Md. Students Aim to Go From X to G (Graduation)

Algebra Proficiency Required for Class of '09

Maryland's ninth-graders are all too aware of the stiff new challenge ahead: to earn a high school diploma, they'll have to prove their algebra smarts on a 140-minute examination.

"We're the first class to have to pass the big test," said Renaire Rivers, 14, an Algebra 1 student at Largo High School.

"You can't get out of high school without that," said classmate Cherise Payne, 13.

In recent years, when diplomas were not at stake for most test-takers, large numbers of Maryland students have fallen short of that goal. Just 54 percent of those who took first-year algebra last spring passed a state test with word problems, two-dimensional graphs and analytical exercises. In Prince George's County, only 31 percent passed, including 12 percent at Largo High.

To put it in algebraic terms, if y represents students in the Class of 2009 and x stands for those who pass the exam, then y-x equals the number at risk of failing to graduate.

So educators are pulling out all the stops to raise performance. Interactive TV algebra, a trial launched in August in Prince George's high schools, is a relatively new entry in the fast-growing field of distance learning. In many schools across the country, TV links have long been used to help students take classes unavailable at their own campus, such as Advanced Placement subjects or foreign languages.

One fall morning at Largo High, students were solving and graphing inequalities in an experimental class meant to help teachers and students alike. Video cameras and two banks of television monitors linked their room to others in Oxon Hill and Springdale as three teachers joined forces simultaneously in an effort to help more students master beginning algebra.

Maryland, joining Virginia and other states, is now pushing students to pass high school exit exams in mathematics and other subjects. And, experts say, Maryland's predicament echoes the nation's.

Sharif Shakrani, deputy executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which monitors education trends, rated the algebra readiness of the typical U.S. eighth-grader as "dismal." He said many are ill-prepared for high school math, especially students in large urban school systems who lack early exposure to algebraic concepts.

Some analysts say states must make elementary and middle school math more rigorous and push more students to take Algebra 1 before ninth grade -- a step embraced in Montgomery and Fairfax counties and elsewhere. Others say raising teacher quality should be the top goal.

"My personal view is, it's less about the curriculum and more about the instruction," said Francis "Skip" Fennell, an education professor at McDaniel College and president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. "It's all about teaching and the person delivering it."

Enter John A. Smith, a rookie math teacher at Largo High, and his tag-team teaching partners in companion classes at Oxon Hill and Charles H. Flowers high schools.