Maryland education officials made history yesterday - and raised a few eyebrows - when for the first time they released school-by-school results of their new high school exams.

But now comes the hard part as the state enters new territory: establishing passing scores for the end-of-course High School Assessment tests in English, government, algebra, geometry and biology. If all goes as planned, passing the tests will be a graduation requirement beginning with students entering high school next year.

"It's a touchy issue educationally, politically and even legally," said John F. "Jack" Jennings, who heads the Center on Education Policy, a think tank in Washington.

How touchy? Massachusetts had to lower the passing score for its exit exam so more students would pass. Parents in New York blamed the schools - and sued. Arizona postponed deadlines for withholding diplomas because students performed so poorly the first time it gave its new exit exam.

"The key for Maryland will be where it sets its cutoff scores," said Jennings. "You don't want failure rates of 60 to 70 percent."

The high school assessments - a mix of multiple-choice questions and short essays - are harder and more sophisticated than the two-decades-old functional tests they are pected to replace, said Gary Heath, the State Department of Education's chief of arts and sciences.

"But at this point we don't know what constitutes a proficient score on any of the tests. We're just now getting good looks at the data," Heath said.

The new high school tests may not let Maryland kids know if they make the grade, but they are providing insights, said Heath. They include:

Across the state, middle school students outperformed high school students in algebra. An analysis by The Sun shows that the 2002 middle school median algebra score was in the 77th percentile. The median - or middle point - for high school students, was in the 38th percentile. Heath said about a third of state students take algebra in middle school, "and they tend to be on a faster track."

Ian Cohen, principal of Polytechnic Institute, offered another explanation. He said the new algebra test includes exercises in analyzing data.

"There's a possibility that high school teachers are teaching the old-fashioned algebra curriculum, so they're not yet square with Maryland's learning goals," said Cohen. Poly's scores - generally higher than those in some well-regarded suburban schools - "are about what I expected, given the hard work we've done," Cohen added.

The racial and economic achievement gap is wider in high school tests than on Maryland School Performance Assessment Program exams, a test battery retired last spring.

White students' scores on the algebra test were more than twice as high as those of African-Americans statewide. And across all five tests, the median score of students eligible for free lunches was about the 30th percentile, while the median score for students who don't need lunch assistance was at about the 55th percentile.

The new high school assessments put Maryland in the company of 24 states that have or will soon have exit tests, said Jennings, whose center has completed a three-year study.

"The states with exit tests tend to be coastal and have lots of minority kids," Jennings said. "Despite the controversy, the tests are getting harder, like Maryland's, and students are taking them more seriously."

And where does criticism frequently originate? "In the suburbs," said Jennings, "because parents there expect their kids to do well anyway. When Maryland starts to deny kids' graduation, the protesters will be PTAs in Montgomery and Baltimore counties, not Baltimore City."

Sun electronic news editor Mike Himowitz contributed to this article.