Scores for Harford County third-graders dropped, while fifth-grade scores showed gains in the most recent round of MSPAP testing.

Schools Superintendent Jacqueline C. Haas said she has not been able to analyze the results and cannot explain the drop in third-grade scores.

Haas said she is waiting for an in-depth report on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program scores so the district can see where students need additional work.

The statewide tests were administered for the final time last school year.

Meanwhile, Harford County schools ranked near the middle of Maryland's 24 school districts overall on the new state high school assessment tests, which cover five subjects.

Harford students ranked 12th in the state in English; 17th in biology; 10th in geometry; eighth in government and seventh in algebra.

The latest MSPAP results show the number of third-graders meeting a satisfactory standard dropped in every category.

The largest decline was in social studies, where 36.4 percent received a satisfactory score, down from 46.7 percent in 2001.

Haas said it's difficult to determine why third-grade scores have declined for two consecutive years.

"It's hard to comment when you have seen only one score," she said. "That score tells you nothing."

Fifth-graders scored higher in all categories, except reading, where there was a slight decline from the previous year. In 2001, 53.2 percent of fifth-graders received satisfactory scores in reading; that number dropped to 51 percent last school year.

Harford was one of 16 school systems that did not administer the test to eighth-graders. The county does not have any middle schools that receive federal money for low-income students under the federal Title I program.

The high school assessment tests were administered primarily to ninth-graders last winter and spring.

State officials haven't set passing scores, so the results were reported in percentile rankings that indicate how students performed when compared to all other students in the state who took the test.

Harford scores ranged from a low of the 49th percentile in biology, to a high of the 57th percentile in algebra.

"It's hard to know what any of these scores mean," Haas said. "We'd like to see the percentiles higher, but they don't tell us what adjustments we need to make."

Bel Air High students scored the highest among the county's 10 high schools, ranking in the 63rd percentile in English; 57th in biology, 52nd in geometry, 64th in government, and 46th in algebra.

Edgewood High received the lowest scores of county schools, ranking in the 34th percentile in English; 46th in biology; 31st in geometry; 36th in government, and 27th in algebra.