Scott Pfeifer, the state's director of instructional assessment, said teachers are asking if they can use a project to instruct the entire class. As long as the questions are modified, the answer is yes. "Teachers see its value," said Pfeifer, who was until recently the principal of Centennial High School in Howard County.
The state allows school districts to make rules about how projects are done, and many districts leave it to individual schools. Some schools allow students to take their projects home; others insist that they be done in class, like a test.
In Baltimore, officials have committed to grading the projects the same weekend that students turn them in, so they know within days whether they passed. For HSA results, the suspense can last up to two and a half months.
On the weekend before Christmas, 50 teachers being paid $30 an hour set up a grading center at Edmondson-Westside High School and scored 880 projects.
Lori Bush, an American government teacher at Edmondson and the school's project coordinator, said the scoring sessions were excellent professional development. They showed her what the state is looking for from her students. And though teachers never grade projects from their own schools, she was able to see the mistakes that other students repeated.
Grading procedures vary by district and by subject. In Washington County, where only a few dozen students might need to do the projects, an entire panel will look at each submission. In Baltimore, two teachers review every government project, with a third coming in as a tie-breaker if there's disagreement. In algebra, where answers are either right or wrong, a project is reviewed by just one teacher if the person has attended a previous scoring session; those new to the process score in pairs.
At Edmondson, Bush said, most of her students are taking the graduation requirement seriously and working hard on their projects and test preparation, but she worries about a few who are waiting to see if the state will back down. A recent debate by the state school board over whether to keep the requirement didn't help their motivation, she said.
"Teenagers see adults change their minds so much that they don't believe that this is truly going to be a requirement for them," she said. A few weeks ago, students noticed when the state school board agreed to let those in extenuating circumstances apply for waivers.
"I told them none of them qualify for it," Bush said. "I was like, 'Get back to class 'cause it doesn't affect you at all.' "
