Students in other counties outpace Montgomery's on MSAs | Washington ExaminerFrom Calvert County to Howard County, students in Maryland's outlying towns and suburbs are outperforming those who attend the vaunted Montgomery County school system and those in neighboring Prince George's County.An analysis of recently released results from the 2009 Maryland Standardized Assessment, commonly called the MSA, shows that Howard County's third and eighth graders more often scored in the highest category than Montgomery County students in both reading and math. The tests are given each year to students in grades three through eight and are scored "basic," "proficient" or "advanced."
Calvert County, with 17,000 students on a peninsula southeast of Prince George's County, fared better than Montgomery among third graders, especially in math. Nearly 42 percent of Calvert's youngest testers scored advanced, and only 7 percent scored basic. In Montgomery, 34 percent scored advanced while 13 percent scored basic.
According to the Maryland State Department of Education, third graders scoring basic in math likely cannot "write simple equations and simple inequalities," or "determine value of mixed currency."...
