Out of over 60,000 Maryland high school seniors last year, only 11 couldn’t graduate because they failed the state-mandated standardized exit exams, according to the state superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick. Starting with the class of 2009, Maryland officials require that students pass the High School Assessments in order to graduate.

“This achievement was the floor, not the ceiling,” Maryland Department of Education spokesperson William Reinhold said. “In the course of the next year we will be looking at rationing up the difficulty level in some way, but this is a good start and shows that students and parents took the test seriously.”

Last year, 68.2 percent of Maryland seniors passed all four of the HSAs: biology, government, algebra and English, while 15.6 percent of students achieved a minimum combined score to pass through a provision where students can fail one of the subjects as long as they excel on another, according to a state press release.

Senior Jane Kessner said that she is opposed to the institution of standardized exit exams, but advocates graduation assessments more based on projects or portfolios where students can demonstrate knowledge regardless of how well they can take a test.

“The HSA standards are meaningless,” Kessner said. “It’s hard to see the effect at Whitman because no one studies and everyone that I know passes. Because a lot of Whitman kids take AP NSL, they don’t have to take the government HSA as long as they get a three on the AP test. For students who aren’t taking the AP or are just bad at taking tests there should be a substitute.”

Rather than making the test more difficult, Reinhold said that the state will look into allowing fewer waivers and getting rid of or restricting the combined score option to raise the standards for future Maryland students. Because state officials have just begun to analyze the data, they are not sure what other changes will occur.

“I have reservations about the policy of standardized exit exams when it comes to at risk students,” Principal Alan Goodwin said. “Especially if the tests get more difficult, we will do everything in our power to provide interventions to help the students. Tiered levels of diplomas may help these students in the future.”

In MCPS, 23 out of 25 high schools met the state standard for yearly progress. This year, Maryland officials removed Montgomery Blair High School from their school improvement list, but Springbrook and Northwood did not meet the standard for adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind act.

However, the county’s high school graduation rate fell to the lowest rate since 1996 to 87 percent. The graduation rate ranked eleventh out of the state’s 24 school districts.

Governors, state school chiefs and education experts proposed a national set of math and English concepts that students should master before the end of high school, Sept. 21. The group drafted the proposal over the summer. This is the first step towards a unified set of standards that would be the foundation for curricula across the country, according to the Common Core State Standards Initiative.