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Blacks, Hispanics show improved test scores

But school official says that decreases among eighth-graders mean more needs to be done

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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The increases, contained in new Maryland School Assessment data released Tuesday, reflect similar gains statewide.

‘‘MCPS continues to see improvements in elementary and middle school MSA performance,” county schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast wrote Tuesday in a memo to school board members. ‘‘While disparities by race and ethnicity continue, we also are seeing strong gains by African American and Hispanic students and the achievement gap continues to narrow.”

Reading and math scores improved for all 24 Maryland school systems. But the state and county data also reveal that older students are not performing at the same level as younger students.

That is a concern for some school officials, who worry that students entering high school this fall may fail state tests they must pass in order to graduate beginning in 2009.

‘‘Middle school continues to be our problem area,” said school board member Patricia B. O’Neill of Bethesda, who is running for re-election in District 3. ‘‘... We’ve got to be preparing kids for high school because the looming graduation requirement of the [High School Assessments] could prove devastating.”

About a quarter of county high school students were not enrolled in county schools in elementary school, meaning they did not receive the benefit of the early childhood initiatives pushed by the school board and Weast over the past six years, O’Neill said.

Scores among fifth-graders, who have had six years of the early childhood initiatives, increased by 3 percentage points over last year’s fifth-graders in reading and by 2.3 percentage points in math. However, the percentage of fifth-graders scoring proficient fell in both reading and math compared to the class’s results on the fourth-grade tests.

African-American fifth-graders’ scores improved by 5.3 percent points over last year in reading and by 3.9 points in math. Hispanic fifth-graders’ scores improved by 5.6 and 6.7 points, respectively.

That is compared to smaller increases for white and Asian American fifth-graders: 1.8 points in reading and 0.4 points in math for white students and 2.3 points in reading and 1.5 points in math for Asian American students.

The only drops in proficiency rates in reading or math this year were seen in eighth grade.

‘‘We can’t afford to send kids to high school who aren’t reading well because they will not pass the HSAs,” O’Neill said.

High schools need more remediation programs, including algebra programs targeted at struggling students, O’Neill said. The George B. Thomas Learning Academy will offer an after-school tutoring program in algebra at high schools beginning in the fall.

Board member Valerie Ervin (Dist. 4) of Silver Spring said middle school reforms that the school system is undertaking need to bring better cooperation and coordination between elementary, middle and high school teachers and administrators.

‘‘The reason for our middle school reforms is we know that we need to put a lot of support in our middle schools and high schools,” said Ervin, who is running for the District 5 seat on the County Council. ‘‘And it really shows when you look at scores on MSAs in younger grades and where they are when they get older.”

Board member Stephen N. Abrams, a candidate for state comptroller, said he is not worried about what the MSA scores could mean for the high school tests.

‘‘We have to see some results in [the HSA data] before we start sounding any alarms,” said Abrams (Dist. 2) of Rockville.

Magnet programs launched at three downcounty middle schools last year will push scores up and increase the demand for high academic standards, Abrams said. As students who benefited from the early childhood initiatives move on to middle school in the fall, the school system will look at what is working in the magnet schools and replicate it countywide as part of ongoing middle school reform, he said.

‘‘We’re not going to diminish the efforts in early elementary,” Abrams said. ‘‘But these kids coming through are going to demand more rigor.”

Under federal law, all students must show proficiency on the tests by 2014.

Tuesday’s release is preliminary data. Final scores, along with data on which schools met state-set progress goals, will be released later for elementary and middle schools and in October for high schools.