Middle school students at the Crossroads School near Fells Point were evaluated by teachers every single day last school year, with the results driving the next day's instruction.

At East Baltimore's Fort Worthington Elementary, about a quarter of the school's parents turned out for MSA Family Fun Night and sampled questions from the Maryland School Assessments.

Alexander Hamilton Elementary, situated in a West Baltimore neighborhood that the principal calls "gang-infested," started a gifted education program last year to challenge students to learn beyond their grade levels.

The principals of the three schools credit those and myriad other initiatives with making their schools among the most improved in Baltimore, during a year in which the school system overall posted historic gains on the standardized tests administered under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

"This is Baltimore leading the way," said Gov. Martin O'Malley. "And this is also Maryland leading the way. Showing the people in the rest of our country that our best days really can be ahead of us."

MSA test results released yesterday showed strong improvements by students statewide, particularly among black and low-income students. But nowhere were those gains bigger - or more surprising - than in Baltimore schools.

There, students posted sharp increases in math and reading scores, at times amid potentially devastating distractions. Alexander Hamilton students made major gains on tests in a neighborhood so challenged that the school was under lockdown for three days because of nearby shootings, including that of a police officer. Principal Charlotte Jackson said a key to success has been persuading gang members, through gang-prevention workshops, to respect the school's boundaries and not recruit their younger siblings, leaving them free to concentrate on academics.

The city's MSA results are no fluke, schools chief Andres Alonso told a standing-room crowd of school officials, politicians, students and teachers at Fort Worthington yesterday.

"I have absolutely no doubt that we're going to replicate these results in the coming years," he said. "We will become a model school system for the nation as a whole."

Citywide, reading scores were up an average of 11 percentage points and math scores rose by 8 points. The biggest improvements were seen in the fifth, sixth and seventh grades, enabling the city to buck a national trend of stagnation among middle school students.

While the overwhelming majority of city schools posted improved MSA scores over last year, several showed declines, including Falstaff Elementary in Northwest Baltimore, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary in Upton and Harriet Tubman Elementary in Harlem Park.

The generally large gains in Baltimore and Prince George's County, which have large populations of poor and black students, contributed to a significant narrowing of the so-called "achievement gap" across the state. Maryland scores on the MSA, a test given in grades three through eight, improved statewide for the fifth year in a row.

City elementary schools have been making incremental progress for the past several years, but the scores released this week, particularly for middle schools, left many wondering how an urban system long associated with dysfunction managed to post such dramatic gains in a single year.

"I've been asked a hundred times already," a beaming Alonso said. "Why? Why? What do you attribute this to?"

The answer, according to the schools chief and his principals and teachers, is complex and not subject to any silver-bullet theory. Alonso attributed the academic improvement partly to investments in early childhood education that preceded his arrival in Baltimore last year but also to "the extraordinary sense of urgency that we have exhibited in the district this year, with a great focus on accountability and expectations."

School principals said adherence to a statewide instructional curriculum - coupled with intensive monitoring of individual students and engagement with their parents - probably were behind the test score gains.

At the Crossroads School, where 90 percent of students are poor enough to receive free or subsidized lunches, the percentage of eighth-graders scoring "proficient" or "advanced" on the math MSA rose from 32 percent in 2007 to 67 percent in 2008.

Citywide, only 28 percent of eighth-graders were proficient or better on the math test, up from 24 percent last year.

"We just got smarter about making sure that our students could demonstrate mastery on any measure," said Crossroads Principal Marc Martin. In addition to assessing his roughly 150 students every day, Martin expanded hourlong "acceleration" classes in which students were grouped every day according to their particular needs and drilled on those subjects.

Martin, who came to Crossroads last year after nearly a decade in the city schools as a teacher and administrator, said the total lack of staff turnover last year was a key component of the school's success.

Teacher turnover has also been low at Poplar Grove's Alexander Hamilton, where students had to endure three days of police lockdowns in April because of nearby shootings. Jackson, the principal, credits staff commitment and increased parental involvement - partly bolstered by a new music program and its student recitals - with bringing a crucial element of stability into a community where just a few years ago students were recruited by gang members.

At Hamilton, the percentage of fourth-graders passing the math portion of the MSA nearly doubled this year over last, from 46 percent to 84 percent.

Fort Worthington Principal Shaylin Todd said her efforts to boost parents' interest with events such as MSA and math-themed family fun nights are bearing fruit.

"Parents are able to see and do the work and know what their children are expected to be able to do and know," Todd said. "It helps them at home in terms of assisting with the homework."

Terry Brown, a Fort Worthington fifth-grader, credits his parents with helping him succeed on the MSA and with classwork.

"They wrote down math problems and made me read books," he said. The standardized test "helps me go to the next grade, so I can become something," added the 10-year-old, who aspires to become a police officer if professional football doesn't work out.

But Annette Walker, whose 8-year-old son attends Fort Worthington, said she was concerned about an over-emphasis on testing at the school.

"I'm not a test person," Walker said. "If a child comes to school every day, there shouldn't be a need for tests."

Her son, Corey Rice, said he wasn't worried about taking his first MSA next year, when he hits the third grade.

"I'm going to be ready," he said.

gadi.dechter@baltsun.com