Maryland opened a new chapter in high-stakes testing yesterday, exposing a large disparity in achievement between top-tier high schools and the perennial low achievers - and revealing the challenge ahead if state officials plan to make passing these new high school exams a requirement for graduation.
At the same time, state education officials closed the book on the annual MSPAP exams that have been administered to elementary and middle school pupils for a decade, with the last batch of results producing some of the worst reading and math scores since testing began.
The High School Assessments look a lot like final exams, testing a year's worth of content in three hours of multiple-choice and essay questions. The tests were given during the past academic year to students - mostly ninth-graders - who finished courses in algebra, English, government, biology and geometry.
The scores released yesterday by the state do not actually show how many students passed - passing scores will not be determined until next summer, after the tests are given again.
But for the first time, the state's calculations show how school systems - and schools and students - stack up against one another at the high school level. Individual student scores will be sent home this month and will appear on high school transcripts.
"That's the beginning of a journey," said state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, who said the new exams give school systems an idea of whether their curriculums are rigorous enough and what they need to fix. "Education should not be static or stagnant. It should be dynamic. This can be the trigger for that. It's a very exciting time."
Principals have said they are concerned that students did not take the test as seriously as they might have if they were getting an actual report card grade. In January, for example, the High School Assessments were given just a week before final exams - and students probably studied harder for those.
Howard and Montgomery counties scored at the top on the new exams, eclipsing the rest of the state. Centennial High in Howard, Severna Park High in Anne Arundel and Towson High in Baltimore County were among the highest scorers in the metropolitan area.
Though several selective citywide high schools in Baltimore performed very well, many other city high schools lagged near the bottom, as did some suburban programs that serve large numbers of poor students.
Montgomery County - which has not always been a high-flier on other state tests - stood out for the performance of its black students on the high school tests. While still lagging behind white classmates, black students in Montgomery scored nearly as high on the state's English exam, for example, as all of Baltimore County's students.
"The data demonstrate that the continued push toward greater rigor in our academic program, particularly at the secondary level, is producing successful results," Jerry D. Weast, Montgomery's superintendent, wrote in a memo to his school board yesterday.
Wealthy Montgomery spends more money per pupil than any other county in the state.
On the much-maligned Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests, state officials played down the low scores, saying systems should not give the scores the same weight as in previous years.
The results showed that the number of third-graders scoring at the satisfactory level in reading fell from 36.5 percent in 2001 to 30.7 percent last spring - just a fraction higher than the 30.6 percent reading satisfactorily in 1994. Satisfactory scores on the third-grade math portion fell from 37.8 percent to 28.7 percent, about the same as in 1993.
Officials blamed the use of out-of-state scorers unfamiliar with the tests; Maryland teachers had graded the exams previously. Officials said students and teachers showed less interest once it became widely known that last spring's MSPAP would be the final installment.
"We're not really comfortable with them because we're just not sure they mean a lot," Assistant State Superintendent Ron Peiffer said yesterday. "Other years we've had much more confidence."
In the past, MSPAP scores have been used to identify failing schools and target them for state takeover. This year, schools will not be punished for poor performance. The MSPAP is being replaced with a new content-based test that will debut in March.
Grasmick asked federal education officials last spring if the state could discontinue use of the MSPAP while developing a new testing program that would produce individual student scores required by the recent No Child Left Behind laws. Her request was denied, except in eighth grade - where two-thirds of systems were permitted to opt out of the May tests.
So the state spent more than $3 million - and thousands of third- and fifth-graders spent nine hours taking tests in math, reading, writing, science and social studies over the course of five school days. Why go through the expense?
"Because we had to," Peiffer said.
Principals are being asked to glean what information they can from the MSPAP results, but not to spend too much time on any data that doesn't mesh with what they already know about their schools.
"We're preparing for the new assessments," said Carl D. Roberts, superintendent of Cecil County schools, "so we're not going to spend a lot of time analyzing why this score went up and why this one went down."
In Anne Arundel, new Superintendent Eric J. Smith said he plans to scrutinize the results for third- and fifth-graders to identify weaknesses in student performance.
"We will dig through it aggressively," he said. "It's too much of an investment of time ... to not have this be useful in some form."
The state could have re-scored the tests - which are still considered valid statistically - but decided against it, determining that the cost would outweigh the benefit.
"We're moving on," said Mark Moody, who directs the state's testing program. "We could re-score the tests and reduce the margin of error, [but] it's pretty expensive and it takes a long time, and, given that it's the last year, not worth the investment."
In addition to developing the new elementary and middle school testing program, state officials also must now set passing scores for the high school exams - something that won't be an easy task.
Should this test become a requirement for graduation, which is the intention of state officials, the passing score will be more than a number. It will determine who gets a diploma and who does not. Students will be able to take the test until they pass, though the details of that may be difficult to work out.
But some students might not pass the test, no matter how many times they take it. Some schools scored abysmally the first time. Special education students - higher-performing students with disabilities who were required to take it - scored far below regular students.
"Is this test going to be a chance for the school systems to step up and do something fantastic to really help these kids [with disabilities] succeed or is this test going to be an opportunity for them to be further excluded?" asked Teresa LaMaster, a parent and advocate in Baltimore County. "That's the crossroads this test presents."
Peiffer said officials have several options. They could create a system with two kinds of diplomas, one for those who pass the High School Assessments and one for those who don't. Or they could start with a low bar for passage and slowly raise it as students and teachers become more familiar with the test.
"The issue is, how can we do that in a way that will provide accountability and not get some unreasonable expectation that will put kids in jeopardy," he said.
But since the state set its initial MSPAP goals a decade ago, no system ever met the standard of 70 percent of students attaining a satisfactory score.
"In the process of developing the test, I'm sure they are using some amount of caution with the lessons they learned from MSPAP," said Gregory Bricca, Carroll County's accountability and assessment supervisor. "The stakes are very high here because you're talking about whether students will get a high school diploma, so I'm sure they'll use some sort of caution.
"The state board will have to make a determination of what percentage of kids they are willing to say are not going to get a high school diploma."
Sun staff writers Liz Bowie, Laura Loh, Jennifer McMenamin, Jonathan D. Rockoff, Tanika White and electronic news editor Mike Himowitz contributed to this article.
More information
On SunSpot: For a complete list of assessment scores for Maryland high schools and middle schools, go to http://www.sunspot.net/scores.
Coming tomorrow: Results for area elementary schools and middle schools on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program exams will be available in tomorrow's editions of The Sun.