By Mike Bowler
Sun Staff
Originally published December 30, 2001

Maryland will have to make extensive and costly revisions to its school testing program - and add a seventh-grade test - to comply with a landmark education bill awaiting President Bush's signature.

But a decade of school reform qualifies the state for millions of dollars in extra federal aid for urban schools, reading programs and other initiatives, say federal and state officials and those familiar with the 1,200-page act.

While officials say the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program is the kind of test Congress had in mind, the new bill requires states to report scores of individual pupils - not compile them by school, as is the current practice.

"To adjust MSPAP will be very difficult, very costly," said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based nonpartisan advocate for public schools. "That's because the test is really given on a sampling basis. Not every child performs the same tasks in the same grade."

Individualizing MSPAP isn't as simple as sending scored test forms back to the schools for distribution to parents, Jennings said.

It's a "happy coincidence," he said, that state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick's Visionary Panel, charged with examining Maryland's school reform program, is recommending that MSPAP scores be released on an individual basis. Jennings is co-chairman of the panel.

Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, the most sweeping federal education legislation since 1965, requires mathematics and reading testing of all pupils in grades three through eight within four years.

MSPAP assesses the performance of schools in grades three, five and eight. The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, a commercial examination, is given in Maryland in grades two, four and six.

Grasmick said that developing a seventh-grade test would cost at least $3 million. She said she did not know how much federal money Maryland would need to revise MSPAP and to create the new test. Congress authorized $2 billion over six years, starting with $400 million next year, for the states to develop high-quality tests that require more than rote answers.

"That's exactly the kind of testing program Maryland has," Jennings said. "Maryland's problem won't be in the concept, but in the details. It'll have trouble, but not the trouble of other states."

In a conference call with education reporters last week, U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige and Undersecretary Eugene W. Hickok said the federal government would work with Maryland to revise MSPAP.

"Everybody concentrates on the testing," Grasmick said, "but Maryland is in good standing on most other requirements, although we will have a tough time with teacher qualification."

The bill requires "qualified" teachers in every classroom by 2005. But if "qualified" means "certified," Grasmick and other officials said Maryland might be in trouble.

A teacher shortage is acute in Maryland because in-state schools of education train nowhere near enough teachers to meet demand, and nearly half of the state's teachers are nearing retirement age.

But Grasmick called Maryland a model for other requirements in the sweeping legislation, which gives the federal government a greater role in local and state school affairs in return for a hefty infusion of aid.

The state's accountability system, begun officially in 1993, is similar to that envisioned in the act. Schools are given time and extra resources to reform and can be reconstituted if they fail repeatedly.

Maryland targets resources at the youngest learners in the poorest schools, and almost all of the $4 billion in additional federal aid authorized will go to schools with the highest poverty under Title I of the act.

Baltimore schools' Title I funding will increase by $10 million next year to $52.2 million, while the state's Title I funding will rise from $124 million this year to $155.5 million.

Beginning in September, the new law will require school systems to issue public report cards that show how pupils perform by a number of academic measures. They're also required to break scores down by race and economic status.

Schools must close gaps in scoring between wealthy and poor pupils and between minority and majority pupils, raising all to a "proficient" level within 12 years.

MSPAP's reporting system, available to the public through the Internet, is fully in compliance with the new law's requirements, Grasmick said, and the state makes no effort to hide growing and troublesome black-white achievement disparities.

The bill triples federal spending on reading programs, providing nearly $5 billion over five years. Modeled after reading reforms in Texas, Bush's home state, the measure targets beginning reading, with the goal that all children will read proficiently by the third grade.

Schools that have more than 15 percent of pupils from homes below the poverty level will get priority for the funds, which will be awarded competitively.

The bill authorizes $260 million to continue family literacy programs and $250 million to fix school libraries.

The reading thrust "is the most far-reaching reform in 30 years," said Cinthia Haan, director of the nonprofit Haan Foundation for Children, which helps poor children with reading. "Just the fact that the nation is focused on reading is going to help."

Maryland "is far ahead of the curve on reading," said Christopher T. Cross, former president of the Maryland state school board and now a California-based education consultant.

Cross said that the state has been heavily influenced by Reid Lyon, director of reading research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.

"He and Susan Neuman [US assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education] really know their stuff," the consultant said, "and Maryland has been listening. Most other places will be relatively clueless."

While many of the new bill's provisions don't become fully effective until 2005, one that will be closely watched goes into effect next fall. Children in some chronically lagging schools will be permitted to transfer to better public schools with transportation provided.

And some will get after-school tutoring - all courtesy of the federal government.

Some of those schools will be in Maryland, but officials haven't yet identified them.

The tutoring provision is expected to greatly increase business for Baltimore-based Sylvan Learning Systems and other for-profit companies that provide educational services.

Sylvan has contracts with 800 public and private schools and is tutoring 55,000 pupils nationally.

Jeffrey Cohen, president of the Sylvan division that conducts school tutoring, said that "tens, if not hundreds of thousands of students eventually might be able to take advantage" of private after-school tutoring paid for by the federal government.

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun