Results "terrible”

Large numbers of Blair students failed their first semester exams in Algebra 1, Geometry, Biology and National, State and Local Government (NSL), with only half of all administered tests receiving a passing grade. The performance, dubbed "terrible" by Principal Phillip Gainous, has some questioning whether a graduation crisis looms as the state's High School Assessments (HSAs) in these subject areas are phased in as graduation requirements.

"If these were the HSAs, huge numbers of our students would not be graduating," Gainous said. "It's scary that large numbers of our students aren't prepared."

Gainous called the failure data a "preview" of how Blair students could perform on the HSAs.

The semester exams in Algebra 1, Geometry, Biology, NSL and English are modeled after their respective HSA tests.

This June, high school students will be required to take pilot versions of the HSAs in Algebra 1, Geometry, Biology, NSL and English. Scores will be reported on students' transcripts. By the end of the 2003-2004 school year, all incoming students will be required to pass the exams in order to graduate, regardless of performance in HSA-subject-area classes.

MCPS Assistant Director of Communications Kate Harrison feels that Gainous' fear of a graduation crisis is unfounded. "There is still time," she said. "There is no graduation crisis." She called this year's performance a "baseline" that the county aims to improve upon each successive year.

Across Montgomery County, success rates on last semester's exams in the HSA subject areas were mixed. Overall, the percentages of students who passed were 52 for Biology, 62 for Geometry, 71 for Algebra I, 72 for NSL and 85 for English 9. Blair students performed about as well as their MCPS peers on the English 9 and NSL exams but received far poorer scores in the other areas. At Blair, the percentages of students who passed the exams were 40 for Geometry, 41 for Biology, 52 for Algebra I, 70 for NSL and 85 for English 9.

Carol Blum, director of high school curriculum for MCPS, said the weak student performance is a wake-up call to improve instruction but is not unexpected given that student failure tends to correlate with poor marking period grades.

In an MCPS public announcement, Superintendent Jerry Weast said that the comparatively high level of success on the English 9 exam will be studied in the hope of improving students' performance on the other four exams. "[The English 9 exam provides] a benchmark that can be used to compare with successful implementation of the other courses and exams across the county, particularly when focusing on the alignment of instruction with the curriculum and the response by students to the increased academic rigor these exams represent," he said.

Special attention will be paid to the Biology and Geometry assessments during the review, Weast added. Less than half of non-honors students passed the Biology and Geometry tests.

MCPS is now beginning a statistical analysis of student performance on the first semester exams in the HSA subject areas. Officials aim to align the tests with the curriculum and to discard or reword faulty test questions. In addition to the MCPS and school-level analysis, the county has hired Achieve, Inc. to conduct an external review of the exams.

All exams administered in the HSA subject areas underwent revision since last year, according to Blum. The revisions included changing and eliminating faulty test questions.

An additional change included the development of two forms of differing difficulty for the English 9, NSL and Biology exams. One form was given to honors students and the other to on-level students. The HSA is administered in multiple forms as well, but all forms are of equal difficulty, according to Blum.

Blum said that the test forms given to honors students were more difficult than the HSAs.

Blair English Resource Teacher Vickie Adamson said that she felt that the English 9 exam was fair. She has complained to MCPS about earlier versions of the English 9 exam that were, according to teachers, riddled with errors.

She said students at Blair performed comparatively well on this year's exam because they were motivated to try to answer the questions on the test. "From SPARC to special education to honors, students tried to complete the written section," she said. "Students made attempts to satisfy the test."

Last January, MCPS canceled 30,000 exams in English 9, Biology and NSL. While officials initially said the cancellation was due to inconsistencies in grading among different schools, then-Assistant Superintendent Pamela Hoffler-Riddick told Silver Chips last spring that the tests were canceled due to large numbers of failures.