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County Schools Hope to Improve on Top Performance

By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 1997; Page M01

Howard County students led the state for the fifth straight year on assessment tests given last spring, but school officials say they are still experimenting with new ways to improve scores in the county's lower-performing schools.

"It's nice if we're on top again, but I'm less concerned with how we compare to other school systems as much as what we're doing ourselves," said Howard School Superintendent Michael E. Hickey. Although Howard officials applauded the improved reading performance by third- and fifth-graders, they said middle schools will need to examine why reading scores slipped for eighth-graders.

The Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests measure third-, fifth- and eighth-grade students' skills in reading, writing, language usage, math, science and social studies.

Although many Howard schools still haven't reached satisfactory levels established by the state, individual schools had much to celebrate. Last year's fifth-graders at Manor Woods Elementary in Ellicott City scored at the "excellent" level in every category, a first for a Howard County school.

Phelps Luck Elementary in Columbia showed the biggest improvement, with the percentage of the school's students performing satisfactorily jumping almost 20 percentage points.

Talbott Springs Elementary in Columbia improved by 11 percentage points, and Clarksville Elementary improved by 10 percentage points. Among middle schools, Dunloggin in Ellicott City showed the most improvement, school officials said.

Overall, Howard schools had a composite score of 57.9 percent of students testing at or above satisfactory. That put it 16 percentage points above the state average. The overall achievement, however, masks some schools whose performances slid. [See accompanying chart.]

Leslie A. Wilson, the Howard school system's testing supervisor, cautioned parents to study how a school has done over the last five years rather than to make too much of one year's scores. The percentage of students who perform at satisfactory levels can fluctuate by as much as 5 percentage points from one year to the next without being significant, Wilson said.

Because the tests also gauge different students each year, scores may vary slightly based on demographics that can change from one year to the next, such as students' poverty level or mobility, Wilson said. Students' performances also may reflect how well new teaching methods are working.

"We're still in some ways, and at some schools, at the experimental stages," Wilson said. "We're taking a lot of risks to change instruction."

The Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests are designed to measure how well each school teaches the state curriculum rather than how well individual students do. Students take the tests, working alone and in small groups, to apply what they have learned to solving problems in reading, writing, language usage, math, science and social studies.

Most Howard schools use the test results as part of their school improvement plan to determine what subjects need to be beefed up, school officials said. The Maryland State Department of Education set a goal that 70 percent of students would reach satisfactory scores in each subject by 2000.

While eighth-graders' reading performances across Maryland dropped by two percentage points, Howard County's eighth-graders dropped 7.2 percentage points in their reading skills, Wilson said.

With 37 percent of Howard eighth-graders reading at satisfactory levels, Howard's eighth-graders still outperformed their state peers, 26.3 percent of whom read satisfacorily.

"We really need to put much more emphasis on reading at all levels than we have been," Hickey said.

The test assumes that students understand what they read, Wilson said. However, she said, Howard students may need more practice analyzing and thinking critically about what they read, as the MSPAP requires.

Whether students' performances improved or slipped, school principals say they study the results closely to decide what basic skills need more attention or what kind of extra training teachers may need.

Orrester Shaw, the principal of Bryant Woods Elementary in Columbia, said he was disappointed that 20 percentage points fewer third-graders scored satisfactorily on reading last year, even with the school's intensive reading program. Bryant Woods received $47,500 in reward money from the state over the last two years for its improved test scores in 1995 and 1996 and has been praised for its innovative approach to providing more individual attention in reading.

"There isn't a cure-all or any magic that will always make these scores go up," said Shaw, who last year was the principal of Talbott Springs Elementary, which posted a 10 percentage point gain.

"Sometimes you just have a harder-working group of students," Shaw said. "The most important thing is that when you get the data you really look at it very closely, and you focus in on those key areas that you see are becoming problems."

Frank Scrivener, the principal of Dunloggin Middle, attributed the improvement in last year's eighth grade social studies scores to changes made by teachers in response to lackluster scores in 1996.

For example, he said, Dunloggin students hadn't performed as well as teachers anticipated on tests that measure how well they understood different political systems. Dunloggin students now use more maps, charts and newspaper articles when studying politics, as they must do on the test. Last spring, more Dunloggin students achieved satisfactory scores on the social studies test.

"We're changing from [students] learning content knowledge to applying knowledge," Scrivener said. "I don't see it as teaching to the test. I see it as reforming the way we teach."