Re: Blood pressure up in MD!

["Arthur Hu(comcast)" <arthurhu@comcast.net>]

Main reason for Mass "success" is that everybody just dropped out. Anyone
who believes that every student can and must graduate high enough to be
admitted to a 4 year college is stupid, a liar, or both. A diploma was,
and should be, a piece of paper you get for completing 12 years of
education, nothing more, nothing less. To doom anyone who performs at a
level less than 4 year university admissions to low paying jobs that
do not require a high school diploma is just plain foolish and cruel.
That's not liberal, or conservative, it's facist.

Arthur Hu
Kirkland WA


-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org
[mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org]On Behalf Of Susan Allison
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 7:05 AM
To: "Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@interversity.net
Subject: [arn-l] Blood pressure up in MD!


I would love it if this Washington Post Columnist got emails from all over
the country on this one.  Her contact info. is below.  I will send her
something as soon as my blood pressure comes back to the normal range.   I
forget who I am borrowing this Texas line from -- but the lies of
Massachusetts are falling on Maryland to its peril!



http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27123-2004Mar3?language=printer



State Should Let Students Rise to the Challenge

By Karin Chenoweth

Thursday, March 4, 2004; Page PG06

If the state Board of Education backs up any more, it's going to fall off a
cliff.

The latest news is that the state won't require students to pass all the
High School Assessments to graduate. If they fail one of the tests, they
still can get a diploma as long as they don't fail it too badly and then do
well enough on the other exams to earn a combined passing score.

Let's review where we were heading and where we are.

Way back when Maryland's school reform effort began in the 1980s, the talk
was that a diploma would be a ticket to a four-year college -- not a
community college remedial class. The hope and promise was that no one would
graduate who was not ready for college.

(By the way, this was long before the federal No Child Left Behind law and
its testing requirements. No Child Left Behind is often blamed for high
school graduation tests, but it is individual states that have decided to
link graduation to tests, not the federal government.)

For years, Maryland was lauded throughout the country for its ambitious
standards and rigorous testing program.

There was even a period in the 1990s when Maryland's university system
considered hooking its admissions standards to the state's high school
graduation standards. Admissions officials would simply look at how students
did on the High School Assessments and be able to decide whether to admit
them to College Park or one of the other U-Md. campuses. They would not even
need to see SAT scores.

But after the state decided it was not going to require students to know any
Algebra II before graduation, the university system washed its hands of the
mess. Algebra II is what the university system says is required to be ready
for college, and the state had no interest in requiring Algebra II before
graduation. In fact, as it turned out, the algebra/data analysis High School
Assessment test barely requires knowing any Algebra I. It's more a
pre-algebra, or "algebra concepts," kind of test.

Even with all the downsizing of their requirements, though, state school
board members are so terrified of the idea of half of the state's students
not being able to pass the High School Assessments that they have pushed
back the time when the tests will count for graduation several times. Right
now, the idea is that today's seventh-graders will have to pass the
assessments before graduating in 2009, but there's no assurance the state
board won't delay even further.

And last week, the state board decided that students don't even have to pass
all the tests -- they just have to accumulate enough test points to sort of
look as if they might be able to pass at some point in their lives.

These school board members are people who clearly don't have a lot of
confidence in the ability of our students to meet any kind of intellectual
standards.

Not that they don't have reason to be worried. More than one-quarter of the
state's college students need remedial classes, according to the Maryland
Higher Education Commission. More than half of Maryland's high school
students failed at least one test on the High School Assessments last year.

But there's good evidence that if you set high standards and give students
good instruction, they will rise to the challenge.

Take Massachusetts. Massachusetts instituted some pretty difficult tests and
required its students to pass them to graduate. The first time the
graduating class of 2003 took the tests, when they were in 10th grade, 77
percent of the white students passed, but only 29 percent of the Latino
students and 37 percent of the black students passed. But the state stuck to
its guns. Last year, the last time these students took the tests, 83 percent
of the Latino students, 86 percent of the black students and 97 percent of
the white students passed.

The same kind of narrowing of the gap occurred for Massachusetts students
with special needs. The first time they took the test, 77 percent of the
students in regular education passed, compared with 7 percent of the
students with limited English skills and 30 percent of the students with
disabilities. Those are scary numbers, and probably what Maryland is facing
as well.

But by the final test administration, 97 percent of the students in regular
education had passed, and 82 percent of those with limited English
proficiency and 80 percent of the students with disabilities passed.

I predict the pass rates will be better this year than last -- and all the
students will know they accomplished something worthwhile.

But Maryland seems uninspired by Massachusetts.

"This is definitely the state with the longest timeline," said Kati Haycock
of the Education Trust in describing Maryland. Education Trust is an
organization that advocates that all students, particularly poor students
and students of color, have access to a high standards and a rich
curriculum.

Haycock is adamant that all students should graduate from high school
prepared for college. Of the Maryland standards, she said that "even if the
students get to these standards, they're still not ready for college."

To some extent, it is up to Prince George's County to persuade the state
that it can have high standards and expect students to meet them. State
board members are concerned about how poorly Prince George's students have
done on standardized tests, compared with peers in other counties, and that
is part of what is leading them to lower the standards.

If students in Prince George's make progress this year on the High School
Assessments, maybe the state board will realize that progress is possible.





Homeroom appears every week in Montgomery Extra. Send questions, opinions
and issues that you would like discussed to Homeroom, The Washington Post,
51 Monroe St., Suite 500, Rockville, Md. 20850. The fax number is
301-279-5665. Or e-mail homeroom@washpost.com. To see previous columns,
visit www.washingtonpost.com, click on the Education page and look for
Homeroom under Education Columnists.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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