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High School Assessments will not be delayed
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If you were hoping that the High School Assessments requirement would be postponed, you'll be sad to hear that the requirement is still in effect for graduating seniors. Frankly, after seeing the statistics that the Baltimore Examiner has published, I am a little worried, too. I didn't realize how many Baltimore City students were being affected by the HSA's.
When 35% of your seniors can't pass a test, there's a problem. A big problem. And it isn't the students who are to blame. About a third of Baltimore's seniors will not be able to graduate this year because they couldn't pass the tests and were unable to complete bridge projects. Compare this percentage to the other systems in Maryland and you can see that the Baltimore City Public School system needs to take a hard look at what is going on. (Baltimore County will not be able to graduate 15% of its students. The rest of the systems have failures of under 10%.)
So, am I saying that Baltimore City should get a special pass? No. Students who can't meet standards shouldn't be entitled to a diploma. They should have to earn it, just like everyone else. What I am saying is I want to know exactly what Baltimore City did to prepare these students to either pass their HSA's or do a bridge project and I want the system to figure out how to help the students it has failed.
I also want to know which schools have the largest number of non-passing students and which schools have the largest number of passing students. It is probably pretty safe to guess that Western, Poly and the other college prep schools have a much higher pass rate. What can Baltimore City do to help schools with a lower pass rate become successful? Does money need to be allocated differently? Do we need smaller classes in the zone schools?
As you can see, I don't have the answers, but I do have questions. Many questions.
Photo by Carl Silver/Stock Exchange
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