Open Recommendations from April 2026
The register. Everything the committee left on the table at April 23–24, 2026 TAC Meeting, with its current state.
This is the page the September 2026 meeting should be run against. Its whole purpose is to make the question “what did we advise, and what happened?” answerable in one place — which the April minutes, read alone, cannot do.
Summary
| Status | Count |
|---|---|
| Accepted | 2 |
| Declined (committee advised against) | 1 |
| Open | 34 |
Nothing has been closed, because no meeting has occurred between April and now to close it.
Session 1 — Smarter Balanced Interim and concordance
| Recommendation | To | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Ask Smarter Balanced whether interim reports can carry the M-STEP score | OEAA → Smarter Balanced | Open |
| Move key takeaway and performance level to the top of the concordance document | OEAA | Open |
| Publish the concordance formula, not just the table | OEAA | Open |
| Build a tool that accepts a theta value | OEAA | Open |
| Consider a prediction study if participation supports it | OEAA | Open |
| Target district financial staff and school boards | OEAA | Open |
| Tell districts they need not wait for reimbursement | OEAA | Open |
Highest leverage: Ask Smarter Balanced whether interim reports can carry the M-STEP score. It is the only one that could make the other concordance items unnecessary, and it requires asking a question, not building anything.
Session 3 — Accountability growth targets
| Recommendation | To | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Pursue the Nearest Grade Average approach | OEAA | Accepted |
| Set adequate growth above the 65th percentile | OEAA | Open |
| Build a growth system that supports all students | OEAA | Open |
| Research whether AGPs are actually used, and used effectively | OEAA | Open |
| Survey whether elementary and high schools interpret growth data the same way | OEAA | Open |
| Present the growth methodology work to MERA | OEAA | Open |
Blocked: the accepted recommendation is gated by ESSA Plan Constraints and by Is the impact of NGA on index values desirable?, which OEAA had not answered.
Session 4 — MTTC forms
| Recommendation | To | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Define the inference the MTTC actually defends | OEE | Open |
| Define ‘meaningfully different’ per incidence group | OEE | Open |
| Reduce item overlap between forms | OEE | Open |
| Prefer fewer forms with less overlap | OEE | Open |
| Start with a standard-setting form and grow the pool | OEE | Open |
| Stick with 100 examinees per form, not 200 | OEE | Open |
| Escalate a field to the next group after two years below 100 | OEE | Open |
| Use automated item generation to enlarge the pool | OEE | Open |
| Define incidence categories for Michigan | OEE | Open |
Prerequisite for all of them: Define the inference the MTTC actually defends. “Meaningfully different” has no criterion until the inference is named.
Session 4 — MTTC endorsements
| Recommendation | To | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Do not build constructed-response endorsement tests | OEE | Declined — committee advised against |
| Define the purpose of the endorsement assessment | OEE | Open |
| Use higher conjunctive cut scores on the existing test | OEE | Open |
| Build one open-ended prompt from a randomly selected standard | OEE | Open |
| Consider transcript review to verify coursework | OEE | Open |
| Give districts an interview guide instead of a test | OEE | Open |
Session 5 — Subscore reporting
| Recommendation | To | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ji Zeng’s work through direct collaboration | TAC | Accepted |
| Report the least bad information rather than none | OEAA | Open (standing posture) |
| Model the joint density of the three dimensions | OEAA | Open |
| Establish scale, then cuts, then categorise from theta | OEAA | Open |
| Review item parameters and total-score correlations before Batch 3 | OEAA | Open |
| Report a level of certainty with any subscore category | OEAA | Open |
| Run parent think-alouds and focus groups on the score report | OEAA | Open — survey in development |
| Offer drill-down score reporting | OEAA | Open |
| Bring a sample score report to the next meeting | OEAA | Open — due at the fall meeting |
Explicit commitments for the fall meeting
Only two things were promised outright:
- Bring a sample score report to the next meeting — a sample subscore score report.
- WIN Work Readiness Assessments at the fall meeting — WIN Work Readiness Assessments attending with its psychometric team.
Open questions
How many educators are actually using the interim assessments? · How would OEAA communicate a standard change and break in trend? · Is the impact of NGA on index values desirable? · How long does it take to accumulate enough examinees to equate? · Can equating data be too old? · What would a score report using the new method look like? · Would varying the inter-subtest correlations change the result? · WIN Work Readiness Assessments at the fall meeting
How to use this at the next meeting
Walk the table. For each row ask whether anything has happened, and if so update that page’s status: and say in its body which meeting moved it. A recommendation that is still open after three meetings is either not actually a recommendation or not actually being tracked, and either finding is worth having.