Thousands of Michigan third graders were flagged for retention under the state's 'Read By Grade Three' law.
Letters will be mailed out to the homes of nearly 2,700 third-grade students to notify their parents that their child did not receive the cutoff score during the state's reading assessment, The Detroit News reported.
If a child receives a score of 1252 or below on the English-language arts portion of the M-STEP, a letter will be sent to their family by mail.
According to CEPI officials, as of this week, 67,000 out of over 104,000 third-grade students have taken the reading assessment, and 2,699 students did not meet the cutoff score to advance to the fourth grade.
A CEPI official told The Detroit News, "Testing is still ongoing, and both students tested counts, and retention letter counts will change over the course of the next several weeks." The M-STEP testing window closes on June 4.
Some children did not take the M-STEP this year because their parents excused them from the test, or they remained in remote learning.
Parents or guardians of the students who did not pass the reading assessment have 30 days from when they received the letter to contact the school's superintendent and request that their child is not held back through an exemption process.
The Detroit News added that many Michigan superintendents have said they will not be enforcing the retention portion of the law for this year because of the learning circumstances of the past year.
Educators, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and state Superintendent Michael Rice have asked state lawmakers to drop the retention of third-graders due to the learning restrictions that happened during the pandemic.
"Third-grade retentions are bad public policy and particularly bad during a pandemic. Even the U.S. Department of Education acknowledged that end-of-year state tests should not be used for high-stakes decisions in the pandemic," Rice said.
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