Two Eldersburg high schools and one Westminster school made the highest gains in the Maryland High School Assessment scores from last year.
Liberty High School?s algebra score jumped 30.5 percentage points compared with the previous year; Century High School?s biology score rose 19 percentage points. In government, Gateway School in Westminster saw a jump of 21.7 percentage points.
“We weren?t happy with the score before,” said Ruthanne Kenney, Liberty High?s assistant principal.
“There is going to be a natural jump in the scores due to the fact that it matters now.”
Carroll County Public School?s Science Supervisor Brad Yohe attributed Century High?s success to a realignment of the courses, requiring physics to be taken before chemistry and biology.
Originally, students could take the courses in any order.
Century High was a pilot school for a new “physics first” approach based on the belief that the concepts taught in biology have their roots in physics.
By the time the students take the biology assessment test, they are better prepared, he said.
Next year, other schools will switch the course order, and Yohe said he expects to see more students passing the tests.
Carroll County Public School?s Secondary Social Studies Supervisor Celeste Saxton attributed Gateway?s improvement to a detailed review of each student?s performance data to better guide instruction.
“We really have examined the data,” she said.
Gateway is a middle and high school for students facing long-term suspensions or struggling with learning disabilities or behavioral and emotional problems.
School officials also credited communication and networking among teachers and principals. Schools that saw gains last year shared their best practices with other high schools, said Kent Kreamer, supervisor of secondary mathematics.
However, what matters most is progress over several years.
“The trend is continued improvement,” he said.
The state assessment scores in algebra, biology and government were released Monday.
English scores will be released in a few weeks. Beginning with the class of 2009, students must pass all tests to graduate from high school.
