Across Maryland -- in superintendents' suites, in principals' offices, in classrooms, in school boardrooms; from the inner city to the wealthiest suburbs to the most remote of rural outposts -- the message is unequivocally clear:

The state is watching local schools as never before, and demanding that local districts rejuvenate them -- or else.

Fix failing schools, the state tells local districts, or the state will do it, by wresting control of them from you.

Rewrite curriculum, the state decrees, to replace outmoded rote learning and prepare children for college and an ever more complex and demanding work world.

Grade not only the students, the state demands, but give every public school in Maryland a report card, too -- detailing test scores, attendance and promotion and dropout rates.

Prove your competence, the state warns teachers, or you'll lose your license to teach.

Demonstrate you can apply "higher-order" thinking to real-world situations, the state orders students, and prove it by taking new tests unlike any anybody has ever seen.

Build students' character, the state directs local teachers, by forcing them to perform community service.

As Maryland schools open this week and next, all of this has meant changes for anyone who goes to school -- students, teachers and administrators. Franklin High School Principal Evelyn G. Cogswell has to hire a science teacher at her Reisterstown school to meet new graduation requirements. Jacqueline Brown, community service coordinator at Patuxent Valley Middle School in Jessup, scrambles to match students with charities. Children at Phelps Luck Elementary in Columbia, says one of their teachers, cry in frustration as they struggle with one of the new state tests.

"Clearly, the pressure is there, and it's intense," says Barbara Whitman, an English teacher at Franklin High, summing up the sentiments of many of Maryland's more than 45,000 public school teachers.

Perhaps the most visible evidence of the more aggressive state attitude can be found at Baltimore City's Patterson and Frederick Douglass high schools, the first two schools threatened with the ultimate sanction -- state takeover.

Abysmal test scores, low attendance (seven of 10 children show up each day at the schools) and dropout rates (38 percent a year at Douglass), prompted the state to target the two schools.

Next week, as a result of the city's state-ordered improvement plans, both schools will open with new principals, numerous other staff changes, separate academies focusing on career and academic programs and other strategies to reverse years of decline.

And this year, more schools will be added to the list targeted for takeover.

'Accountability'

It's all about "accountability," a word invoked constantly, as if a mantra, by state Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, the state school board and more than a few state lawmakers. In its quest for accountability, Maryland's efforts threaten the long-cherished notion of local control over schools and place the state in unprecedented roles as reformer, catalyst and enforcer for the state's 772,000 public school students.

During her three years at the helm, Dr. Grasmick, working closely with her board, has never flinched from delivering politically risky decrees and executing far-reaching policies.

"It's amazing," says Baltimore County Superintendent Stuart Berger. "If we'd been sitting here in 1984 when I was superintendent in Frederick County, and you'd told me this was going to happen, I'd have said you were crazy."

Blunt response

To those who ask why the state should meddle in local affairs, Dr. Grasmick is characteristically blunt, pointing to alarming dropout rates, incompetent teachers, dismal attendance, "seat time" rather than performance as a standard for credit, high schools that graduate kids unable to write a few literate sentences.

Today's reform-minded interventions can be traced to a man some of the state's top educators and policy-makers regard as a visionary, longtime Baltimore civic leader Walter Sondheim. His ideas, which seemed much more radical five years ago, have since been widely embraced.

In 1989, a governor's commission headed by Mr. Sondheim prescribed detailed "accountability" measures for every school and every school system.

Dr. Grasmick says for too long politics and adult interests have superseded children's. "If you focus on the reason we're in this business -- educating children -- if you really are committed to that, it gets back to what I said so many times before: No child should get an inferior education because of where that child lives."

Full-scale offensive

But her critics, notably the Maryland State Teachers Association (MSTA), have conducted a full-scale offensive against some of the reforms.

A day before the state board approved the "reconstitution" -- or takeover -- measure in November, the union launched an ad campaign denouncing the measure as a scheme to turn public schools over to private operators.

"Hands Off Our Schools," a union radio ad said. "State bureaucrats want to seize them and sell them to the highest bidder."

In the communities surrounding Douglass and Patterson, the union found many allies, as parents, teachers, clergy, community activists and students denounced the state measure. Ultimately, the state accepted city plans to revive the schools -- and neither ended up in the hands of private operators.

Last spring, Dr. Grasmick and the board again infuriated teacher unions with their effort to strip the licenses of teachers who receive three unsatisfactory ratings in a five-year period.

Decrying a move to reduce teachers to "probationary status for the rest of their careers," the MSTA charged that the new licensing requirements would create a climate of fear and lead to arbitrary dismissals.

But if anything, local superintendents and some board members suggested, the new requirements, which take effect in January, should be more demanding.

Reforms win support

Said state board member Edward V. Andrews: "I don't want to be in an airplane where a pilot lands three out of five times. I don't want my grandson in a classroom where his teacher performs satisfactorily three of five years."

Privately, many teachers acknowledge they're embarrassed by their union's opposition to a measure that in effect requires of teachers a grade of 60 -- a D-minus in most classrooms. While critics garner headlines and sound bites, the reforms have won the crucial support of key legislators and influential business leaders.

Jeff Valentine, vice president of the Greater Baltimore Committee and veteran school-watcher, says well-documented evidence of schools' failings has turned the tide of public sentiment from viewing radical reforms with disdain or without -- interest to embracing, even demanding them.

"We're running out of time and running out of options," he said. "How many times do you go back to the drawing board before people say it's a lost cause, especially in Baltimore City? How much longer can we tolerate kids being the product of mediocre schools? We need strong accountability. We need to hold the bosses accountable."

The reforms also are backed -- publicly, at least -- by all 24 local superintendents.

In reality, though, the level of the superintendents' support varies widely and, in some cases, remains tenuous, with private grumbling and wounded egos aplenty.

Uncertain fate

Some think the direction of reform in Maryland may depend on the results of the November election. With Dr. Grasmick's boss, Gov. William Donald Schaefer, ineligible for another term, her fate is uncertain. Though her term runs until 1996 (and she is appointed by the state board, not the governor), she says she probably would resign if Prince George's County Executive Parris N. Glendening, who is endorsed by the MSTA, wins election and "isn't supportive."

Creating further uncertainty, as the state moves ahead with its reforms, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke reportedly is preparing to go to court to force the state to match its decrees with millions more dollars for Baltimore schools. Precisely when the suit would be filed remains unclear and poses a prickly dilemma for the mayor.

Mr. Schmoke is allied with Mr. Glendening, and a suit could anger the Washington suburbs, where Mr. Glendening is counting on strong voter support.

For decades, wrangling about inequities in funding has dominated the debate on rejuvenating schools. Increasingly, in Maryland and elsewhere, legislators have grown weary of pumping additional money into failing districts and instead focused on attacking incompetence and forcing radical changes.

Among the first products of the drive for accountability: the tests designed to measure how well students apply classroom learning to real-life situations. A radical departure from the more traditional standardized tests, the nine-hour battery of tests replaces multiple-choice questions with "tasks" requiring students to write essays, draw graphs, conduct experiments and work in groups to solve problems.

New tests

The new tests were developed at a cost of $1.7 million with test publisher CTB Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, based on the advice of more than 200 Maryland teachers.

The tests cost about $2.5 million each year to administer.

Though viewed by their creators as a linchpin of the state's school reform efforts, the 4-year-old performance tests have been beset by criticism from the beginning, and significant glitches have made valid comparisons to previous years' results impossible.

Critics call the tests unproven measures of student ability that set arbitrary standards and unfairly assess skills teachers have not been trained to teach.

Marti Bowen, a third-grade teacher at Columbia's Phelps Luck, said the state "did not gear the tests to the level of our slower students." On a recent test, she said, students had to write a letter about the test itself. "A student wrote that he wasn't as stupid as the test would judge him to be," Ms. Bowen recalls. "When that happens, we have to ask what these tests are doing to children."

The latest results -- for tests given to third-, fifth- and eighth-graders in May 1993 -- provide some measure of the huge gulf between reality and lofty expectations the state hopes to meet in the next few years: All but a few of Maryland's more than 1,000 public elementary and middle schools got failing marks.

Whatever their views, teachers and administrators know the performance tests will take on much more significance next year when they'll be used, along with other measures, to help identify elementary and middle schools targeted for possible state takeover.

The second round of identifying "academically bankrupt" schools expected to expand to other high schools, perhaps bringing the total to 20 or more, state officials say.

For now, only a fraction of Maryland schools face a takeover threat. But even in high-achieving districts, schools are taking extraordinary measures -- such as volunteer attendance monitors who call the homes of absent students each morning -- to make sure they get good grades on the state report card.

'Take a close look'

It's a new era in Maryland education, and Ms. Bowen's emotions couldn't be more mixed: "As a teacher, I think it's made us stop and take a close look at what's happening in education and give thought to what children need to learn. As a Howard County taxpayer, I view it as an extremely expensive project whose results may not be worth the money we're spending on it."

THE STATE'S REQUIREMENTS

The state of Maryland is taking an increasingly active role in setting standards for schools and monitoring whether each school meets the standards. Listed are requirements for the schools, students and teachers.

WHAT SCHOOLS HAVE TO DO:

Meet an array of standards that are part of the state's school improvement program. They include test scores, attendance rates, dropout rates and promotion rates. Schools that don't meet the standards -- and that aren't making progress toward meeting them -- are informed that they are eligible for "reconstitution," or state takeover. Reconstitution occurs only after state and local educators have made a series of efforts to improve the school.

WHAT STUDENTS HAVE TO DO:

*Take the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills -- multiple-choice tests in reading, language and math given to a sample of students (and all students in some systems) in grades three, five and eight.

*Take the Maryland Functional Tests in reading, writing, citizenship and math. Students must pass all tests in order to graduate.

*Take tests in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program. These are sophisticated tests of so-called higher order skills given in grades 3, 5 and 8 as part of a test of schools, not students. So far, most Maryland schools are failing.

Graduation requirements:

*Three years of mathematics, including mastery of the essential content of algebra and geometry.

*Three years of science, all in earth, life or physical sciences, and all to include laboratory work.

*One year in technology.

*Four years of English.

*One-half year each in physical education and health.

*One year in the fine arts.

*Three years of social studies, including one in U.S. history, one in world history and one in local, state and national government.

*Seventy-five hours of community service, now called "service learning." All 24 school districts have chosen an option that allows the "equivalent" of 75 hours but, according to a state Education Department spokesman, "does not actually have to be" 75 hours.

*Unspecified time in "multi-cultural education," which includes study of racism and sexism.

*(College-bound students must take two years of a foreign language or advanced technology. Career-bound students must complete a state-approved career technology program.)

WHAT TEACHERS HAVE TO DO:

Receive "satisfactory" or better ratings at least three of every five years to retain their teaching licenses as part of an unprecedented effort to weed out incompetence among Maryland's 45,000 public school teachers.