About 70 percent of Maryland students who completed alternative projects because they could not pass tests required to graduate high school earned a passing score their first time, officials said Tuesday.
The Bridge Plan, an alternative program where students can earn their diploma if they failed the High School Assessments needed to graduate, began this summer. The projects, which can be submitted multiple times in order to get a passing grade, were finished by more than 250 students throughout the state.
This year, high school seniors will be required to pass four High School Assessments in government, biology, algebra and English 2, or complete the Bridge Plan, to graduate.
Local school districts are late in gathering data on how many students face losing a diploma because of the requirement, but state officials presented the state school board with preliminary information that shows 12 percent of seniors have not passed the assessments.
Leslie Wilson, assistant state superintendent for accountability and assessment, said she expects that percentage to be much lower because the Bridge Plan and thousands of students who have dropped out were not factored into the data.
“There is no reason any student should be denied a diploma based solely on HSA requirements,” Wilson said.
But Kate Walsh, a state school board member, disagreed.
“Then why are we doing them?” she asked. “If we have spent all this money on a test that is a graduate requirement and the only worry is that no one fail, doesn’t that say that they don’t mean enough?”
The decision to require students to pass the assessments to graduate — part of maintaining accountability under the No Child Left Behind law — has sparked a heated debate across the state.
Blair Ewing, vice president of the state school board, said the requirement would only widen achievement gaps between minority and white students, accomplishing the opposite of what No Child intended.
“I think this is too rosy a picture by far,” Ewing said. “I don’t think the HSA is really the thing we ought to be doing in the state of Maryland.”
Other school board members joined Ewing in opposing the assessments, but State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick said they make the high school diploma meaningful.
Officials expected more accurate data in October on the number of students who may not receive a diploma because of the requirement.
“It’s very easy to just give a student a diploma,” Grasmick said, “without holding them to a standard.”
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