To pass the test, you have to take it
In voting last week to uphold the High School Assessments, the state school board left open the possibility that certain seniors may be able to get waivers from the requirement. State Superintendent Nancy Grasmick said she would only recommend waivers in a very limited number of cases, where students have not had ample opportunity to take the tests.
The HSAs are offered at the end of courses in Algebra 1, sophomore English, American government and biology, and they're administered five times a year. So the only seniors who wouldn't have had multiple opportunities to take the tests are those who have not yet taken the courses. Presumably, most of the students in that category would be those with disabilities and those learning English as a second language.
But at one Baltimore high school, it's the whole senior class.
According to data released by the Maryland State Department of Education, only one of the Baltimore Freedom Academy's 41 seniors -- or 2.4 percent -- had met the requirements for graduation. That figure was surprising to me because the school, a charter that this year began expanding to include middle school, generally has an excellent reputation.
As it turns out, BFA did not offer biology to the class of 2009 until this year, the result of staffing issues as the school expanded. It's being taught now in a longer period until the end of the first semester, giving seniors two chances to take and pass the biology HSA before graduation. If they don't pass, they can graduate by earning a minimum score on the four tests combined. And if they fail the first time, they'll also have the chance to do a project. (Grasmick recently eased the requirement that a student had to fail the test twice for the project option to kick in.) School officials say they still expect to have a 100-percent graduation rate, but clearly, they're cutting it close. According to Liz's story today, biology and English have lower pass rates statewide than algebra and government.
Until this year, biology was a junior-level course at most city high schools. It's now offered to freshmen and sophomores to give students more opportunities to pass the biology HSA. Baltimore Freedom Academy is giving biology to freshmen this year, and administrators there say they're considering making that and Algebra 1 eighth-grade courses in the future to give students access to more rigorous courses in high school.
Categories: Around the Region, Baltimore City
