By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

One of the largest hurdles in the struggle to get more than 2,700 Prince George's County high school seniors to pass graduation exit exams is that many of them aren't even showing up to take the tests required to earn a diploma.

Of 2,754 students at risk of not graduating in June -- more than one third of the county's 7,871 seniors seeking a diploma -- 1,165 have not taken one or more of the four required High School Assessments in algebra, English, government and biology, school officials told the county Board of Education on Monday in Upper Marlboro. About 180 have not taken any of the tests.

The school board, in its first meeting with interim Superintendent William R. Hite Jr., appeared deeply troubled by the numbers. Member Heather Iliff (District 2) likened the exams to "a speeding train coming at us," and she and others asked repeatedly what could be done to turn things around.

"The most important thing the community can do is encourage the students to take the exams," said Donna Muncey, the school system's accountability chief. "They can't pass the exam if they don't sit down and take the exam."

Prince George's is not the only system with such a problem. In Montgomery County, more than 1,300 students haven't taken one or more of the exams, according to state data. (Of the students in Montgomery who have taken all four tests, more than 94 percent have passed, compared with 76.5 percent in Prince George's.)

Part of the problem is that students learning English -- a large population in Prince George's and Montgomery -- often don't take the English exam until their senior year. But Prince George's schools also have serious problems with truancy, particularly at the high school level. In the 2006-07 school year, the most recent year for which data are available, most high schools had truancy rates above 10 percent, according to state data. Some have much higher rates. At Potomac High School, truancy topped 26 percent.

The school board is pushing ahead with an anti-truancy campaign this year, and Hite said he would be sending letters home to every student at risk of not graduating, as well as having his staff meet with their parents personally. The board's student member, Edward Burroughs III, suggested that the county deploy additional truancy officers on testing dates.

But Hite and others said many students hadn't taken the tests seriously until the eleventh hour.

"There has been this belief that maybe it's not important or maybe it will go away," Hite said. "It's very important that we communicate that students must sit for this assessment."