Parents and community leaders reacted yesterday with alarm over the wide gap between Baltimore County's best- and worst-performing high schools on Maryland's newest high-stakes tests, but they clashed over the reasons for the troubling results.

While Dulaney, Hereford and Towson high schools scored among the best in the state, Milford Mill Academy and Chesapeake, Randallstown and Woodlawn high schools performed among the worst.

"I was shocked," said Van Ross, president of Woodlawn High's PTSA, after reviewing results from the High School Assessments released Thursday. "We're supposed to be improving. I don't see a thing."

Parents, community leaders and school officials disagreed about what was most responsible for the poor showing and how best to fix the problem.

"I wasn't in shock. These were schools that had been identified over time as needing additional support," said Superintendent Joe A. Hairston, who has equalized funding among schools and has sent extra teachers and programs to troubled schools.

Hairston said the school system has to work on improving instruction, but learning won't improve without parent involvement, such as checking children's homework and stressing the importance of education.

"All of the technical things you find in your recommended strategies for improvement of schools are in place," Hairston said, "but improvement has an awful lot to do with the spirit and the will of the community."

On the exams, the typical student at the county's highest-performing schools ranked in the top 20 percent of test-takers across Maryland, while the typical student at the county's worst-performing schools was in the bottom 20 or 30 percent.

Baltimore County school board President Donald L. Arnold cautioned against reading too much into the results because the state has not determined what constitutes a passing score. But he said the gap among schools was a concern that the system is trying to address.

"We're paying a lot more attention to it, and doing a lot of things," he said. "Whether we're on the right road, only time will tell."

The worst performing of the county's 24 high schools had among the school system's highest concentrations of minority students. The schools also had high percentages of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches.

Some parents rallied behind the superintendent, praising the work he's done in troubled schools to create environments conducive to learning. They said poor performance often has more to do with the wealth of parents than official neglect.

"I don't see that as neglect as much as the reality of living in a poor neighborhood," said Meg O'Hare, chairwoman of the Northeast Area Advisory Council. "But is it going to stay that way? I don't think it will."

Yet others blamed insufficient resources, inexperienced teachers and bad leadership, disagreeing with those who say that socioeconomic status was the cause.

"Are they trying to say the people in this area are a different kind of class and you can't teach them? It doesn't make sense to me," said Alberta R. Shiflet, sergeant-at-arms of the Essex-Middle River Civic Council.

Shiflet's 16-year-old granddaughter attends the private Institute of Notre Dame in Baltimore instead of Chesapeake High.

The gap between high-performing schools - many of which are in the central part of Baltimore County - and poor-performing counterparts has been a problem for years that various superintendents have tried to address.

"That divide has been a persistent problem, and it's getting worse," said Ella White Campbell, a community activist from Randallstown. "The kids in the southwest and northwest area are not getting the same quality of education as the kids in other areas."

Campbell said many of the schools doing badly on state assessments have students placed by state agencies in the county's many group homes. She said the schools need more help with these students, who come with serious emotional problems requiring extra attention.

Robert C. Berkshire, a Dundalk resident who is active in the schools in the southeastern part of the county, said the problem goes beyond the high schools themselves. He said it starts with providing good instruction in elementary and middle schools.

Berkshire stressed the importance of parent involvement. "That's the biggest component in raising overall scores, something that wouldn't cost much money," he said. "Just getting involved."

But Ross, of Woodlawn, said schools sometimes discourage involvement. She said they schedule school improvement meetings during the middle of the workday and treat parents condescendingly.

Michael Franklin, president of the PTA Council of Baltimore County, said that parents need to get involved more - and not only by providing more help to their children.

"There should be a hundred people in the boardroom asking why the differences in these schools exist," he said.

Sun electronic news editor Mike Himowitz contributed to this article.