Final Exams

COLLEGE PARK - The Maryland women's basketball team has final exams this week, which should be a change of pace for the Terps players who were virtually untested by Monmouth last night. The No. 19-ranked Terps routed the Hawks, 81-49, to win their sixth straight game and improve to 7-1 before 2,729 at Comcast Center. Sophomore guard Shay Doron, who paced the Terps with 20 points and also had seven steals, said she feels the Terps can improve despite playing weaker competition. "I just think every game we need to take positives and learn from the negatives," she said.

In an effort to help more students graduate, Baltimore school officials for the first time this year allowed high school seniors who had technically failed a class to re-take their final exams and earn their diplomas. The practice, which affected dozens of seniors this spring, has angered some teachers, who say that students are being let off too easily and pushed through the system to inflate graduation rates. But top-level school officials and some principals defend the practice, saying the system is adopting a new philosophy regarding high standards.

Julien and Sophie, the central characters of Yann Samuell's wince-inducing Love Me If You Dare, are two of the most insistently unlikable movie creations to afflict audiences in some time, a pair of self-obsessed anti-romanticists who spend some two decades doing stupid things at each other's behest. They also whine a lot. Of such things are destructive relationships made, and Love Me If You Dare, I'm sure, sees itself as an extended metaphor for obsessive love, for how engulfing and overwhelming and gosh-darn pure it can be. Love is a force, the movie argues, that recognizes no bounds, not even those of common sense, certainly not those of common decency.

COLLEGE PARK -- A fire Tuesday night forced the evacuation of a University of Maryland dormitory just as students were in the middle of studying for final exams, but no one was injured. The fire started about 6:20 p.m. in a heating and air conditioning unit at La Plata Hall, campus police said. Six dormitory rooms suffered water damage but were deemed habitable when the building reopened at 11:20 p.m. The fire's cause is under investigation, but foul play has been ruled out, police said.

SOME FOLKS need to learn a lesson about getting the last laugh. Those students in Coppin State College's criminal justice program who sneered at Joycelyn Evans for doing a thesis had better think about that. Here's a brief recap of the Coppin controversy: In March, 14 students in Coppin's graduate criminal justice program filed a lawsuit alleging that the faculty had ill-prepared them for the comprehensive final exams and seminar papers required for graduation. Evans chose to do a longer 40- to 50-page thesis instead of taking the final exams and preparing a shorter seminar paper.

When Stephen W. Lafferty opened the newspaper Dec. 7, he could not believe his eyes: Some MSPAP scores at his well-heeled neighborhood's high-achieving elementary school had nose-dived. Twenty-eight percent of third-graders at Stoneleigh Elementary School had earned a satisfactory score on MSPAP's reading test, a 23 percent drop. Of about 100 elementary schools in the county, only six posted larger losses. Lafferty, a state housing official who does not have children, discussed this with his wife, and later talked with friends.

Maryland opened a new chapter in high-stakes testing yesterday, exposing a large disparity in achievement between top-tier high schools and the perennial low achievers - and revealing the challenge ahead if state officials plan to make passing these new high school exams a requirement for graduation. At the same time, state education officials closed the book on the annual MSPAP exams that have been administered to elementary and middle school pupils for a decade, with the last batch of results producing some of the worst reading and math scores since testing began.

ELMONT, N.Y. - For the fourth time in the past six springs, a horse has come to New York with a chance of winning the Belmont Stakes and becoming the 12th winner of racing's Triple Crown. The candidate for immortality this spring is War Emblem, a lanky, nearly black colt with overpowering speed and seemingly limitless stamina. That combination proved unbeatable in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Today, in the 134th Belmont at majestic Belmont Park on Long Island, War Emblem will likely face assault at every stage of the 1 1/2 -mile "Test of the Champion."

For the third time in four months, the Anne Arundel school board will take up a plan today to overhaul the grading system used in 117 county schools. And this time, board members said, they're ready to approve it. The plan spells out how much homework teachers are to assign, how valedictorians are to be selected and how much weight to give final exams in high school. On that point, the plan calls for semester and final exams to count for 20 percent of a final course grade. Students and teachers had lobbied for the 20 percent weight after a school system committee initially proposed that exams count for 30 percent.

For the third time in four months, the Anne Arundel school board will take up today a plan to overhaul the grading system used in 117 county schools. And this time, board members said, they're ready to approve it. The plan spells out how much homework teachers are to assign, how valedictorians are to be selected and how much weight to give final exams in high school. On that point, the plan calls for semester and final exams to count for 20 percent of a final course grade. Students and teachers had lobbied for the 20 percent weight after a school system committee initially proposed that exams count for 30 percent.