Black students have shown improvement on the Maryland High School Assessments in the past four years, but less than 70 percent are passing the exam, according to a new report card issued by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“We have a long way to go … to achieve our goal … of 95 to 100 percent [passing],” said Natalie Woodson, chairwoman of the NAACP?s education committee.
A four-year report card tracking blacks students? high school performance shows improvement on the HSA English, government, biology and algebra exams in almost every school district.
But Woodson said she is still concerned about tying passing scores on the HSA to high school graduation ? a change that will take effect in the 2009 school year.
“We support high standards … however [this requirement] presupposes that the students are being prepared properly,” Woodson said.
Better teachers and test preparation are needed to level the playing field for black students, she said.
The Maryland State Department of Education is currently exploring black students? performance on the HSA exams through the Achievement Initiative for Maryland Minority Students steering committee, a group that monitors minority achievement, said Barbara Dezmon, chairwoman of the group.
In other categories, the report card found that no school district is Maryland had an attendance rate for blacks of 96 percent or above. Many school districts, including Anne Arundel, Harford, Howard, Carroll and Baltimore counties, experienced decreases in high school attendance for black students over the four-year period, from the 2003 school year through the 2006 school year; Baltimore City attendance rates showed slight improvement.
The report card also found that 16 of the 24 Maryland school districts showed an increase in the suspension rates for 2006.
Attendance and suspension rates are both important indicators of school achievement, Dezmon said.
“People sometimes narrowly define achievement by grades and test scores, but if a student is suspended from school he is not learning; if a student is not attending school he is not being taught,” she said.
The NAACP has called on all school systems to increase behavior modification programs and introduce character instruction into the curriculum.
