By Jenna Johnson and Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 28, 2008; B01
Nestled in the affluent enclaves of Calvert County is a school system often overlooked in lists of the Washington area’s best.
Calvert has long fared well on state tests, but it has quietly climbed the ranks of area school districts, surpassing Montgomery County and nearly matching Howard County this year. Yet its academic prestige seems confined to some education circles and to Southern Maryland, in part because of the relatively modest profile of Calvert high schools.
Maryland School Assessment results in 2008 for grades 3 through 8, released this month, show that 91 percent of Calvert students rated proficient or better in reading and 86 percent in math, ranking the county third and fourth in the state on those respective tests. Of particular note were gains in reading pass rates at middle schools, including two that had double-digit increases.
“I see them wanting to be on the cutting edge of initiatives, innovation, and I think that’s really accelerating. I didn’t always see that,” said State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick. “I think in many ways it’s an emerging county.”
Some analysts have pointed out that because the state tests were shorter this year, that might have played a role in higher MSA scores. State officials, however, have said the level of difficulty remained the same.
Calvert Superintendent Jack Smith credited principals with identifying the challenges facing individual students, setting goals and aggressively addressing them through “intervention classes” and other strategies. Rather than relying on after-school or summer sessions, teachers try to integrate help for lagging students into the regular school day to ensure a systematic approach, Smith said.
Because the school system is small, with 17,000 students and four high schools, Smith said educators can closely monitor each student’s progress and implement most initiatives countywide.
“We have scale on our side,” he said. “I know every single school administrator on a personal scale, and that’s a huge advantage.”
Calvert also has demographics on its side, as do other prosperous counties that surround the struggling urban school systems of Washington and Baltimore. Calvert has the third-lowest rate of student poverty among the 24 Maryland school systems; 15 percent of county students qualify for federal meal subsidies. Calvert’s median teacher salary is the highest in the state, meaning the well-paid teachers tend to stay put.
This year, relatively high percentages of Calvert students rated advanced, the highest of three performance levels, on the tests: 40 percent in math, 46 percent in reading.
Calvert officials said they noticed last year that students could benefit from learning vocabulary and other language skills outside reading classes. So all teachers, including specialists in music, art and technology, were coached to throw new words into their lessons and break the words down into roots, prefixes and suffixes to help students make connections to similar words.
Calvert’s low profile might stem in part from its performance on the SAT and Advanced Placement tests, which have emerged as twin beacons of academic prestige.
When shopping for a house or a school, parents tend to pay more attention to SAT scores or AP participation than to the pass rates on state tests. They tend not to regard proficiency on the state test as a particularly ambitious goal. Some education scholars agree, saying that many states, including Maryland, have built their state tests on academic standards that are too low.
Calvert’s composite SAT score last year, 1518 of a possible 2400, was more than 100 points below the scores in Howard, Montgomery and Fairfax counties, which have many of the region’s top-regarded high schools. None of Calvert’s four high schools ranked among Maryland’s top 30 on the 2008 Challenge Index, created by Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews to measure participation in college-level AP and International Baccalaureate tests.
However, on Maryland’s High School Assessments, which the state uses to establish minimum end-of-course standards in four subjects, Calvert had a composite pass rate of nearly 86 percent in 2007. That was second best in the state, just behind Howard. Among 13 Washington area school systems, Calvert has the second-highest graduation rate, 86 percent, just behind Loudoun, according to a 2008 report by the trade newspaper Education Week.
Ted Haynie, Calvert’s director of system performance, said focusing on state test scores is not enough. The school system is working to increase the rigor of its curriculum, especially in high schools.
Haynie said SAT scores and AP test participation are more difficult to quickly improve because high school “is just such a difficult culture to change.” Plus, he said, the county is focusing on improving HSA scores because they affect all students, not just those continuing on to college.
School officials note that teachers have encouraged more students to take AP classes and tests. The number of students taking at least one college-level test has more than doubled since 2004.
“As we try to increase the rigor, there is a transition time,” Haynie said. “While we are enjoying good, overall aggregate success, there are still kids who are not performing well. It’s all relative. There are always things to improve.”
