When Jasmine Sims heard that she would have to pass a battery of four exams or face missing out on a diploma, she freaked.
“It was like a bomb was just dropped: Class of 2009, you have to pass these tests to graduate,” said Sims, an 18-year-old senior at W.E.B. Dubois High school in northeast Baltimore.
“I get the jitters when I look down” at a test, she said. “All the words just scribble.”
But Sims has an option besides passing the biology, government, algebra and English tests that make up the High School Assessment. The state education department began using this past summer a set of projects, called the Bridge Plan to Academic Validation, that students can complete if they fall short on the exams. Many students are working to take advantage of the alternate path to a diploma.
Of nearly 4,000 seniors in the city, about 1,600 have yet to meet the requirement, according to recent school system data. About 1,230 of those students are working on nearly 2,400 Bridge projects.
“Completing a project, we believe, is good learning,” said Andres Alonso, chief of the city school system. “If you go out into the work world, this is what you’re going to have to do… projects.”
How poorly students performed on the assessments determines how many projects they need to pass. The maximum number of projects a student could face is 28, but no one has that many, said Leslie Wilson, assistant state superintendent for accountability and assessment. Students who have not passed any of the exams, she said, need to finish an average of 7.3 projects.
At W.E.B. Dubois, 32 students are working on government projects, 45 on algebra, 25 on English and 34 on biology.
The school was selected to pilot the Bridge program during the summer. Teachers and administrators “adopt” 15 students each to meet with weekly to discuss where they are on their road to college, and students can take Bridge classes before, after or during school to work on their projects.
When Sims tackled her English project, she had to write an essay about a famous person in history. For every day for weeks, she researched her subject before writing the paper and turning it in.
Shadon Smith, 18, is working on her biology project at W.E.B. Dubois, trying to find out the kind of shark to which a type of DNA belongs. So far, she has written notes on the front and back of several pieces of paper about the gummy, spinner and dusky sharks.
For some students, the projects make for exhausting days. Gabriel Nieba, 17, starts his 12-hour days at a 7 a.m. Bridge class before moving on to the school day, another Bridge class and finally football practice. When he gets home, he starts working on homework.
“It’s nothing,” he shrugged confidently.
The state school board last month considered delaying the requirement for a year, and Principal Delores Berry said some students slacked off in the hopes that the board would push back the requirement. But once Sims and her classmates got used to the idea that they will have to pass the new requirement, they buckled down and confronted the challenge.
“When it comes down to it, we know we can do it,” Smith said, “But it’s hard.”
