City students post largest gains on state assessments

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Baltimore City students this year made their largest strides toward meeting mandates required by the No Child Left Behind law.

Their reading scores jumped almost 11 percentage points over last year’s, while math scores increased nearly 8 percentage points on the Maryland School Assessment. Even larger gains were made in groups of disadvantaged students, including those in special education and who don’t primarily speak English.

City schools chief Andres Alonso, who has served for about a year, called the gains “remarkable.” He said that while scores have steadily increased since the test began in 2003, a sense of urgency instilled in the school system this year helped push the marks higher.

“The kids who have traditionally been the toughest nuts to crack are improving the same or at higher levels” as other students, Alonso said.

“These scores, I’m telling you, are just unbelievable.”

He was most proud of the improvements in grades five, six and seven. He said students in those grades are at a point most critical to determining whether they will graduate from high school, and they made the most dramatic reading improvements — seventh-grade students’ scores, for example, shot up 18 points.

Schools for students in kindergarten through eighth grade clearly helped to improve scores, Alonso said, because they eliminate the difficult transition between elementary and middle school, where performance often drops off.

And while 1,328 fewer city students took the test this year, 3,028 more reached the proficient standard that No Child Left Behind requires all to meet by 2014.

Whether schools met the rising standards of adequate yearly progress has not yet been determined. Schools that repeatedly fail to meet the mark face harsh consequences, including a complete replacement of staff, but Alonso said he was not worried.

“No kid is dispensable, and the question is how do you move a kid,” Alonso said. “I said from day one, ‘I don’t care about [adequate yearly progress].’ I care about movement for kids.”

msilvestri@baltimoreexaminer.com

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