By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer
While grading tests, teachers and other professionals also look for signs of abuse, suicide

More than half of Maine public school students will take a big, state-sponsored test this spring. They’ll show off their math skills and reading prowess. They’ll write. And write. And write.

But when officials score those essays and compositions, they’ll look for more than the correct answer.

They’ll look for signs of child abuse, suicide and even thoughts of murder.

“It’s rare that we find something,” said Patrick Philips, deputy education commissioner. “But our primary focus is on the whole child.”

Like other states, Maine has a history of raising a red flag when a student’s writing is overly dark or seems sinister. For years, teachers did the job when they scored the state’s Maine Educational Assessments, or MEAs, for fourth-, eighth- and 11th-graders. When the state started using Measured Progress of New Hampshire, a private testing company, that company’s professionals took over the task.

In order to meet federal academic testing rules, all students in grades three through eight will take the MEAs this year; 11th-graders will take the SATs. That’s more than 105,000 students.

And all of their tests will be vetted for language and themes that seem to show a student has a problem.

Measured Progress calls them “crisis papers.”

“We’ve been doing this from the very beginning of the company,” said spokeswoman Patricia Ross. “It was obvious that was something we needed to pay attention to.”

The company trains its readers to spot potential problems. They might red flag a test because the student mused about suicide. Or it might be something more subtle.

“It could be one word,” Ross said.

Measured Progress, which works on testing for 23 states, does not track the number of “crisis papers” it sees every year.

SAT officials call them “cry for help essays.”

About three million students take the SATs every year. Although a spokesman didn’t have exact figures, he said reviewers raised the alarm in “well, well under 1 percent of them.”

“It’s somewhat reassuring to know this doesn’t happen with great regularity,” said Brian O’Reilly, a spokesman for the College Board,which administers SATs.

Before the expansion of the MEAs, when only students in grades four, eight and 11 took the tests, Maine officials saw somewhere between three and 10 alarming compositions, essays and long answers a year.

Testing officials and educators declined to release examples of such writing because of confidentiality issues.

This year, as in the past, red-flagged tests will be sent to the student’s school system for a follow-up. Often, after talking with the student, guidance officials find nothing behind a dark essay on suicide or a sinister answer that involves violence.

“A kid just decided to write a pretty dark paper about their feelings,” Phillips said.

Still, educators say they have to err on the side of caution, particularly after the country’s infamous school shootings.

“With Columbine, you can’t assume anything,” said Debra Cloutier-Baggs, a guidance counselor at Lewiston High School.

At Lewiston High School, teachers are trained to look for potential problems in students’ in-class writing, school assignments and tests. If they see any indicators, teachers go to guidance counselors. Counselors talk to parents.

Some of the parents wave off concerns. Others welcome the help.

“They don’t always know where to go or where to turn,” Cloutier-Baggs said.

At Edward Little High School, students often write in journals. Those writings, more than exams, can seem abnormal. When they do, Edward Little teachers talk to the student and go to guidance.

“That’s very difficult because they’ve told the kids it’s open-ended and confidential,” said Sandra Milne, guidance director.

Milne believes her office has dealt with fewer than five situations so far this year.

“Usually, it’s a student who’s already on our radar,” she said.

But whether it’s one student or 100, educators said, it’s a necessary precaution to take.

“It’s common sense,” said Ross at Measured Progress. “It’s just ethics.”