'Carding' High Schools by Rankings
Group Looks at Spending, Pay, Graduation Rates
By Megan Greenwell Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 15, 2007; Page GZ02

A single page of data released by a D.C. think tank last month could be a crucial tool in Maryland legislators' discussions about educational funding priorities, its authors say.

The Maryland State Card, a product of the nonpartisan Alliance for Excellent Education, aims to provide a snapshot of the state of public high schools through an analysis of data collection systems, graduation rates, per-student spending, reading test scores and teacher pay. Each state and the District received a report, which then was sent to the governor or mayor, members of state legislatures and federal officials.

"It's not a lot of data, but it's designed to provide an immediate start to the discussion of what high schools look like and what should be done" in funding education, said Robert E. Wise Jr., a former governor and Democratic member of Congress from West Virginia who serves as president of the alliance. "The present No Child Left Behind Act does not really deal with high schools, but the cards show there's a major federal role in assisting high schools."

The report ranked Maryland 14th nationally in terms of per-student spending, at $9,212 per student annually, compared with a national average of $8,287. Maryland has the 20th-highest graduation rate, with 75 percent of students receiving a high school diploma, and has the 13th-highest starting teacher salary, an average of $33,760.

In comparison, Virginia ranks 23rd in per-pupil spending, 21st in graduation rate and 21st in starting teacher salary. The District ranks third in per-pupil spending and first in starting teacher salary, but its graduation rate was not included in the study because it is not a state.

"Maryland is doing better than the national average across the board," Wise said. "But the reality is that it's not a national competition, but international, so in every state we've got a lot more work to do to keep up."

Just 30 percent of the state's eighth-graders receive proficient or advanced scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the only available national standardized test, according to data compiled by the alliance. Scores on the NAEP test, which is administered to a randomly selected group of students every year, are significantly lower than on the eighth-grade Maryland State Assessment, where 66 percent of students scored proficient or higher.

Wise said his organization uses NAEP instead of state-issued standardized tests to judge the quality of a state's education system because the rigor of tests varies widely among states. Under No Child Left Behind, each state is responsible for setting the standards it will use in scoring standardized tests.

"NAEP is the only true apples-to-apples comparison we have," Wise said.

Alliance researchers concluded that teacher salaries can be an important factor in student success, because high salaries allow school systems to recruit and retain top teachers. Half of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years, according to alliance data.

Minimum starting teacher salaries vary across the state, from a low of $36,050 in Allegany County to a high of $41,758 in Montgomery. Calvert County offers the highest maximum teacher salary, $93,793 for teachers who have a doctorate.

Salaries have been a hot topic for the past few years in such fast-growing counties as Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's in the southern part of the state. Charles County Superintendent James E. Richmond has pledged to look at ways to increase salaries to prevent the loss of teachers to larger, wealthier counties.

Charles County pays $38,336 to first-year teachers with bachelor's degrees, compared with $41,410 in neighboring Prince George's County.

A significant portion of the Maryland State Card is dedicated to an analysis of the state's data collection systems. The Maryland State Department of Education tracks graduation and dropout records, the alliance found, but cannot track individual students over time or keep a record of transcript information.

Data collection abilities in most Maryland counties are significantly more advanced than on the state level, officials from several school systems said. Montgomery County public schools use three systems to track students' demographic information and academic progress, allowing the school system to keep a record of county, state and national assessment scores for each student, said Deputy Superintendent John Q. Porter.

St. Mary's County public schools have one of the most advanced data collection systems in the state, a year-old digital warehouse called Performance Matters that allows teachers to customize reports to compare a student's grade in a particular class with his or her score on the corresponding standardized test. Assessment results for countywide tests are entered into the system at the end of each quarter, said Regina Greely, the school system's supervisor of the data warehouse and instructional technology.

"It's a great, flexible program that teachers really love," Greely said. "We're working on including more and more assessments over time."

At the other end, Prince George's County public schools record test scores but have no system for teachers and administrators to access the information, spokesman John White said. The school system is working on the creation of a centralized data warehouse.