The 2008-2009 school year brings reform to the Maryland High School Assessments. The changes involve the removal of BCRs and ECRs, as well as the creation of the Bridge Plan as an alternative for students who haven’t yet passed their HSAs, putting them in danger of not graduating.

One change is in the test format; writing samples are scheduled to be removed from the May HSA test administration.

BCRs require a student to read a selected passage and then write a response to a given prompt, using details and information that supports the answer. ECRs require a student to support and elaborate while keeping a set tone and voice.

According to Bridge Plan Coordinator Geri Hastings, there has been no official statement as to why BCRs and ECRs will be removed, but she suggested that the reason was that “the turnaround grading time was too long and that the department was looking to shorten the amount of time that it took to report HSA grades to students.”

The change won’t take place in time for the students taking the HSA in January, but HSAs for spring semester classes will have the change.

Students, however, are concerned about how the differences in testing will affect them.

Sophomore Paige Thomas is currently taking Honors English 10. She will take the current form of the English HSA, the one with ECRs and BCRs.

“It’s not fair. They [spring students] don’t have to take it. It’s not an equal test situation,” she reacted.

Sophomore Grace Hochheimer is happy to be rid of the writing samples.

“I hate ECRs and BCRs,” she said.

In place of the BCRs and ECRs, analytical multiple choice questions will be added. Sophomore Alex Wallace was concerned that teachers might not be prepared to help students learn how to answer the new analytical multiple choice questions since the questions are new, and many teachers aren’t as familiar with this format as they are with ECRs and BCRs.



As for Ms. Hastings, she believes that getting rid of the writing portion of the HSAs will prove to be a challenge for some students, especially those who aren’t very successful answering multiple choice questions.

“In my experience with the AP U.S. History test, students have more problems answering multiple choice questions than writing essays. You can teach a student how to write but you can’t teach students how to take multiple choice tests,” Ms. Hastings explained.

Because the class of 2009 is the first class that must pass the HSAs in order to graduate, the stakes are high for those senior who haven’t yet earned passing scores. That is where the new Bridge Plan comes in.

According to mdk12.org, the Bridge Plan for Academic Validation allows students to complete one or more projects in tested areas to show their knowledge and skills if they have been unsuccessful with “traditional testing instruments”.

In order for any student to be eligible for the Bridge Plan, he or she must have an alternative remediation, such as a special course, have an attendance rate of at least 80% for the past year, and make progress towards graduating. This includes passing all classes.

Under the Bridge Plan students will be assigned one or more “rigorous project modules” dependent on the student’s highest score earned on the specific HSA test. For example, one of the English tasks, as described at MdBridgePlan.org, asks the student to compose a “found” poem, created from lines from other poems, and then analyze that poem in an essay. The project is scored by the project monitor, in this case, Ms. Hastings, using a rubric.