HSA update for city's seniors
Tonight's city school board meeting agenda includes an update on where students who began high school in the fall of 2005 and are still enrolled in Baltimore schools stand on the HSA requirement. Among those who have made it to senior year, data on the BoardDocs Web site show, 100 more had passed all four tests by December than in October. Another 172 have now met the minimum composite score. Still, there are 620 seniors who haven't passed a single one of the exams. More concerning still are the 245 students who began high school in 2005 yet are still freshmen; 184 of them haven't passed any test.
On the projects students can do as alternatives, 79 percent of those submitted so far -- including 880 submitted in December -- passed. The pass rate was 92 percent in algebra, 72 percent in biology, 75 percent in English and 58 percent in government
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
City Schools are to be congratulated for tracking and reporting on all the students who began as the class of 2009, rather than just those who are currently seniors. The state's data only tracks those students who are "on track to graduate" and thus ignores thousands of students who still linger in 9th, 10th, or 11th grade. City Schools transparency in the powerpoint presentation acknowledges the difficult fact that over 1000 students have not made it on time into the senior class- being open about this being the case builds confidence that they are now focusing on these students and trying to figure out how to move them forward.
The City Schools powerpoint also shows the scale of the challenge-- 1403 seniors have not yet met the HSA requirement.
Posted by: Bebe Verdery | January 14, 2009 9:42 AM