Despite steady gains on the state's annual report card on student achievement, Carroll County schools dropped from second to third in overall statewide scores, losing a position the school system has held since 1994.

Harford County schools pulled ahead of Carroll this year to take second place behind Howard County, which has maintained the top ranking among the state's 24 school systems since the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program began reporting scores in 1993.

"I hate to see us drop from second to third even though it's only a difference of two" percentage points, said school board member Ann M. Ballard. "But if we had the resources a Howard County has, we'd be off the charts."

Carroll's score for students who performed satisfactorily on the tests was 56.4 percent, a one-point increase over last year. Harford's score was 58.3 percent, and Howard's was 60.1 percent.

The MSPAP tests are given annually to third-, fifth- and eighth-graders to measure student proficiency in applying knowledge to six subject areas. The state's goal is for 70 percent of all schools in the state to score at the satisfactory level by 2000.

Last year, former Carroll Superintendent Brian L. Lockard warned that county teachers were being asked to do more and more with fewer financial resources than most counties. Lockard's successor, William H. Hyde, expressed the same concerns yesterday.

"We have cause to celebrate compared to other systems, but we have schools where we simply have too many students not achieving at satisfactory levels," Hyde said.

"There's a point in time where we will exhaust our ability to realign and redistribute resources," he said.

Carroll school officials have long touted the system's high academic performance and conservative spending. The county's cost per pupil, $5,874, is fourth lowest in the state, according to 1996-1997 data. Carroll's ratio of 62.5 instructional staff per 1,000 students is the second lowest in Maryland.

However, on average, Harford spends only $72 more than Carroll on each pupil, and its schools showed dramatic gains in this year's MSPAP scores, particularly at the elementary level.

For example, Harford's third-grade reading scores jumped from 51.1 percent to 57.8 percent. Carroll's third-graders posted a two-point increase in reading, from 49.7 percent to 52.0 percent.

Michael Perich, supervisor of Carroll's Office of Continuous School Improvement, questioned whether Harford's achievement would transfer to the higher grades.

"I don't mean to take away from Harford, but at the middle school level the scores are not as high," Perich said. "I'm not sure the trend is a sustained trend in Harford."

Although the county's MSPAP scores have raised some serious concerns among school officials, the report also contained some encouraging signs.

"An awful lot of Carroll County schools are within 10 to 20 points of the state standard," said Ronald A. Peiffer, assistant state superintendent with the State Department of Education. "They've been making good, solid gains since 1993."

Carroll, which over five years has gained 14.4 points on its total MSPAP score, is one of seven school systems to post scores above 50 percent, within 20 points of the satisfactory standard.

Carroll third-graders ranked fourth highest in the state in reading and social studies. Their performance in science was ranked fourth, despite a small drop in scores.

They also showed declines in language usage and math.

At the fifth-grade level, county students ranked second in the state in reading, but the writing scores have dropped two years in a row.

Although eighth-graders in Carroll had some of the highest scores in the state, school officials found some of the results worrisome. For example, the county's eighth-grade students earned a first-place ranking in reading with only 37.6 percent of pupils meeting the satisfactory level.

Across Maryland, MSPAP scores indicated slow progress at the middle school level. State and Carroll officials have begun fTC initiatives to devote more resources to improving middle school reading.

Looking to the future, Hyde said he's confident that Carroll's Advancing Early Literacy Program -- which began in January and provides intervention programs for at-risk students in kindergarten and first grade -- will yield impressive results in future test scores.

Pub Date: 12/09/98