State moving forward with plans to close failing schools

Public education advocates are pushing back on plans by the Michigan School Reform Office to shutter a number of failing schools next June, saying the move would be unfairly based upon results of the state's new, rigorous standardized test.

School officials were told by The Michigan Department of Education that they wouldn't be penalized based on student performance on last spring's M-STEP test. The idea was to collect three years of data from the exam -- thus far it's been given twice -- before using the results for policy decisions.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/public_education_advocates_que.html