Maryland Students

Maryland students made gains in reading and math on the most recent national tests, in some cases outpacing strides made in other states. In three of the four tests given in the spring, Maryland ranked slightly above the national average. Still, that means that - as in many other states - fewer than half of Maryland students are passing the national tests. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in reading and math were given to 700,000 students in the fourth and eighth grades in Maryland and across the nation in March.

COLLEGE PARK -- Returning to the campus where six years ago he praised a small pilot project that blossomed into his domestic volunteer program, President Clinton told University of Maryland students yesterday that he wants to double the size of that initiative and open it to high school students."

The state's Science and Technology Scholarship program has come under criticism from one of the schools it is supposed to benefit -- the Johns Hopkins University, where officials say it could end up costing students money."

COLLEGE PARK -- Maryland will tighten security for men's basketball games at Cole Field House, particularly in its student sections, in the wake of the Terps' loss to Duke on Sunday.Athletic director Debbie Yow said that her department is adopting a "zero tolerance" policy toward the throwing of objects during games. In addition, more of the 20-25 campus police who provide security at men's games will be stationed in the four aisles in the student sections.Fans caught throwing anything will be ejected.

TO HEAR the state tell it, the "crisis of instruction" afflicting our public schools is abating, as teachers across Maryland are posting their "daily outcomes," forsaking fact-based instruction and mesmerizing their students with "critical thinking" activities; all the while brimming with excitement over the new high school assessments about to come online.Yeah, sure. As a 20-year veteran of the trenches, I am forced to deal in hard realities, not flights of bureaucratic fancy. And the reality is that the Maryland reform package is going to have a devil of a time delivering on its extravagant promises, because it is part of the same wretched policy-making that has been strewing banana peels in my path throughout my two decades on the job.Maryland's education reformers have discounted and demeaned basic academic skills from MSPAP's inception to the present, and that has become our most debilitating weakness.

Rumored school violence never materialized yesterday, but an estimated 250,000 Maryland students -- either fearful of the threats or enjoying a warm spring day -- abandoned their desks in what state officials called "unprecedented" absenteeism.About 30 percent of the state's students missed school, said officials, who were still tallying attendance figures. In some schools -- such as Glen Burnie High in Anne Arundel County -- more than half the students did not show up for class."We have families that are distraught -- my phone has been ringing all morning," said Cyndy Little, director of pupil services in Carroll County.

COLLEGE PARK -- Before No. 2 Maryland opened its Atlantic Coast Conference schedule last night, coach Gary Williams pleaded for kinder, gentler language from the fans in the student section at Cole Field House.His Terps then beat the you-know-what out of Wake Forest.In a performance that proved that an NBA lockout hasn't deprived the nation of breathtaking basketball, Maryland made its first 14 shots, piled up a 28-8 lead and administered a 92-69 whipping before another ravenous sellout crowd of 14,500.

Eight-year-old Samantha Hall has a plan for tackling the first big exam of her academic career, the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, a standardized national exam thousands of Marylanders in the second, fourth and sixth grades are taking this month, most for the first time.Samantha, a second-grader with glasses who goes to Sunset Elementary School in Pasadena, says she will start test day with a cup of coffee, three chocolate chip cookies and one ginger cookie. Once in school, she will take three deep breaths, then get out her pencil.

COLLEGE PARK -- Before No. 2 Maryland opened its Atlantic Coast Conference schedule last night, coach Gary Williams pleaded for kinder, gentler language from the fans in the student section at Cole Field House.His Terps then beat the you-know-what out of Wake Forest.In a performance that proved that an NBA lockout hasn't deprived the nation of breathtaking basketball, Maryland made its first 14 shots, built a 28-8 lead and rolled to a 92-69 whipping before another energized sellout crowd of 14,500.

Eight-year-old Samantha Hall has a plan for tackling the first big exam of her academic career, the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, a standardized national exam thousands of Marylanders in the second, fourth and sixth grades are taking this month, most for the first time.Samantha, a second-grader who goes to Sunset Elementary School in Pasadena, says she will start test day with a cup of coffee, three chocolate chip cookies and one ginger cookie. Once in school, she will take three deep breaths, then get out her pencil.

While SAT scores in Maryland remained relatively stable, the number of students taking and passing an Advanced Placement exam rose significantly this past school year, reflecting a national trend in the use of the rigorous high school exams. In the data released Tuesday by the College Board, African-Americans showed progress on both tests. Although they represent only 16 percent of all the students taking AP tests in Maryland, there was a 10 percent increase in their participation over one school year.

Maryland students continued to post slight gains on the ACT this year, with scores consistently remaining above the national average, according to results released Wednesday for the Class of 2009. "This is a reflection of the quality of the instruction that students are receiving," said state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, who also noted Maryland's better performance relative to neighboring states on the national standardized test taken by students applying for college. The percentage of "college ready" students rose by one point from last year, to 30 percent - compared with 23 percent nationwide, according to the state ACT report.

College admissions officers did not know what to expect heading into this year's application period. They wondered if the recession would drive students toward in-state or public colleges and away from more expensive ones - or committing to any college at all. Despite evidence that such trends occurred nationally, Maryland admissions officers are generally relieved at how little change they have observed in the state. Students applied and committed to Maryland colleges and universities, public and private, at robust levels this spring.

Despite fears that thousands of seniors might not get their diplomas this year because they failed to pass the Maryland High School Assessment exams, it appears that all but a handful of the state's 55,000 seniors are on track to graduate in June. Only about 1,000 students have yet to meet the requirement, either by passing the test or completing a project to show they have mastered the skills measured by the exam. State officials expect that before the terms ends, most of them will do one or the other and graduate as well.

Wind power threatens to silence songbirds Frank D. Roylance's excellent article "Tracking the songbirds" (Feb. 13) was a fascinating account of how far scientists have come in their ability to trace the thousands of miles of migration by birds wearing tiny "geo-locators" attached to their backs. But the part of his article that should serve as a wake-up call for those rushing to place wind turbines on the unfragmented forests all along the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains is the paragraph pointing out that "scientists have known that destruction and fragmentation of forests in North America are among the factors that have contributed to population declines here."

Maryland officials are understandably proud of Education Week's recent ranking of the state's K-12 public education system as the best in the country. But before this ranking becomes the rationale for state officials to curtail education spending or the State Department of Education to act with less urgency, a closer examination of the evidence is warranted. Is Maryland really No. 1? To begin with, there is reason to doubt the objectivity of much of the data underlying the Education Week rankings because they rely on states' self-reporting.

Should the Maryland State Board of Education require every public school student, beginning with the current class of 12th-graders, to pass four end-of-course exams - the High School Assessments - to graduate from high school? As they reopen deliberations on this question without the benefit of current data, the new board should be guided by the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm." There is general agreement that high school graduates should be better prepared for employment and higher education; there is also a consensus that taxpayers deserve to know the effectiveness of Maryland's public schools.

Fourteen-year-old Chet Stem has been waiting anxiously for the Maryland State Fair. Though, like most teenagers, he enjoys the rides and the games, the main attraction for the Westminster native is the livestock competition. Chet will participate in cattle, swine and sheep competitions in what is a longtime tradition for Maryland's biggest fair, which opens tomorrow. "You just go to the state fair as if it's the grand prize, because you don't just compete with the people in your county, you're competing against the whole state of Maryland.

Beginning next year, Maryland students will face an additional hurdle to graduate from high school - passing four state tests. Students will be unable to receive diplomas if they fail the Maryland High School Assessments (HSA), even if they pass all of their classes during the year. Fortunately, the General Assembly is considering legislation that would eliminate this one-size-fits-all graduation requirement. If we want to fix our schools, punishing students is not the answer. Instead, we must provide students with the resources they need, and rely upon other measures to assess them.

The high-decibel chatter that occasionally typified the start of my 12th-grade English class was suddenly silenced. "I want this noise to stop!" our teacher roared, accentuating her words by slapping her palm on the desk. As we sat stunned, wondering what had we done to derail her normally genteel disposition, she lashed out again: Our daily horseplay, she insisted, indicated how we rarely took classwork seriously. And that, she said, was why we and other South Carolina students were making headlines for performing poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)