Maryland School Performance

School, furniture store team up to improve scoresEthan Allen Interiors and West Friendship Elementary School have formed an educational partnership to help the students improve their scores on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP).As part of the partnership, the students participated in a week-long activity to design a bedroom suite for a dream house, using the mathematical, decision-making and writing skills required for the MSPAP.The students submitted their entries, and three were selected for publication in an ad in The Sun. Readers voted for the best design, and Ethan Allen awarded a $50 savings bond to the winning student.

Carroll school officials met with the new Board of Commissioners Friday to discuss the budget, contract negotiations and Carroll's Maryland School Performance Program."

The Harford County school superintendent said yesterday that he is "proud . . . not satisfied" that county schools continued to show gains in meeting standards set by the Maryland School Performance Program.As they did last year, Harford's 49 public schools met 11 of the 13 criteria set by the state. Superintendent Ray R. Keech said county schools were rated "excellent" in seven of the 13 criteria established under the school reform program that began in 1989. The results for the 1993-1994 school year which ended in June were released yesterday.

Keeping track of how Howard County has fared on the battery of state-mandated tests in recent years hasn't been difficult: County students generally score well on all of them.This year was no different. Howard ranked first among the state's 24 jurisdictions on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, which covers a number of criteria including three assessment tests. The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills and the Maryland School Performance Assessment Test are administered in the third, fifth and eighth grades, while passage of the Maryland Functional Test is required of ninth graders (although most school systems begin administering it in middle school)

Harford County school officials were delighted yesterday with their county's fourth-place showing for the second year in a row on the state's annual Maryland School Performance Report -- and vowed to continue improving."

With rumors of May 10 schoolhouse attacks circulating wildly, education officials in Anne Arundel and Howard counties are making plans to deal with potentially dangerous situations and trying to reassure students and parents.Anne Arundel school administrators will meet today to discuss how to deal with parental concerns and student fears about attacks rumored to be set for Monday, the day many pupils throughout the state are to take Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests."We are going to sit down and assess how to handle this," said Ken Lawson, assistant superintendent of Anne Arundel County public schools.

This Howard County third-grader recently took the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program test for the first time. Here he compares MSPAP to the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills that he took last year. I HAVE taken the MSPAP and the CTBS. I don't think CTBS tested my knowledge. I only had four choices for each question. The questions were also fairly easy.The MSPAP was much harder. You could write anything instead of just four answers. Every task has writing in it. More than half the test is writing.

"We may adjust the time limits on reaching the goal, but we're not likely to adjust the goal."-- Nancy S. Grasmick, state superintendent of schools, commenting on overall gains in the annual Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests and the likelihood that, despite continuing improvement, they would not reach achievement goals set for 2000"We have high poverty, yet we're doing real well. This is a breakthrough year. Every school has something to brag about."-- Allegany County Superintendent John O'Connell, whose school system has had the second-highest point gain among Maryland's counties"In some sense this isn't a totally happy day. Any of us in the upper group can't feel very good as long as Baltimore City is where it is in the scoring.

In Montgomery County School board unanimous in seeking MSPAP halt ROCKVILLE - The Montgomery County school board voted unanimously yesterday to ask the state school board and state superintendent to halt Maryland's elementary and middle school testing program until it's changed to give pupils individual scores. Montgomery educators have raised questions about the 2001 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program results, noting technical problems and concerns over how teachers graded pupils' exams.

Linda Jarvis Eberhart, a teacher at Baltimore's Mount Royal Elementary/Middle School, was named Maryland Teacher of the Year yesterday during a ceremony at Martin's West. Selected from a field of seven finalists, Eberhart was recognized for her work teaching science and math to fourth- and fifth-graders. Her efforts helped the school post the highest math scores on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program the past two years. "At Mount Royal, we eliminated the race and income achievement gap," Eberhart said yesterday after being honored.