Gimme an A! High-Spirited Rallies for High-Stakes Tests

Call them the MSA missionaries.

Oxon Hill High School sent a busload of about 50 students to Owens Road Elementary , Forest Heights Elementary and other schools to help get youngsters to believe in themselves as they take the Maryland School Assessments this week and next.

The teenagers also helped the youngsters and their teachers make some serious noise.

Emcee-rapper Kenneth Williams , 17, a senior, who lives in Fort Washington and is, as one administrator noted, an A student, led the elementary school children in motivational chants and hollers. "Take the test and learn your best," he sang at one appearance. Williams also got teachers and principals to boogie to a line-dancing tune called "The Electric Slide."

Cheerleaders led MSA spirit routines. Drummers laid down a beat. Dancers performed. A choir sang a cappella.

"We want to see those scores soar all the way up!" said the pep squad's coordinator, Paulette Brown .

This week, Prince George's County students in grades three through eight took the mathematics portions of the state achievement tests. Next week, it's reading. Makeup tests are then scheduled through March 28 for students who were absent. This is the fourth year Maryland has administered the MSA.

By June, principals and teachers should know how their students did and whether the scores will help their schools make "adequate yearly progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The Oxon Hill High-led rallies were not the only ones. Other elementary schools in various parts of the county also were gearing up to help students and teachers get psyched for the exams and celebrate their effort. Principals got a final chance to remind their students to get a good night's sleep, eat breakfast and keep a clear head for the all-important testing.

Schools are pulling out all the stops. County school officials are predicting gains over last year's scores. But they don't know whether they will be enough. Each year, state targets are tougher to reach as the federal law pushes schools to what may be an impossible goal: near-universal proficiency by 2014. In other words, just about every student at grade level.

"Just making gains is not sufficient," said Leroy Tompkins , chief accountability officer for the county school system. "You've got to meet the targets. And therein lies the rub."

Seventy-five of the county's 199 schools are on the state's needs-improvement watch list. To get off the list, they must hit state targets two years in a row.

Tompkins said that about 10 to 15 schools are eligible this year to come off the watch list. But another 20 or so are eligible to go on it. Whether the school system will be able to shrink the number of schools on the watch list is unknown.

"It's a crapshoot," Tompkins said. "You never can tell. There's so many things that can trip you up."

Fruits of a Donation

About that Oxon Hill High choir. It has a new rehearsal room, thanks to about $45,000 in renovations funded by the Peterson Cos. , a developer. The project included a new ceiling, carpet, paint, window blinds and wall sound panels.

Interim schools chief Howard A. Burnett praised the choir's benefactor. "The business community continues to help us build brighter futures for our children," he said in a news release.

The high school recently was given priority by the county government for a huge renovation project in a funding request made to state school construction authorities.

Officials aim to make the south county school a regional academic magnet akin to Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt. Like Eleanor Roosevelt and Charles H. Flowers High School in Springdale, Oxon Hill High offers a high-end science and technology curriculum to a limited number of students.

Odds and Ends

Largo High School is holding a school uniform "fashion show" at 7 p.m. Tuesday to help parents pick a design for their children, according to a PTA officer there. . . . The school system has scheduled a hearing for 6 p.m. March 30 at the school headquarters in Upper Marlboro to get input for the name of an elementary school scheduled to open in Bowie in August. . . . Some school officials are growing more concerned about high truancy rates around the county, the subject of a recent community meeting at Northwestern High School in Adelphi. One school system motto addressing the issue is "Be Cool: Go to School."