Whenever the results of the Maryland School Assessment tests come out, the spin-meisters go to work.

Usually, school officials in a given county will try to highlight some area of improvement, say, among special-education students.

That was evident again when the latest scores showed improvements in some jurisdictions and at some grade levels, but declines in others. It was the usual mixed bag.

But the bottom line is that the stakes keep getting raised for school systems. The federal government, still operating under No Child Left Behind standards, expects annual improvement. As it stands today under the education act, 100 percent of students nationwide are supposed to be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Of course, nobody in their right mind, including in the federal government, believes that will happen. (The Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials even put its skepticism in a document, saying the goal is “unattainable even under perfect conditions.”)

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that without changes to No Child, 82 percent of U.S. schools could be labeled failures next year. Schools deemed to be failing for several consecutive years could face a shutdown. As a result, Duncan has been granting waivers so schools can skirt some No Child mandates.

What Duncan and others are hoping is that Congress will rewrite the law and soon. But short of that, the pressure on the schools is coming from a number of sources, perhaps most glaringly from a coalition called Change the Equation. The national organization, made up of 110 CEOs, is trying to improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, particularly for girls and students of color. The nation’s position in the world’s pecking order is at stake.

In a recent column, Craig Barrett, retired CEO of Intel and board chairman of the coalition, noted that the U.S. is the only developed nation where 25- to 35-year-olds are less well educated than 55- to 65-year-olds.

“Unless we level with parents and students about the true state of education, this country doesn’t have much of a chance to make students competitive in the 21st century global marketplace,” he wrote.

Barrett’s group issued “Vital Signs” reports earlier this year on the status of STEM learning in all 50 states. The conclusions for Maryland give pause. Among them:

“Raise the bar on state tests. The Maryland state test rates almost 90 percent of the state’s 4th graders as proficient in math. That’s far more than the 44 percent of Maryland 4th graders who score proficient on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which sets a consistent bar for student performance across the states and tracks international assessments.”

So no matter what the most recent standardized state tests show and what school officials around Maryland say eventually they’re going to have to answer to a higher authority.