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By Amy Argetsinger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 9, 1998; Page B1

Maryland students showed small but solid improvement on the state's standardized test, according to scores released yesterday – a sign that the rigorous and unconventional exam is slowly prodding public schools to change the way they teach children.

The increase in the average score was the biggest in three years, bringing the number of students at or above the "satisfactory" level of achievement to 44.1 percent statewide, compared with 41.8 percent in 1997.

Yet more than half of all third-, fifth- and eighth-graders still are falling short of that mark on the exam, the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program. The MSPAP attempts to measure their progress in mastering the problem-solving and analytical skills they will need to succeed in the future.

The statewide gains reported yesterday were mirrored in the Washington suburbs, where administrators in the state's two largest school districts put more emphasis on the test than ever before when their students took it in May.

Montgomery County, jolted by its slip last year in statewide rankings, moved back up to fourth place among Maryland's highest-scoring school systems. In Prince George's County, where nine schools have been targeted for potential state takeover because of lagging MSPAP performance, scores rose 3 points – although the county did not improve its second-worst ranking, ahead of only the troubled Baltimore school system.

Howard County, where 60.1 percent of students scored at the satisfactory level or better, remained the top-ranked school system in the state.

State officials say the schools that have shown the most improvement have drastically overhauled the way they instruct students, trying harder to improve children's reading skills, requiring more writing exercises and involving students more in "hands-on" science experiments and social studies projects.

"I think every school system now is taking [the MSPAP] seriously," said Nancy S. Grasmick, Maryland's state superintendent of schools. "For years, there was either resistance or passiveness."

Still, while standing by the once-controversial test, she and other education officials acknowledge that their attempt to push major reforms has faced far more difficulty than they envisioned a decade ago, when their goal was to have 70 percent of students hitting satisfactory scores by 2000.

"We could have selected an easy test and defined a low standard," Grasmick said. "We did neither, and thus set ourselves a huge challenge."

The MSPAP is dramatically different from the standardized exams of earlier generations and from those still given in most other states. There are no multiple-choice questions or bubble sheets. Instead, it asks open-ended questions, many with no right or wrong answers, and requires students to write mini-essays, draw maps and charts and perform on-the-spot science experiments, sometimes working in groups. The test is scored by hand, not by computer.

Although students are grilled on six subject areas – reading, writing, language usage, mathematics, science and social studies – every test blends numerous skills across disciplines.

Above all, the MSPAP was designed to rate schools, not students, and for them it carries unusually high stakes: Low-scoring schools whose marks fail to improve are threatened with state takeover. Nearly 100 such schools now are being monitored – most in Baltimore – though the state has yet to actually seize control from local officials.

Despite facing initial opposition, the MSPAP has gained the support of most of the state's decision-makers, including legislators and school superintendents. The state teachers union, which fought the exam hard at first, now recommends only modest changes in how it is administered.

"People see the kinds of results we're achieving in Maryland," said state Del. Howard P. Rawlings (D-Baltimore), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. "They see we're in the forefront of reform."

Faculty member T.J. Briscoe makes a sign celebrating better test scores at Orem Middle School in Prince George's County. (By Dudley M. Brooks – The Washington Post)

Many parents and some local school officials continue to criticize the exam as too difficult. School board members in Prince George's have questioned whether the exam is "culturally biased" in a way that puts African American students at a disadvantage.

Grasmick, however, contends that the test is as tough as it needs to be and is meant to push schools to raise standards. While acknowledging that many Maryland schools have made little or no progress on the exam, Grasmick said that the success of others proves that improvement is possible.

"It shows that third-graders can read at this level, at-risk students can succeed, fifth-graders can solve complex math and science problems," she said.

The most persistent lag has been with eighth-grade students. Their reading ability has remained near the 25 percent mark since the state started monitoring scores five years ago. Grasmick said the state education board will appoint a task force to explore the problems in middle schools that have caused those scores to stagnate.

Montgomery County, which virtually ignored the MSPAP for several years in favor of its own exams, put more emphasis on the test during the last school year after its slow-growing scores drew criticism. Schools incorporated MSPAP-style exercises into daily lessons in language arts, science and social studies.

"We are now catching up with other smaller districts that jumped into this initiative much earlier," said Brian Porter, a spokesman for the Montgomery schools.

Prince George's officials, meanwhile, cheered their 2.9-percentage-point increase after watching two years of slight decline. "It is a reflection of the overall progress we believe this school system is making across the grades," Superintendent Jerome Clark said.

In January, the state targeted nine low-scoring Prince George's schools for possible state takeover and ordered immediate reforms. Seven of them showed improvement in this year's scores.

But of six other low-performing schools reorganized by Clark in 1997, only two made progress this year. In that restructuring, five principals were removed and their staffs were ordered to reapply for their jobs. Soon afterward, Clark put an additional 16 schools on alert that they, too, would face reorganization unless they made gains. Fifteen improved this year.

Rural St. Mary's County became one of five counties in the state this year – and the only district in the Washington area – to raise its score by more than 20 points since 1993. Neighboring Calvert County was the only district in the region to see scores drop, although only by half a percentage point. Officials there blame the disruptive influence of constant growth, which adds as many as 500 new students each year.

Howard County is refusing to rest on its laurels. Superintendent Michael E. Hickey said high-performing districts like Howard need to share their strategies for success with others. "They need our help, and for us to turn our backs on them and say it's not our problem, well, that's not true," Hickey said. "Our problem is what is going on in the state."

Individual school scores will be published tomorrow in the Maryland Weekly sections and on The Post's Web site at www.washingtonpost.com

Staff writers Beth Berselli, Lisa Frazier, Ellen Nakashima and Craig Whitlock contributed to this report.