As lawmakers try to settle the controversy over Maryland’s new graduation tests, it is one of the counties in which students face the highest risk of rejection where support is strongest for the hard line.
While many in Prince George’s County support the high-stakes measures, in neighboring Montgomery County, where most students look to ace the graduation tests, officials oppose them.
In Prince George’s, it’s a matter of money and accountability.
“We are not going to turn our back on the millions of dollars of taxpayer money spent getting our children ready for this endeavor,” said Rosalind Johnson, a Prince George’s school board member. She explained the school system has spent “buckets of money” on tutoring, training and test prep for the district’s 132,000 students.
Even so, as of last June, nearly a third of the 7,820-member class of 2009 have not passed at least one of the tests in algebra, biology, English or government.
If those students fail to pass by next June, Johnson said, there would certainly be budget implications.
“But [what could be] worse than being ignorant, and you can’t get into college, and you can’t find a job, but you have a diploma?” Johnson asked. “That’s the ugly part.”
Montgomery County officials, however, say the State Board of Education has failed to develop quality tests before placing students’ diplomas on the line.
“The state board is in a ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ mode,” said Pat O’Neill, a Montgomery County school board member who drove to Annapolis yesterday to share her concerns with the legislature.
O’Neill, like her board colleages, worries at the same time that the test is not rigorous enough for many students, but constructed so that a large number, especially English-language learners and special education students, won’t graduate.
“We think that before adults withhold diplomas, they need to shoulder their adult responsibility and make sure I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed,” O’Neill said. “And they’re not there yet.”
Johnson suspects different motives. “I think it’s fear that great numbers of young people won’t pass, and parents will be up in arms, and people will be out of office, cause everyone needs someone to blame.”
