Despite slipping slightly from last year, Harford County schools remained among the best performing ones in the state, ranking third overall behind Kent and Howard counties.
The county's eighth-graders posted particularly impressive gains, finishing first overall in the state's 1999 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) scores, rising from fifth last year and 14th in 1994.
Harford's third-graders ranked third statewide in reading, writing, language, science and social studies, while fifth-graders ranked third in all areas except language, where they were fourth.
While the county's overall performance on the tests dropped to 56.3 percent, or about 2 percentage points from last year, school officials were undaunted.
"If you have a blip, you can't get off-track and let that distract you," said Harford County Schools Superintendent Jacqueline C. Haas. "If you look at the data, you see that we have had steady improvements, and that speaks to the solid curriculum we have here."
Seventeen of the county's 39 elementary and middle schools met the state's standard in at least one category. Jarrettsville and Ring Factory elementary schools met the goal in nine of the 12 test areas.
At Havre de Grace Elementary School, where school officials gathered yesterday to release the state data, scores have shown significant improvement over the past six years. For instance, third-graders soared in mathematics while fifth-graders showed equally strong improvements in language usage and science.
Haas said her agenda for next year will be to focus on the performance of each student.
"We need to look at the students who have not yet done satisfactorily and determine why that is," she said. "Let's look at every student as an individual, see what their individual needs are and how we can move them along."
Karen L. Wolf, president of the county board of education, said that after the release of last year's scores, educators focused more on middle school students.
"There were some concerns last year with the eighth-graders' performance, and they have just soared," she said. "We've always been close to the top consistently and it's folks here, the teachers and administrators, who work so hard to keep us there."
In an otherwise encouraging picture, the county's dropout rate emerged as the one bleak sign. The rate, which had been declining for the past several years, rose unexpectedly to 4.54 percent, well above the state's satisfactory goal of 3 percent. That reversed a four-year downward trend.
Pat Benedict, of the Harford County Council of Parent Teacher Associations, said yesterday that while she worries that the tests might not be age-appropriate, she has seen student performance improve as a result of MSPAP.
Data source
The Composite Index scores on these pages are based on data provided by the Maryland State Department of Education.
Because of differences in rounding techniques, some of the scores published here might differ by one-tenth of a percentage point from those posted on the department's Web site. The differences are not statistically significant.
The department's Web site is http: //msp.msde.state.md.us.
Harford County Elementary Schools
This table shows composite index scores for Harford County elementary schools over the past seven years under the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program. The composite is roughly equivalent to the percentage of students who scored at a satisfactory level on the MSPAP tests. The last column shows the percentage point improvement since the tests were first administered in 1993.
'99 '98 '97 '96 '95 '94 '93 Chg.
State Average 43.8 44.1 41.8 40.7 39.6 35.3 31.7 12.1
County Average 56.3 58.3 53.5 52.2 50.9 42.2 38.4 17.9
Abingdon 63.4 70.6 67.9 50.3 NA NA NA NA
Bakerfield 53.9 54.3 53.1 48.7 49.6 29.3 25.3 28.6
Bel Air 62.9 63.5 52.7 63.5 50.5 47.9 49.8 13.1
Church Creek 45.6 47.6 51.4 40.4 34.4 NA NA NA
Churchville 53.5 66.6 55.5 64.2 47.4 45.1 31.5 22.0
Darlington 56.4 52.0 51.7 57.3 22.0 42.9 33.6 22.8
Deerfield 39.7 36.5 39.7 30.9 31.8 25.2 23.9 15.8
Dublin 50.7 65.4 48.7 56.0 52.4 38.2 32.3 18.4
Edgewood 42.5 37.2 40.7 42.4 42.4 28.6 20.5 22.0
Emmorton 61.8 67.9 64.3 62.3 NA NA NA
Forest Hill 63.8 62.5 65.8 58.4 59.0 43.2 41.8 22.0
Fountain Green 70.2 65.2 63.1 60.7 58.9 58.2 NA NA
Halls Cross Roads 40.6 34.8 35.8 36.3 35.7 16.0 13.5 27.1
Havre De Grace 52.2 45.9 42.2 30.0 28.7 32.4 20.3 31.9
Hickory 53.0 62.5 57.4 53.1 55.1 45.1 40.1 12.9
Hillsdale 41.0 47.8 39.6 35.2 38.1 20.3 23.8 17.2
Homestead/Wakefld 65.4 67.2 66.6 52.7 57.0 45.0 47.5 17.9
Jarrettsville 73.9 71.3 65.7 61.1 58.3 51.8 41.1 32.8
Joppatowne 40.9 56.5 41.8 39.8 40.5 32.2 26.7 14.2
Magnolia 34.1 42.2 29.9 34.0 29.4 25.3 24.3 9.8
Meadowvale 53.8 66.0 55.3 59.9 41.2 45.0 40.6 13.2
Norrisville 47.7 67.9 61.3 52.7 75.2 51.1 59.1 -11.4
North Bend 65.9 69.9 58.0 65.9 NA NA NA NA
North Harford 56.7 59.6 54.0 48.1 47.9 42.0 34.7 22.0
Prospect Mill 70.0 73.1 65.4 70.0 73.0 54.1 46.8 23.2
Ring Factory 72.0 74.1 67.8 72.9 71.6 54.9 62.8 9.2
