Detroit is a city on the move, and the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) are a major source of positive energy. This is a city that holds rallies on the first day of school to excite and inspire students and teachers. This is a district that has spaghetti suppers and pancake breakfasts with parents to explain the statewide testing program and how to motivate students to excel on the tests. Local radio and TV stations broadcast public-information commercials about what is happening in the school system. Bus drivers, lunch ladies, teachers, students, and administrators all proclaim that they are “DPS, working together to build brighter futures.” (The city’s slogan is “I am DPS.”)

The city has its share of challenges. More than half of the population lives below the poverty level, and crime rates are among the highest in the nation. The city has lost population, including students, for the last two decades. But Detroit has begun to reverse those negative trends and seems eager to improve. The mayor of Detroit, Kwame M. Kilpatrick, has made education reform his top priority.

As with other large urban school districts that experience high student turnover rates, Detroit is struggling to ensure that all students are taught the complete citywide curriculum regardless of how many times they change schools during the year. To that end, the district established extensive pacing guides for teachers to use for instructional planning. The pacing guides help ensure that teachers throughout the district cover the curriculum at the same rate, so that students who move from one school to another will not miss any content. To monitor the effectiveness of the pacing guides and their use districtwide, DPS developed a plan for quarterly testing. The quarterly test concept is the brainchild of DPS CEO, Dr. Kenneth Burnley, who is determined to make Detroit’s schools “shine.”

In the fall of 2002, Measured Progress began a partnership with DPS to develop and implement quarterly tests in reading and mathematics. Together, we have developed two such tests to measure how well students have learned the curriculum. The district administers the first of these in the fall, testing students on the first eight weeks of instruction. DPS administers the second test (the fourth-quarter test) in the spring, which covers several weeks of curriculum toward the end of the school year. (For the second- and third-quarter tests, the district uses other measures.) And because the test material is so closely linked to the curriculum, the test booklets can be used by classroom teachers to provide instructional support.

DPS administers the quarterly tests, called the Measuring Instructional Progress tests (affectionately known in Detroit as the “MIP”), to approximately 150,000 students in nine grades (grades 1–8 and 10). We are discussing with the district the addition of a tenth grade (grade 9) to the MIP program. Adding science and social studies to the MIP might also occur in the near future. Right now, however, there is a time limit on quarterly testing.

We have collaborated with DPS on some of their remarkable achievements for this testing program. For example, answer sheets are pre-slugged with student names and ID numbers to prevent problems caused by hand-coding errors. In addition, we produced many of the MIP documents in Arabic. (Since Detroit has the largest population of Arabic speakers this side of Saudi Arabia, we might produce future tests in Arabic for some grades.) Later, we produced and shipped tests for the first administration in the fall of 2002 and completed the reporting process for each grade, including shipping, within a week. That is the kind of service we are committed to providing our clients.

We are proud to be a part of Detroit’s bright future. Measured Progress and DPS have forged a strong partnership to develop the MIP and help to build a brighter future for the city’s children.