Testing Program

Forty percent of the heavy diesel trucks tested so far in Maryland's new voluntary emissions-control program flunked, spewing smoke dirtier than an industry-recommended standard.But state Department of the Environment officials greeted the news cheerfully yesterday.That failure rate is very close to what they expected when the program for heavy-duty rigs began seven weeks ago, officials said at a press conference in West Friendship, held at a truck weigh station on Interstate 70.The 18-month, penalty-free "pilot program," they said, is supposed to encourage the owners of soot-belching vehicles to tune up their engines and clean up the air. The $160,000 effort is also intended to help the state decide in 1995 whether a mandatory testing program for heavy-duty trucks, defined as those weighing more than 8,500 pounds, is needed.

Bills to tighten seat-belt, emission laws pass SenateThe state Senate has passed and sent to the House of Delegates bills to expand Maryland's vehicle emissions testing program and strengthen the mandatory seat belt law.The seat belt bill, approved on a 38-16 vote, is a weakened version of a bill proposed by Gov. William Donald Schaefer.As amended, the bill would expand the seat belt law to cover pickups. It also would require children weighing up to 40 pounds to be strapped into a child safety seat and would require all children up to age 10 to wear seat belts if they are not riding in a safety seat.

In a move toward greater accountability, the state school board ordered all Maryland second-, fourth- and sixth-graders yesterday to take an annual national test of basic skills.The decision marks the state's first effort to ensure that all pupils receive individual standardized test scores. State officials plan to develop a new testing report card that would inform parents of their children's marks on the national test and scores from other tests.Maryland's current testing program for third-, fifth- and eighth-graders -- known as the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP)

Saying their concerns about Maryland's school testing program aren't being heard, some of the state's teachers have turned to the General Assembly to try to make changes. A ranking legislator has introduced a bill that would require an independent study of the 10-year-old program -- a system of school accountability hailed as tops in the country by a national education group, but the subject of continuing skepticism among some legislators, parents and teachers in Maryland. "We have become too test-driven," Tom McDade, a fifth-grade teacher at Hillcrest Elementary School in Baltimore County, told lawmakers last week.

This week's release of the latest state test scores looms large for Maryland's public schools.Based on the results to be made public Wednesday, principals may be promoted or demoted. Homebuyers and some companies may decide where to move. Schools may receive thousands of extra dollars for improving or face the humiliation of being added to the state's list of failing schools. Some long-failing schools may even be taken over or closed by the state next year.The effects of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, or MSPAP, extend even further: The tests have led to a fundamental shift in instruction in every elementary and middle school in the state -- a shift widely referred to in schools as the "Mizpap revolution."

Maryland pupils won't start taking the next round of state tests for another six months. But preparation for those exams began the moment they returned to classrooms this fall -- and it's the time they have to spend getting ready that's at the heart of attacks on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program. Critics say that teachers and schools waste thousands of hours prepping for a series of exams that they don't believe even accurately gauge whether children know basic facts.

Signs of trouble in Maryland's school testing program arrived with the 1995 scores.Six months after the students had hunkered down for the problem-solving exercises, the test results for a few schools soared while most others improved modestly or not at all.Officials who had praised the dramatic scores now acknowledge they were too good to be true.An investigation of the 1995 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) test has revealed cheating incidents, lapses in monitoring and misunderstood directions.

Digene Corp. said yesterday that it is in discussions with the Mexican Ministry of Health for a contract to supply its new test for monitoring HIV patients to a public health program.The possibility of the deal is the result of recent 90-day clinical evaluations by Mexican health officials in which a number of companies' HIV tests were reviewed. Digene's test was rated the most reliable and easiest to use, the company said.The announcement drove Digene shares up 37.5 cents yesterday to close at $12.375.

About 50 Marylanders sounded off on the state's proposed high school exit tests yesterday, and at the end of a long afternoon, schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick pronounced the exercise "affirming." Parents, students, public officials, teachers, principals and school board members took to a microphone at Education Department headquarters in Baltimore to comment -- in three minutes -- on the new tests, expected to be approved next month by the State Board of Education. The tests in English, algebra, biology and government were praised by about a third of the speakers and opposed by another third.

A state Senate committee is expected to approve a bill that would keep Maryland's treadmill-like emissions test voluntary, despite the Glendening administration's push to make it mandatory.At a Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee hearing yesterday, members voiced concern about the dynamometer emissions test damaging cars because the engines would be run at high speeds. The lawmakers complained that they haven't seen sufficient evidence that the dynamometer is more accurate than the tailpipe test that is required now."