Arundel MSA scores make moderate gains

Student performance at some schools shows sharp drops, however

By Ruma Kumar | Sun Reporter

9:17 AM EDT, June 14, 2007

Overall, Anne Arundel County elementary school students seem to be performing well in terms of reading and math, according to Maryland School Assessment test scores released yesterday.

The young children -- particularly fourth-graders -- saw moderate gains in their test scores, and their achievements continued to trump statewide averages. Of the 10 top-performing elementary schools in the state, two -- Shipley's Choice and Benfield -- are in Anne Arundel.

But the test data released by the Maryland State Department of Education, also showed some sharp drops in student performance -- even at schools once lauded for academic turnarounds.

Twenty-two of 77 elementary schools in Anne Arundel County posted double-digit drops in the percentage of students passing the state reading or math tests, and some of those same schools ranked among the 23 with double-digit gains in math and reading performance.

At Belle Grove Elementary in Brooklyn Park, 85.8 percent of the third-graders passed the state's reading test, a more than 25 percentage point increase over last year.

School officials said yesterday that they hadn't had time to study all the data, but said they were proud of the fourth-grade gains and steadily narrowing gaps in scores between minority, white and poor students in the district's 77 elementary schools.

"Looking at our fourth-grade scores, I feel optimistic that we've seen some gains and sustained some gains, even as the bar has gotten higher," Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell said.

But Maxwell cautioned that drops or gains might appear sharper at small schools where a handful of students can make or break a school's ability to meet state benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The law requires 100 percent proficiency in every subject for every student by the year 2014.

"Before we make a leap of judgment, we need to look further into the data and find out why we see some of the drops or gains," Maxwell said. "We're planning to review our math curriculum this year, and we'll be looking hard at those math scores to see what needs to be addressed, where our focus needs to be."

Last year at Tyler Heights Elementary in Annapolis, 90 percent of third-grade students passed the yearly state math test. This year the number of passing students dropped to 57.5 percent. Its declining performance reverses a rebound that began seven years ago.

Tyler Heights, where 95 percent of children come from low-income families, had struggled with lagging scores. It saw a resurgence after aggressive reform efforts began in 2000, when it was one of two schools to win a national literacy grant.

After that, the district tapped it to be one of 14 schools to receive an intensive phonics-based curriculum.

A local private school sent its students there to be mentors and tutors. Last fall, the school became one of the first two in the county to have uniforms, a move that officials said would get the children's minds off fashion competition and on academics.

The school moved off the state's list of failing schools in 2005 by posting double-digit gains in reading and math.

But the test results released yesterday show that the percentage of third-graders at the school who passed the reading test dropped from 90 percent last year to less than 80 percent this year. The number of fifth-graders passing the test also dropped by more than 10 percentage points. Yet, even as fifth-graders' performance dropped in reading, it rose in math: Close to 86 percent of the students passed, up 12 percentage points over last year.

Maxwell said he and his staff are studying what factors are derailing progress at some schools.

"I fear that we will not be able to keep pace with the kind of improvement we want to make because we have not received the funds that we believe are important," he said.

ruma.kumar@baltsun.com

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that 22 of 77 elementary schools in Anne Arundel County posted double-digit drops in the number of students passing the state reading or math tests. The double-digit drops were in the percentage of students passing the tests. The Sun regrets the error.