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Montgomery Ranks Sixth on Tests

53% of County's Students Meet Standards

By Fern Shen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 1997; Page M01

For Montgomery County, results were mixed on the statewide assessment tests given in the spring.

On the one hand, the county saw a modest increase in its schools' overall performance on the tests given as part of the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). Montgomery also had the school with the highest individual score in the state -- Somerset Elementary in Chevy Chase.

On the other hand, Montgomery's ranking slipped, coming in sixth, behind Howard, Carroll, Calvert, Harford and Frederick counties.

School officials acknowledged that the county could have done better but note that, despite its reputation as a wealthy Washington suburb, Montgomery has many challenges.

"We are a large county with a lot of socioeconomic diversity, a lot of students for whom English is not their first language," said school board member Mona M. Signer (Rockville-Potomac). "Look at the populations of the counties that came in ahead of ours and compare them."

School Superintendent Paul L. Vance noted, in a letter to the school board, that the county's performance was disappointing. Its composite score, showing 53 percent meeting satisfactory standards on the MSPAPs, was just 2.2 percent higher than the previous year.

Montgomery County Public Schools' "composite score has not moved as much as we had hoped," Vance said in the memo, but he noted that the results are still higher than the statewide averages.

Montgomery officials said the reason the school system has not scored well on the tests is, in part, its resistance to the tests when they were being introduced in the early '90s. Montgomery parents and officials have argued that the state's standards are lower than those set by the county's ambitious curriculum and its own county assessment tests, the Criterion Reference Tests (CRTs).

"The CRTs are a measurably tougher test, and our students are doing well on those, so we're not tremendously worried about this," said Brian J. Porter, Montgomery County schools spokesman.

Montgomery has, historically, failed to place much emphasis on the tests but has now made them a priority and is working to improve scores, Porter said. By 2000, the state wants to see 70 percent of Maryland schools have their students score satisfactory or better on the tests that gauge their knowledge and analytical skills.

The test is given every spring to public school students in the third, fifth and eighth grades and assesses their abilities in reading, writing, language usage, math, science and social studies.

Overall, the third- and fifth-graders did better than the eighth-graders. The percentage of eighth-graders who earned satisfactory or better scores decreased in several areas: from 37.2 percent to 31.6 percent in reading, 61.6 percent to 58.2 percent in language usage and 59.2 percent to 57 percent in science.

An official at one of the elementary schools that showed progress in MSPAP scores this year said the secret to its success has been "a dedicated staff."

"These are people who really want to be here, and they're excited about everything we're doing," said Gaithersburg Elementary School Principal Sharon Jones, noting that the school won the state's Distinguished Title I School award last week and a $41,000 award from the state for its past performance on the MSPAPs.

The proportion of Gaithersburg students who scored satisfactory or better rose from 25.5 percent in 1994 to 34.2 percent in 1995, 38.8 percent in 1996 and to 39.8 in 1997, continuing the upward trend.

Jones said that the school's performance comes in the face of many challenges: Of its 600 students, 19 percent are not English-speaking, and approximately 60 percent qualify for the free and reduced-rate meal program.

The school brought its scores up with strategies including tutoring, summer school programs, monthly staff meetings and a special intensive focus on reading for kindergarten through second grade, Jones said.

"We all believe here that it doesn't matter what socioeconomic background children are from, they all can achieve," she said.