Test

It's that time of year again when we parents of high school seniors must put on our retired racehorse personae (i.e., become "nags") and get the college application process going with our students. There are many things you and your student should have done already, but to ramp up your stress level, I will list them anyway. By now, your senior should have taken the PSAT/NMSQT (Perfect Students, All Talented/No More Slacking, Quibbling, Tempers) examination. This test is administered at your student's high school in the fall of the junior year, so you are in luck, because it happens automatically.

Belle Grove Elementary Principal Donald Wagoner found the bad news on the first line in the right-hand column of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program test report.It was devastating -- only 13.2 percent of his third-graders performed satisfactorily on the reading portion of the annual test last year. Why, he wondered. His school has good teachers and eager pupils. For six years, he worked to get an updated computer lab and involve parents in their children's education.What went wrong?

SCHOOL TESTING officials don't talk like the rest of us. They speak not of roses, crabs and beer, but of norms, cluster equating, rubrics and coefficient alphas.So when I set out last month to watch the scoring of the 1999 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program reading tests, I expected incoherence.It wasn't that bad. The MSPAP scorers are Maryland teachers who speak plain English, and several of them spoke of their joy -- even after years of scoring -- when they come across a creative response from a totally anonymous Maryland third-grader.

One-third of the country's high school seniors do not understand the fundamentals of American government, according to results of a national test administered by the Education Department.The tests showed that 26 percent of high school seniors had "proficient" knowledge of the workings of the government. And most of those polled, 65 percent, were defined as "at or above" a basic level. But 35 percent were below the minimum requirement.The test was part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nation's report card.

Addressing SAT achievement gapThe Sun's article "Tests show advances in reading" (Aug. 19) suggests that Baltimore County's school system has presented test scores that prove it has begun to close the academic achievements gap among cultural groups.But caution is in order before school districts around the state beat a path to Baltimore County's door to learn how to close the academic achievement gap.Ten years ago, statistics indicated that African-American students started school on par with their white counterparts of the same socioeconomic level and were happier to be in school and less likely to be absent.

Members of the Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants are answering readers' tax questions through April 15. See below for how to submit a question.My daughter, 22, still lives at home, works and goes to school but not full time. She does not pay room and board and we pay her tuition. Last year she made $14,236. Can we claim her as a dependent?Probably not, assuming the earnings are taxable. Since she is over 18 years of age and not a full-time student, she has to earn less than $2,700 in order to pass the "Gross Income Test."

Faced with escalating rumors that Maryland schools will be hit by violence Monday, education officials are taking extraordinary steps to calm parents and students -- even postponing statewide achievement tests scheduled that day.State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick announced yesterday afternoon that standardized MSPAP testing for 120,000 third- and eighth-graders would be delayed until Tuesday.The delay, she said, would provide students a stable routine for the five days of testing.

So you know your Chaucer, but how about your CD-ROMs? You've got Schopenhauer down cold, but how do you handle a spreadsheet?A new test has been designed to answer those questions, giving college students who major in the humanities and social sciences a chance to prove their technical prowess for potential employers.Tek.Xam got its fourth and final test drive over the weekend as 1,000 students on more than 60 campuses in 25 states -- including Goucher College and the University of Maryland, College Park -- took the four- to five-hour test.

When she prepared for the graduate school admission test this fall, Amy Black, a 25-year-old Baltimore schoolteacher, traded in her No. 2 pencil for a computer keyboard and mouse.That's because the last paper-and-pencil Graduate Record Examination was given last spring. Instead of facing an answer sheet full of black circles waiting to be filled in, the 400,000 grad school hopefuls who take the GRE each year will hereafter stare at a computer screen."I would certainly much prefer to take a paper test," said Black.

THE ANNE Arundel County school system cannot surrender to the impulse to build better test-takers. It must build better-prepared students.The temptation is there to "teach to the test." The composite score on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program test dipped two points this year in Anne Arundel.In the county, 46.5 percent of third, fifth and eighth-graders met satisfactory standards. That's much better than six years ago, but not as good as the statewide increase over that span.

The United States and allied powers threatened Monday to impose new penalties on North Korea after the defiant regime announced a second nuclear bomb test, but their leverage in derailing the weapons program appeared limited. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, meeting in emergency session in New York, denounced the test as a "clear violation" of a 2006 resolution banning such actions. China and Russia, usually North Korea's defenders, joined with France, Britain and the United States in the statement.

First- and second-graders in Baltimore significantly improved their performance on a standardized test this year, meeting or exceeding the national average in three of four areas measured, scores released Friday show. In math, the city's first-graders outscored 63 percent of their peers in a national sample on the Stanford 10 exam, compared with 55 percent last year. They outscored 50 percent in reading - meeting the national average for the first time - compared with 47 percent a year ago. Second-graders scored at the 57th percentile in math, up from the 49th, and the 46th in reading, up from the 42nd.

Anne Arundel County students continue to score higher on SAT tests than their peers across the state and nation, but their results on the critical college indicator test fell for the third consecutive year, according to data released this week by the test administrator. County students who took the SAT in the 2007-2008 school year scored an average of 1,514 points, 16 points better than the state average and three points higher than the national average, but it was a five point decrease from last year, according to the College Board.

One of the toughest things I have to do as a Baltimore biology teacher is to teach my students about the scientific method. That is, basically, the set of rules under which science operates. Every year, when my kids take the High School Assessment, they have a lot of difficulty on that section of the test. They don't quite understand about variables and how to run a controlled study. I always worried that this would hinder them if they went into a scientific profession. Now, however, I can take comfort in the fact that it prepares them for jobs with the Maryland State Department of Education.

BROOMES ISLAND - Bernie Fowler never gave up on the river he calls his "beautiful lady." He believed in the Patuxent all through the 1960s, when effluent from sewage treatment plants began fouling the water, killing the crabs and the grasses that nurtured them. He fought for her in the 1970s, when a judge ruled that the state of Maryland and the federal government weren't doing enough to protect the river. And he was indefatigable throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when, as a state senator representing Calvert County, he introduced law after law aimed at curbing river pollution.

Life more complex than any one test As a high school English teacher, I agree with Walt Gardner that teaching to the test is an approach that needs to be fully understood ("Teaching to the test: Good teachers do it," Commentary, May 21). But I'm afraid that others in positions to influence curriculum and instruction might misinterpret his words and use them to support practices that shortchange our students. For instance, if school administrators believe, as Mr. Gardner does, that "it would be irresponsible for a teacher to provide students with practice writing descriptive or narrative essays that aren't the type to be tested," as it would not help them master "persuasive essays - the types of essays that are on the test," then they might limit the curriculum to one particular kind of writing - the kind on the test - at the expense of other forms of expression that might allow students to explore their voices and foster their creativity.

Andrew Risinger, the eighth-grader who won this year's Howard County Library Spelling Bee, set his sights this week on a much bigger challenge. The 13-year-old student at Patapsco Middle School is taking preliminary tests in hopes of qualifying to be among the 100 quarterfinalists in the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington. Yesterday morning, Andrew and 287 other hopefuls took an online spelling test and today are scheduled to take an oral test where each spells one word.

Confronting one of his first challenges, the city's acting fire chief, Jim Clack, says he has resolved a racially tinged cheating scandal involving promotional exams by allowing the results to stand. His decision led to the reversal of a previous ruling by the city's human resources director who had ordered a retest and means that six firefighters identified by the inspector general as likely cheaters -- the top three scorers on a lieutenants and a captains test -- could be promoted. But Clack said he is considering disciplining them, which could prevent them from moving up in the ranks.

Firefighters who took a promotion exam in June will all have to retake the test next year because an investigation found some of the test-takers likely cheated amid lapses in testing security. The next exam is scheduled for March 15 and will be taken under new policies that city officials say will provide a more secure environment. In June, fire union officials questioned the scores of five African-American firefighters, leading a black firefighters group to call the suspicions "racially motivated."

Northrop Grumman Corp. is expanding ship-based radar systems and manufacturing new land-based radar types, both of which will mean more business for the company's largest sector, Electronic Systems of Linthicum. The company's top brass traveled from the Los Angeles headquarters to the subsidiary's headquarters next to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport yesterday to cut the ribbon on a $13.7 million radar antenna testing facility. Officials say the 60-foot by 40-foot scanner, housed in a five-story, 16,000-square-foot building, is the only one of its kind.