Maryland schools got another top score on a national report card Wednesday.
The College Board announced that 23 percent of Maryland’s high school students taking advanced placement tests had earned a score of 3 or higher (out of five), the highest percentage in the nation, edging out New York for the first time.
“This is huge,” state Schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick told reporters, emphasizing that the scoring is national. “If you’re No. 1 on this, you’re No. 1.”
Maryland was also first in the nation in the percentage of graduating seniors who had taken an AP exam, with 37 percent of seniors participating.
“We’re very, very proud of this,” said Gov. Martin O’Malley.
Last month, Education Week ranked Maryland schools first in the nation in its “Quality Counts” report, based on a variety of performance measures, including last year’s AP data. O’Malley has touted the first-place ranking repeatedly as a sign that the state’s annual $5.3 billion spending on K-12 public schools is achieving results, and the new AP scores make the same point, the governor said.
Under Grasmick, the state education department has pushed for more students to take advanced placement course, which are supposed to be college-level instruction. In half of Maryland’s school systems, close to a third of seniors now take AP courses.
Maryland is one of 18 states that has eliminated the performance gap on AP tests for Hispanic and Latino students, but the gap still remains for African-American students.
According to figures from the College Board, 6.1 percent of high school students are Hispanic or Latino, and Hispanics represented 6.5 percent of those taking AP tests, of whom 6.9 percent got a score of 3 or above.
Black students make up a third of the public school students in Maryland, but they represent only 19 percent of those taking AP exams, with 9 percent of those getting scores of 3 or higher.
The five most popular exams for Maryland students are in English language, English literature, psychology, U.S. history and world history.
