State Board Reprimands System Over Test Scores

Officials Are Ordered To Improve Academics

Prince George's Superintendent John E. Deasy wants to move staff to the system's worst schools and improve teacher recruitment. (By Michel Du Cille -- The Washington Post)

BALTIMORE, Oct. 25 -- After three consecutive years of inadequate test scores, the Prince George's County school system was placed under "corrective action" by the Maryland State Board of Education yesterday.

That label has been given to only one other system in Maryland -- Baltimore schools -- and under the federal No Child Left Behind law, it carries a range of potential sanctions, including a possible state takeover of low-performing schools.

In March, the state board attempted to place 11 Baltimore schools under independent management, but Democratic legislators intervened and delayed the action by a year.

Although it raised the hammer, the board did not bring it down on Prince George's yesterday. State School Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick recommended no sanctions, saying the county's new schools chief had presented a plan to address the district's most serious academic problems.

John E. Deasy, a California educator hired in May to lead the 134,000-student system, "understands what has to happen," Grasmick said before the board unanimously approved her recommendations. "He understands, as we do, the urgency."

Deasy has vowed to raise the county's test scores, which have increased in recent years, by reallocating staff to the system's worst-performing schools, bolstering teacher recruitment and retention, improving parental participation, and giving children more opportunities and better training to participate in Advanced Placement courses.

"You need not be concerned about the level of gravity in which we take it," Deasy told the board. "You need to be concerned about the celebration when we meet our goals."

Grasmick also recommended continuing a course of corrective action for Baltimore schools yesterday and lifted a less-serious "school system improvement" status for Charles, St. Mary's, Allegany, Cecil, Dorchester, Kent and Somerset counties.

The board's actions coincided with the release of Annual Yearly Progress reports for the state's 24 school systems and for individual high schools.

The reports showed that high schools fared better in 2006 than in 2005 on state tests, reflecting improved scores in reading and math. Four Washington area high schools, two each in Montgomery and Anne Arundel counties, tested well enough to leave Maryland's school improvement watch list. Twenty-two high schools in the region, 19 of them in Prince George's, remain on the list.

The release of the data, the standard of success under the No Child law, also meant that some schools were placed on the state's improvement watch list.

Four of 24 comprehensive high schools in Montgomery -- Magruder, Montgomery Blair, Northwest and Quince Orchard -- failed to make adequate progress in 2006. In every case, the problem was poor reading performance among special education students on the English assessment.

John F. Kennedy High School staff members "really have worked hard over the past two years, focusing on what they needed to do" to improve performance in the special education community, said Heath Morrison, a Montgomery education official who oversees Kennedy and Blair.

Of Blair's failure to make adequate improvement, Morrison said he thinks it missed by the statistical equivalent of half a student -- in a school that has about 3,000 students. He said administrators are frustrated that performance by a comparatively small statistical subgroup of students can lead a whole school to be labeled a failure.

But Montgomery's standing improved on the school watch list, which is limited to schools that have missed their targets for two or more years. Only one high school, Montgomery Blair, remains on the list this year, having missed its goals for three years. Two other high schools, Gaithersburg and Kennedy, reached their targets.