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Excerpted from Education Beat:
More Musings, Talking Pro and Con about MSPAP
By Mike Bowler
January 31, 2001, Baltimore Sun
More sightings from the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program.
Williamson Evers, chairman of an independent study highly critical of MSPAP, and Gary Heath, branch chief for arts and sciences at the State Department of Education, duked it out last week on WJHU's Marc Steiner Show.
It was a draw at high noon. Heath more than held his own, while Evers, on the phone from California, was articulate in his indictment. Both men were polite. Was it a coincidence that, during the noon hour of a school day, three consecutive pro-MSPAP callers identified themselves as public school principals? Lunch duty?
Meanwhile, State Department of Education officials reminded me that three independent polls since 1997 have found Marylanders more satisfied with MSPAP than did those responding to the Maryland Poll commissioned recently by The Sun and two other news organizations.
A poll conducted by the University of Maryland in 1999 found that two-thirds of Marylanders thought MSPAP was "somewhat useful" or "very useful." The Maryland Poll, released this month, asked 1,200 registered voters across the state if they thought MSPAP "is leading to better public education." Only a quarter answered affirmatively.
"The verdict is still out on [MSPAP's] viability from a public standpoint," said Keith Haller, president of Potomac Survey Research in Bethesda, which conducted the Maryland Poll….
Maryland was rated first in the nation and Kentucky third in a study of standards and accountability conducted recently by Education Week.
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