BALTIMORE, MD -- When states first began requiring students to meet minimum course requirements and pass competency tests before graduating high school, some educators worried that the new standards would cause students -- especially minority and disadvantaged students -- to fail at higher rates and drop out more often than was already the case.

Their thinking was that these students were already failing to meet existing standards. Raising standards, they argued, would simply force them further into an educational limbo.

As it turned out, the exact opposite happened. Although initial rates of passing were low, school systems with minimum standards report that more of their students are passing and -- perhaps the biggest surprise -- dropout rates are stable or declining.

In light of this, some states are now deciding that they should go beyond minimum standards and adopt a more rigorous academic experience, not just for those students thought gifted, but for everyone.

Although several states have begun efforts in this direction, one of the few states to link that kind of reform to higher education is Maryland, which has been slowly putting into place a system-wide reform that will eventually make a high school diploma not only a certificate of mastery, but a ticket to good jobs, higher education and even scholarship money.

"I want kids to have a diploma they're proud to hang on the wall," is the way state board of education member Walter Sondheim Jr. put it.

Corporate Support

Late in January, Maryland took a big step toward its plan to require high-level assessments when the state school board asked testing companies for bids to design ten tests, to be taken throughout the high school years.

To make sure the tests are challenging for all students and to guard against pressures to "dumb the tests down," state educators plan on having multiple levels. For example, achieving a score of 80 on the exams might guarantee high school graduation. A score of 85 or 90 might garner the student a special note on the diploma that he or she had graduated with merit or distinction. Higher scores might guarantee the ultimate reward of automatic entrance to a Maryland college and even scholarship money.