[Nancy S. Grasmick] called the middle school scores "uneven." Seventh-grade reading scores statewide, for example, were flat. A year ago, 67 percent of seventh-graders passed the test. This year, 67.2 percent did.

Grasmick singled out Howard County for praise, calling the school system's achievement "quite stunning." Howard County was already at the top of the state. Maintaining high performance - and in some cases excelling further - is quite a feat, she said. Climbing from the lower rungs is often a simpler task.

The MSA is different from the MSPAP partly because the old test looked at student scores as a whole, allowing scores of the traditionally lower-performing students - special education, poor and non-English-speaking - to be masked by the scores of their higher-performing peers.