The Senate agreed to the full title.
Senator Polehanki asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Polehanki’s statement is as follows:
I rise today to discuss House Bill Nos. 4556 and 4557 which, among one other thing, eliminates the essay part of the SAT test. The essay portion of the SAT has not been offered nationally since June 2021. No Michigan public university uses the data obtained from the essay portion of the SAT as part of their admissions process. Michigan is one of only two other states that still requires high school juniors to take the essay portion of the SAT. Combined with the new law that makes the work skills test optional for high school juniors, if we pass this bill today, we will have removed about four hours of mandatory standardized testing for juniors, putting as much as a full day’s instruction back in our classrooms. Standardized testing is important and needed, but it must be tailored to students’ needs. Forcing young people to take tests that don’t help them is not the way to go.
The second part of this bill would remove MME subject area test scores from high school transcripts. This mandate was put into place over 20 years ago in order to get students to try harder on the old MEAP test. A relic of the past, this requirement, unique to Michigan, can hurt students in the admissions process or in the workplace if certain subscores are unflattering as other states don’t require it.
No group is opposed to this bill. The college admissions counselors, College Access Network, the school boards, the counselors’ association for schools, the teachers, the principals, and the superintendents all support the bill; and it passed the House 101-to-0 for both bills. I do request a “yes” vote on both bills today.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4557, entitled
A bill to amend 1979 PA 94, entitled “The state school aid act of 1979,” by amending sections 22p and 104c (MCL 388.1622p and 388.1704c), section 22p as amended by 2025 PA 15 and section 104c as amended by 2021 PA 48; and to repeal acts and parts of acts.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: