Hundreds may miss 2009 graduation | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

What's more, many of them are African-American students caught in the county's long-standing achievement gap between white and black, affluent and poor students. If nothing is done, officials say the county's African-American community could be hit hard.

"That alarms me greatly," said Carlesa Finney, director of equity assurance for the county school system. "I want people to be aware that we need to begin right now to reduce those numbers. We're going to have a lot of kids, white and black, that aren't going to graduate, and a disproportionate number will be African-American."

Without high school degrees, county students won't be able to get good jobs, local civil rights leaders say.

"We've had a graduation rate problem, with a higher rate of African-American students dropping out of school," said John Wilson, executive director of RESPECT. "And the HSA heightens the problem."

At a forum for Arundel, Old Mill and Meade high schools, a panel of nine African-American said they struggled when they first started taking upper-level courses. The forum was one of several held throughout the ecounty to discuss the HSA tests and the subject of minority student performance in school.

Will Burnett, a senior at Arundel High, started taking higher classes at the advice of a school counselor. It was an adjustment at first, he said.

"I was surrounded by people not the same shade as me, to put it lightly," he said. "It took a while to get used to that transition, but I was able to pass all my HSAs the first year. To be honest, I had no idea I would pass."

There are plenty of reasons why African-American students sometimes fall short of expectations, said Vanessa T. Bass, senior manager of recruitment and staffing for Anne Arundel schools' Division of Human Resources.

Minority students often feel distant from their peers, and sometimes struggle with negative self images, Ms. Bass told the group of about 40 people who turned out for the forum.

A big part of the problem, according to Meade seniors Chardon Hunt, Virginia Williamson and Margaret Williamson, is stereotyping.

Videos and magazines tend to portray African-Americans a certain way, they said, and unfortunately, sometimes teens buy into those stereotypes.

"You can't be like, I'm going to go drop out of school and be a rapper," Miss Hunt said. "You have to have a group of friends who have the same goal as you."

The forums, in part, fulfill an agreement negotiated three years ago between the Board of Education and the county NAACP and RESPECT organizations, in which the schools agreed to raise achievement of African-American students, in part through community discussion.

The state is requiring all students, starting with the class of 2009, to pass four standardized exit exams to graduate from high school. Students take those tests throughout their high school years.

Students have been taking the High School Assessments (HSAs), for years, but next year's class is the first that must pass them to graduate.

The measure is meant to raise the bar on student achievement and the worth of a high school diploma, said Dan Cunningham, director of instructional assessment for the state Department of Education.

"It makes certain that students know some basic, bedrock skills. That was the goal," he said. "A lot of students graduate with a piece of paper that doesn't mean anything. The state Board of Education felt strongly this was the right direction."

According to data from the school system, about 23 percent of the county's class of 2009, or 1,034 students, have not yet passed all the exams.

Within those numbers, 362 black students, or about 40 percent of black students in the class, haven't passed all the tests.

To ensure the exit exams won't keep students who simply aren't good test-takers from graduating, the state is letting some students do projects in lieu of passing the tests. For example, some students who can't pass the biology exam can instead complete a science experiment created by the state education department.

But county school officials are still worried. Part of their concern stems from fears that not all students will be eligible to do a project in place of an exam, because students need to meet state-set criteria, such as passing specific courses, to be eligible. And part of it is that the achievement gap still exists three years after the NAACP and RESPECT agreement.

In Annapolis, Annapolis High junior Teri Hunt described why students aren't passing the state's new exit exams.

Some don't show up for the tests, others sleep through them, she said. On one test question, students were asked to name the largest organ in the human body; it's the skin, but students in her class said it's the stomach.

"Not everybody can pass the tests," Teri said to about 60 people attending the forum at Annapolis Middle School. "I haven't passed any of them, and I have to graduate next year."

Staff Writer Allison Bourg contributed to this story.