Improving student learning on all levels in Maryland - High School/College Connections

Liberal Education, Spring, 2003 by Katharine M. Oliver

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, almost one-half of all Maryland 18-to-24 year olds enroll in college-level courses. This makes Maryland a top performer in the nation. Almost 80 percent of the high-school graduates of the class of 2001 indicated they planned to attend college on either a full- or part-time basis. But disturbing is the rate of ongoing need for remediation by students first enrolling in the state's higher education institutions, as reported in the Maryland Higher Education Commission's annual Student Outcomes and Achievement Report. Maryland welcomed the National Panel Report, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, as both affirmation and support for its ongoing effort to improve student leaning and better connect the K-16 learning levels.

Filling achievement gaps

In 1999, ten years into the Maryland School Performance Program's reform agenda, the state found itself plagued by achievement gaps that impeded significant and sustained gains in student achievement. The State Board of Education made eliminating achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity, poverty, native language, and disability Maryland's number one priority. Dr. Nancy Grasmick, state superintendent of schools, knew that tackling this priority would mean getting the public rallied around the issue. She convened the Visionary Panel for Better Schools to compile lessons learned from a decade of school reform and to draft a new plan, nor only to eliminate achievement gaps that separate students, but to accelerate achievement among all students.

Included in the panel's recommendations released in early 2002 was the development of a voluntary statewide K- 12 curriculum that will provide schools and teachers with a much clearer, more explicit, and much more understandable accounting of what students should know and be able to do in each grade and every subject. The first editions will be available in spring 2003. The panel further recommended that the state and school systems establish a close alignment between K-12 curriculum and testing to ensure that elementary, middle, and high school expectations are contiguous. Perhaps most ambitious of all was the panel recommendation to demand full funding of existing reform plans.

Fiscal support

On April 4, 2002, the Maryland General Assembly responded to that demand. In an unprecedented legislative bid to guarantee educational equity and adequacy, it enacted the Bridge to Excellence in Public Education Act. The Act increases flexibility in the use of funds and the amount of state aid to public schools--by $1.3 billion over the next six years. It embodies a standards-based approach to school funding by requiring that each school system commit to a five-year master plan that will close achievement gaps in every school and every classroom.

Resources and alliances

In addition to the fiscal support from the legislature, two other partners continue to provide invaluable assistance to the state's efforts to close achievement gaps and accelerate student achievement: the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education (MBRT), established in 1992, and the Maryland K-16 Partnership for Teaching and Learning, which began in 1995.

MBRT has been a vocal supporter of the state's high standards, rigorous assessments, and strong school accountability. In 1999, they launched Achievement Counts, a comprehensive campaign to demonstrate to students, parents, and community, the critical connection between achievement in schools and success in the workplace and in life. Based on the premise that success in reaching higher standards of achievement will require a dramatic increase in student buy-in and motivation, MBRT identified nontraditional messengers to whom students could relate and strong messages that would heighten their understanding of why high school is so important to their futures.

Each strategic and interwoven component of Achievement Counts--Speakers Bureau, Parents Count, Workforce Survey, and Teen Website--has been designed to strengthen and reinforce the others. Through the Speakers Bureau, young business volunteers talk with students in their classrooms about their profession and what it took to get there. The Parents Count Web site provides valuable information to parents on how they can help their children in school. The Workforce Survey results paint a compelling picture of Maryland workforce needs and the skills that Maryland firms expect new employees to bring to the job. Under development is an interactive Web site that will introduce high school students to a variety of careers and what it takes to qualify for them.

The Maryland Partnership for Teaching and Learning, K-16, is an alliance of the Maryland State Department of Education, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, and the University System of Maryland. The chairmanship of the group rotates among the three institution heads. A Leadership Council, consisting of corporate, civic, and public and private education leaders who advise, counsel, reinforce, communicate, and support an agenda to improve student achievement, supports the Partnership. To facilitate the direction of the Leadership Council, a K-16 Workgroup comprised of members of the above-described constituencies meets regularly to share cross-institutional information, seek solutions to articulation issues, and collaborate on promising practices that improve student success.