State education officials said Monday that only 11 students statewide did not graduate in June because of newly required tests, a number that seemed surprisingly low to those who had worried that thousands of students would fail to graduate.
The High School Assessment, which took effect with the Class of 2009, had produced some of the most divisive debates in the education community in the past several years. Supporters of the tests said they would make the state's high schools more rigorous and a diploma more meaningful. Others argued against the requirement, saying that it created an unfair disadvantage for students in urban schools who had not been given an adequate education.
But the results for the Class of 2009 prompted state school board member S. James Gates Jr. to ask, "Are we setting the standards high enough?"
State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said she had always viewed the requirement as "the floor" of what students should attain to get a diploma and she hoped to propose more standards in the near future.
Of the roughly 62,000 seniors in 2009, about 41,000 actually passed all four of the pencil-and-paper exams, which test skills in algebra I, 10th-grade English, biology and American government. Many of the remaining students who met the requirement earned a combined minimum score, received waivers or completed projects. For example, no seniors in Baltimore failed to graduate solely because they did not pass the required tests.
Bebe Verdery, education director for the Maryland ACLU, said board members should not worry that the standards are too low until more students can pass.
"School systems generally did a good job of supporting students to meet the high school requirement through alternate routes so there were not huge numbers of students who didn't graduate," Verdery said. "The fact remains however, that only two-thirds of the seniors were able to pass all four tests and that points toward the need to improve instruction."
The number who did not meet the requirement does not include those who may have dropped out because they became discouraged and believed they would never pass. In the Class of 2009, 1,700 dropped out last year and 2,200 failed to graduate because they hadn't passed classes and the tests. About 10,000 students in the class had dropped out over the course of four years, said Leslie Wilson, who is in charge of testing for the state.
