By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2007; GZ03
Like many elementary schools struggling to make adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law, North Forestville Elementary in Prince George's County went all-out this year to increase the share of students rated proficient on the statewide Maryland School Assessment.
The effort yielded an added dividend. Not only did more students attain proficiency at the school, but a far greater percentage rated "advanced" on the state assessment, meaning that they mastered most or all grade-level skills.
While proficiency is the overarching goal of the federal education mandate, a growing number of principals, teachers and parents are tracking student progress in reaching the next level of performance on MSAs, advanced. They see that as a gateway to honors, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate study in high school.
Student performance is grouped into three broad levels on Maryland's test: basic, indicating partial mastery of grade-level work; proficient; and advanced, a term that roughly equates to performance above grade level.
A Washington Post analysis of state test scores for 457 elementary schools in Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Frederick, Howard, Montgomery, Prince George's and St. Mary's counties found steady progress in moving students from proficiency to advanced performance.
Nearly 350 schools in the eight-county region increased the percentage of their students rated advanced on the MSA, or at least held steady, while only about 100 schools went down, based on a comparison of 2006 and 2007 performance. The analysis considered tests given in reading and math in grades 3, 4 and 5, ignoring schools with incomplete data and students in grades other than those three.
The share of students rated advanced at North Forestville Elementary rose from 5 percent in 2006 to 16 percent this year, an 11-point gain reflecting a schoolwide push toward proficiency and beyond.
With 58 percent of students receiving subsidized meals, the school fell just below the cutoff for federal Title I funds, an avenue to extra staff and supplies.
North Forestville Principal Wanda Grant nonetheless persuaded Prince George's school officials last year to give the school a full-time math specialist, a former classroom teacher who spent her time "just working with teachers and with small groups of students."
Grant also used incentives, contests and recognition ceremonies to focus students on the MSA.
"We kept it in their face," she said. "We would post the scores for particular classes or particular grades. The students are very competitive."
Critics of No Child Left Behind say the law encourages mediocrity at the expense of higher standards because it measures schools largely on proficiency rates.
"I think that the focus on bringing increasing numbers of students to proficiency has caused school systems and schools to focus on just that goal and just those children," said Fred Stichnoth, a Montgomery County parent who is an advocate of education for gifted children.
Some school systems have found ways to encourage schools that aspire beyond proficiency. Officials in Montgomery, for example, are studying ways to assess schools annually on their delivery of accelerated curriculum, including advanced performance on the statewide test.
"You're not just shooting at the middle," said Kevin Igoe, principal of White Marsh Elementary School in St. Mary's County, where the share of students rated advanced on the MSA rose eight points to 32 percent this year. "We say to ourselves here, 'We're doing well with proficient, but how are we challenging our brighter children?' "
The percentage of students statewide who were rated advanced on the state test has grown steadily in five years of testing. In the elementary grades, the advanced share has nearly doubled from 15 percent in 2003 to 27 percent in 2007.
Success in reaching the highest tier of MSA performance varies widely among suburban counties. Howard, with its comparative affluence, has 42 percent of students rated advanced in the elementary grades.
Forty percent of students rated advanced in Calvert County, 36 percent in Montgomery, 35 percent in Anne Arundel, 32 percent in St. Mary's, 28 percent in Frederick, 23 percent in Charles and 14 percent in Prince George's.
Cold Spring Elementary in Potomac had the highest percentage of students rated advanced, 74 percent. Forty-nine schools, all in Prince George's County, had fewer than 10 percent of students in the advanced category.
Pointers Run Elementary in Clarksville produced a 12-point increase in the share of students rated advanced, from 46 percent last year to 58 percent this year. With the proficiency rate at her school topping 90 percent across the grades, Principal Darlene Fila found that the instructional focus at the school naturally shifted "to the proficient kids and how to move them up to advanced."
The school used a common instructional technique called flexible grouping, with classrooms broken up into smaller groups according to ability.
What has changed in the past year or two, Fila said, is the frequency with which teachers move students from one group to another. Students are now reassigned after every academic unit, based on tests taken before and after the unit.
"It's a lot more work for the teachers, a lot more data collection, but it paid off," she said.
At Spark Matsunaga Elementary School in Germantown, teachers met weekly last year in instructional teams to review student data and to update the roster of students assigned to each academic group within their classrooms. Principal Judy Brubaker said teachers had assigned students to math groups by the second day of school.
"I wanted consistency," she said. "And consistency is what we have been able to control. And that [means] instruction, and constantly reviewing data, to make sure that nothing gets away from us."
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