There’s good news and bad news in the latest results from Maryland’s high school exit exams. The good news is that all but 33 students, out of nearly 60,000, passed the requirements. The bad news is that all but 33 students, out of nearly 60,000, passed the requirements. Those numbers are down from 2009, when 52 students were withheld a high school diploma for failing to pass the exams or submit qualifying alternative projects. In the first two years of implementation, less than one-tenth of one percent of all Maryland seniors have been denied a high school diploma because of the new, “stronger” graduation requirements.
It’s also troubling that a growing percentage of graduates are opting for so-called “alternative projects.” Maryland’s southern neighbor had a similar experience. Last spring parents of students with special needs in Virginia who argued the alternatives were little more than easy escapes from accountability compelled Virginia to adopt an objective evaluation for students with disabilities. Maryland appears to be on a similar trajectory, particularly in places like Prince George’s County, where 16.5 percent of students took the alternative route, double the statewide average.
This is a good reminder for would-be accountability hawks proposing high school exit and end-of-course exams for their states that there are no shortcuts here. Lawmakers, backed by business groups, sought to strengthen and unify what it meant to earn a high school diploma in Maryland by passing the new requirements in 2004. Yet, when it came down to making the difficult decisions about what that might look like, policymakers opted for an extremely watered-down version that allows virtually everyone to pass. Raising standards, making sure students are equipped to meet them, and then holding students accountable for meeting high achievement goals is a noble cause, but each of these steps must be valued equally, or else it quickly becomes little more than the shell game we’re used to playing in education.
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It is sad the direction our schools are heading in these days. Just goes to show you that the government will ruin anything they get involved in.
It seems that numbers and statistics are more important to the state than the actual education the students receive.
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