Doubts emerge as statewide tests keep just 11 from diploma

State education officials said Monday that only 11 students statewide did not graduate in June because of newly required tests, a number that seemed surprisingly low to those who had worried that thousands of students would fail to graduate.

The High School Assessment, which took effect with the Class of 2009, had produced some of the most divisive debates in the education community in the past several years. Supporters of the tests said they would make the state's high schools more rigorous and a diploma more meaningful. Others argued against the requirement, saying that it created an unfair disadvantage for students in urban schools who had not been given an adequate education.

But the results for the Class of 2009 prompted state school board member S. James Gates Jr. to ask, "Are we setting the standards high enough?"

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said she had always viewed the requirement as "the floor" of what students should attain to get a diploma and she hoped to propose more standards in the near future.

Of the roughly 62,000 seniors in 2009, about 41,000 actually passed all four of the pencil-and-paper exams, which test skills in algebra I, 10th-grade English, biology and American government. Many of the remaining students who met the requirement earned a combined minimum score, received waivers or completed projects. For example, no seniors in Baltimore failed to graduate solely because they did not pass the required tests.

Bebe Verdery, education director for the Maryland ACLU, said board members should not worry that the standards are too low until more students can pass.

"School systems generally did a good job of supporting students to meet the high school requirement through alternate routes so there were not huge numbers of students who didn't graduate," Verdery said. "The fact remains however, that only two-thirds of the seniors were able to pass all four tests and that points toward the need to improve instruction."

The number who did not meet the requirement does not include those who may have dropped out because they became discouraged and believed they would never pass. In the Class of 2009, 1,700 dropped out last year and 2,200 failed to graduate because they hadn't passed classes and the tests. About 10,000 students in the class had dropped out over the course of four years, said Leslie Wilson, who is in charge of testing for the state.

The state contends that the assessment did not have a detrimental effect on students because the statewide dropout rate fell for last year's seniors to 2.6 percent, from 3.4 percent the year before.

Few students were held back in part because the state, after contentious discussion among state board members and education advocates, put in stopgap measures that would help more students pass. In October, 9,000 students across the state, or about 17 percent of the Class of 2009, were at risk of not getting a diploma.

That month, the state board defeated a motion to delay the requirement after five hours of emotional debate, but it did give school systems the ability to offer waivers of the requirement for students with special circumstances. In some cases, they were students who had not taken courses in the right sequence and didn't have enough time to get extra help to pass the test, were in special education or had a personal crisis, such as the death of a parent. Some 531 students were given waivers, including 103 in the city.

One of the ways that the state could tighten the requirements would be to reduce the number of students eligible for the waiver, a move Grasmick said she expected to make this school year.

In addition to the waivers, students could choose to make up for failing any of the tests by doing a "bridge" project. The state also has the option of making those projects more difficult. But Grasmick said that the projects done by the Class of 2009 were not meaningless and that a high level of standards were in place because two state officials spot-checked the projects to make sure school systems were not passing students who shouldn't be passed.

School superintendents and state officials say many schools gave struggling students the attention they had lacked for years, which improved the chances that everyone would meet the requirement and graduate. The graduation rate did not fall in Maryland this year, as it has in some states that instituted high-stakes testing. For example, in Howard County, no student failed to meet the requirement and the graduation rate rose to its all-time high of 94.87 percent.

In Baltimore, the number of students who graduated went up, the number of dropouts went down and no student did not graduate because of the testing requirement.

The city's graduation rate for 2009 is officially 62 percent, the same as last year. However, the state's formula does not count students who dropped out and returned to graduate. If those students were included, the city's graduation rate would be 4 percentage points higher.

City schools CEO Andrés Alonso said the city supported having the testing requirement and worked hard to make sure that students had access to good support and help to pass the tests. The result, he said, was that about 200 more students graduated this year than last.

In Baltimore County, five of the 7,736 seniors in the Class of 2009 did not graduate solely because of the HSA requirement as of June, school officials said.

"That's a monumental achievement for us," Superintendent Joe A. Hairston said.

The district saw its graduation rate rise - to 83.56 percent, up from 82.21 percent in 2008 - and its dropout rate decrease to 3.74 percent, from 4.34 percent the previous year, said Kara E. B. Calder, a schools spokeswoman.