Baltimore students keep upping their game on Maryland’s statewide assessment.

On Tuesday, the state released scores for the annual exam given to students in grades three through eight and in some high school classes known as the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program, or MCAP. Statewide, almost every single grade made improvements across reading and math, though scores and improvements were much stronger in English Language Arts.

It’s the same story in Baltimore. Test takers once again outpaced the state’s growth in English, adding to nearly a decade of improvement in the subject and more than doubling the rate at which they had previously gained ground.

State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright said it’s proof Maryland’s pivot to the science of reading is working. The head of Baltimore’s public schools agreed, saying what began in city schools “a number of years ago, we see it paying off,” adding that explicit writing instruction and a more rigorous curriculum moved the needle in city high schools.

“We know we have not arrived,” CEO Sonja Santelises said of her district’s scores. “But we are making gains. And that is what we are staying focused on.”

Though some jumps were smaller than half a percentage point, scores went up across all grades in Baltimore, according to a Banner analysis of school test data. Here’s how city students improved again, by the numbers.

3.5

The number of percentage points the city managed to raise its overall English score, compared to the 2.4 percentage point jump across Maryland.

Baltimore City had the state’s lowest proficiency rate at 31.2%, compared to 50.8% of test takers across Maryland. The city’s third, fourth and fifth graders all scored the lowest of their cohorts.

But last year’s fourth graders, who were in kindergarten when COVID-19 shut down schools, still managed to make a 1.6 percentage point gain, although that was the only group that didn’t improve statewide.

The city’s 10th graders posted the best results, coming in at 42.6% proficient and with the biggest jump at over 8 percentage points.

2.4

The improvement in the city’s math scores, which is the same jump as the state’s. That’s a third consecutive year of math gains, up nearly four points from two years earlier.

The city’s math proficiency rate stands at 12.6%, the second-worst in the state. Overall, just over a quarter of Maryland students are proficient in the subject in which they used to excel.

Santelises said city schools will have a “deep focus on mathematics” using new materials and “doubling down on teacher development in very much the same way that we did with literacy.”

15

Roughly the number of percentage points by which the city has improved its overall reading score since the 2016-17 school year, when Santelises took over as CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. This is Santelises’s last year as the head of the nearly 77,000-student school system.

Santelises said she’s encouraged by the city’s results.

“We have grown, even through a pandemic, even through a time when schools were closed,” Santelises said. “I’m leaving knowing that we have the momentum, we have the trajectory, but also that we have a lot of work to do.”

0.7

The percentage point change in math scores within the same time frame, a far more sluggish improvement.

While Baltimore’s scores lag significantly behind the state in both major subjects, Santelises said she’s still encouraged by the acceleration.

“When I first came, it was like, you know, half a percentage point, a percentage point a year,” Santelises said. “And now we’re up to some schools at double-digit gains.”

7

The number of Baltimore City high schools that ranked within Maryland’s 10 most improved high schools in English.

Paul Laurence Dunbar High School saw the largest gains of any school across all grade levels in Maryland, raising its proficiency score from 40.1% to 63.4% — a 23.3 point jump that takes the school’s students above the statewide English Language Arts average.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.

Banner data journalists Sahana Jayaraman and Allan James Vestal contributed to this report.