Mr. Clark has a good heart but it seems, made some serious mistakes/missteps. The types of things that he is accused of are very serious and cannot be excused. I am sure that at the time he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing. My hope is that upon further reflection he will be able to recognize that the ends do not justify the means.

As for what to do in situations like this, I think what the system did (for once) was the right thing - investigate and then meet with Mr. Clark. It was his decision to resign - he could have fought this if he wanted to and chose not to. Based on what I know about this case I would say this was the right move. I was very sad to hear about the decision of some of the teachers to not show up to school either the day before break (the day after Mr. Clark resigned) or the first day back from break. Abandoning the children is never the answer. It's one thing to use this as a "teachable" moment and quite another to punish kids by not showing up. As a fellow city teacher I am ashamed and hope they loose their jobs. I am not sure who the teachers thought they were punishing - the area office (who sent in staff and had staff from other are schools show up to help cover the classes for kids and deal with the fall out)? Sure, for a day or two I am sure those area staff were put out, but in the long run it was the kids who were abandoned. It was the students who were left without adult supervision. It was the kids who did not have those they trust to turn to.

Yes, ashamed is what I feel when teachers put their own needs before those of children.

Doug-

I find your response to be very pre-mature without knowing the facts of the allegations. I also feel that you must know that Dr. Clark is a man of integrity and has been committed to to the public school system for a long period of time. Being a teacher you may not be familiar with the "Due Process" that needs to be taken place when dealing with Administrators. To find an individual of his educational status and background and the committment he made to inner city kids who look up ro him as a father figure would be hard to overcome. Additionally to wish for someone to lose their job is a very selfish request by not keeping in mind the relationship he has built with past and current students at Maritime.

Here's the rub about grade falsification. When a principal makes a decision to change a grade, I think they are largely within their administrative role, though to do so often is very upsetting to teachers who have tried to make the standards work. There is such a thing as discretion, and when it is applied for situations that call for it, no problem, right? (please, lets have good discussion, because usually when I stick up for administrators on something like this, there is lots of push back.)

The problem becomes when this is done on a larger scale (like what I hear was the case at Walbrook)-- to cover up record keeping problems, inept management, or something like this...it is a cover-up, plain and simple, and ethical violation.

This has happened before, and I hope the system will put processes in place to keep it from being as chronic as it may have been. It is certainly symptomatic of a system where we are "socially promoting" children who are not learning, and it has contributed to a nationwide devaluation of the value of the high school diploma. We have to deal with this issue.

But the real problem I have us when North Avenue makes there annual calls to principals DIRECTING them to have fewer Seniors failing to receive a diploma. I've never directly seen this...only heard about it. And if it has happened in the past, then it's a good thing that Wortham is gone? (I for one never met her, but what I've heard -- "Dr Worthless"-- scared me). She used a lot of language that Frank DeStefano supposedly used like "Bold Goal" in relation to seniors passing, and teachers (I know this for sure) have been told in relation to Seniors to document EVERYTHING well...failing grades, performance measures, attempts to remediate the child in any way, regardless of whether the kids have made attempts or met the teacher half way. I agree with Dr. Alonso that we have to push students and support them, and this could involve second chances, grace, etc. But I have students (Freshman) who only come to school half of the time, and miss out a lot. And I for one know what happens when the real world kicks in. The kids that show up, learn, work, shoulder responsibility, etc. are those that "win" in the complex system of American social class. We send clear messages when we allow those who won't work to pass on, for whatever reason, when they have not met the standard. So if someone was fired for giving a kid a second chance, shame on us-- but I don't know what happened, and am suspicious that there is something more serious.

But then again, maybe it was only a lesson learned from the top?

I am sorry that other high quality educators don't see that when teachers don't show up and abandon their children this should be cause for dismissal. I understand making statements to management (administrators) and encourage teachers to get students and families involved in standing up for what they believe they should get. I love the algebra project and all that they do. What I cannot understand is a teacher thinking they are making a statement by not showing up to their school to educatate their students. This is simply something that should never be an option.

I am familiar with due process and based on the fact that Mr. Clark tendered his resignation instead of fighting this tells me a lot. How many principals have been fired in the past 10 years? My guess, none. Even Dr. Bundly wasn't fired or forced to resign. I am not nor (nor ever for that matter) going to let North Ave off the hook, but I don't accept the excuse that "I was just following orders" I was in a school where I was told to change the grades of a student who had not passed. I refused and told the principal that she could if she wanted, but that when we got sued over this kid, or the next, I wanted it on record that I wasn't going to be named. People can and should say no to things and based on how bad things are and have been in BCPSS, maybe it's time that we start doing more of it.

In this case I would not hitch my wagon to closely. I feel for those kids and the school - Mr. Clark has a good heart and cares about kids. Having said that there is clearly something more here since he quit.

This is what the BTU contract says about grades: "Determination of Grades
A. The teacher shall maintain the right and responsibility to determine grades within the grading policy of the Baltimore City Public School System based upon his professional
judgment of available criteria pertinent to any given subject area or activity for which he is responsible.
B. Once a teacher has provided evidence documenting a grade, no undue pressure should be applied to the teacher by the principal in an effort to force the teacher to change that grade.
C. If a principal of a school feels it is necessary to change a pupil’s grade in any subject at the end of the grading period, the principal shall consult with the teacher who issued the original grade and give his reasons in writing for the necessary change to the teacher. If a change in grade is made, it shall be recorded and logged (on a log kept by the Area Academic Officer) as the principal’s grade and not the teacher’s grade."

During my many years in the system, I've been aware of many grades that have been changed by administrators. In not one case am I aware of the above-mentioned procedure having been implemented.

Teachers are definitely pressured to change grades lest they be evaluated as being ineffective. I know of many teachers who have bent over backwards to help students achieve, but still find that they have high failure rates. We end up giving students grades that they don' t deserve just to allow them to pass. And, please don't get me started about the minimum grade teachers are allowed to record for students. I can't tell you how it angers me to have a student who shows up 10 percent of the time, turns in 2 assignments and EARNS a grade of 8% but must be given a 50% so as not to hurt their self-esteem and keep them from trying to dig out of the hole during subsequent semesters. What kind of message does it send to that student and to the student who may be struggling but barely earns a 50% on his own merit?! It's a terrible lesson we're teaching our students, one that will not serve them well out in the world of work or higher education.

As for the issue of unceremoniously removing a teacher or administrator from the lives of students - that's a difficult one. So many of our students look to teachers and administrators as positive, stable role models. It is surely devastating when they are ripped from their lives with no closure, no good-byes. But what can be done? I can't think of an ideal solution to this dilemma. I think the only thing that can be done is to offer them the opportunity to discuss their feelings and have them validated in a class/counseling session. We can't ignore the pain their feeling.

Hate to say it but Marco was playing lots of games and he had one heck of a reputation with other principals. He was playing the system for a while and it caught up to him. The union wasn't backing him either, seems they went on a limb for him last year when Marco got 10 days without pay for other issues.

It's a shame that another adult let kids down by doing the wrong thing. The kids look up to us, we have to do the right thing. When we make bad choices and do the wrong thing, kids are the ones who pay.

Insider:

I agree - it is interesting that he was brought up by the same person who was involved in another major scandal that dealt with grade tampering and I wonder what other shady things. Having said that, both Dr. Bundly and Mr. (is it Dr?) Clark have great hearts when it comes to kids - the outpouring from the school makes it clear that Mr. Clark was well loved. I am sure that he formed relationships with many parents and kids and that helps when trying to educatate people. What this tells me is that people are complex and good people can make bad decisions and bad people can form great relationships. I think how Mr. Clark handles this in the next few days/weeks (does he let the school transition smoothly, does he encourage his staff and the new principal to get back to the matter at hand and so on) will tell us which he is.

One more note about the school and Sara's somewhat sloppy reporting. According to the story, the school has a "99% graduation rate". I did a little (very little in fact. I went to: http://mdreportcard.org/Demographics.aspx?K=300431&WDATA=school) and found that in fact the graduation rate was at only 62.75%. The attendance rate is a good 90%, but I hae to wonder if those numbers are accurate give the grade issue. I wonder why Sara couldn't have fact checked this with a click to the same Web site that I went to. I also wonder where she got the 99% number and if she is going to print a retraction/correction.

Doug, thanks very much for all your comments, and for bringing the statistic on mdreportcard to my attention. I'm sorry I didn't think to check the site myself while I was writing the story under extremely tight deadline. However, the story says the school had a 99 percent graduation rate "according to literature it distributed." I thought it looked inflated, too. But it seemed relevant to include that the school was boasting a 99 percent graduation rate given that the principal was accused of allowing a student to graduate who didn't deserve to, presumably to inflate the numbers. The literature saying that Maritime has a 99 percent graduation rate is what's being distributed by Elijah Cummings' office as he tries to build community support for the school. I do wish I'd contrasted that with what's on the state's Web site in the story, and I will be sure to include the opposing numbers in any future stories I do about this subject.

Doug-

Based on my knowledge the Baltimore Public School system has one of the highest turnover rates for high school principals. This should say something about central office. Losing qualified, dedicated professionals with Ph D's is not the answer Doug. Especially black men serving as father figures for a good number of these inner city students.

Are you a part of the solution or adding fuel to the fire questioning Dr. Clark's integrity and credentials? Associating him with Dr. Bundly is very inappropriate without knowing about the facts first.

Speaking of facts and seeing that you took time to do research to post and correct Maritimes graduation rate at 62% but you failed to post that the overall graduation rate for Baltimore Public Schools is close to 32%. Not only is the graduation rate for BCPS low, it remains to be a problem for 14 of the largest school ditricts around the country (less than 50%).

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-06-20-dropout-rates_x.htm

The problem is bigger than the "allegations" against Dr. Clark. As an educator you need to look at this from a global perspective and begin to attack BCPS's central office rather than personally attacking Dr. Clark ,who's graduation rate almost doubles the city's overall average. Let's focus on what's important and use this platform to question the real issues.

Lastly what is your school's graduation rate? What extracurricular activities do you do to engage your students? Please enlighten us Doug with solutions.We always question the methods but never providing solutions or actions.

In response to Blaze's comment: The graduation rate reported by USA Today, part of a study commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, does show Baltimore as graduating only 38.5 percent of students on time. However, that data is from the 2002-2003 school year; the data on mdreportcard says it's from 2007. More signficantly, the state and the Gates study calcualted their rates differently. The state reports a citywide graduation rate of 60 percent and a rate of 62 percent at Maritime -- pretty comparable.
There are lots of different ways to calculate graduation rates, and I won't get into the different methodologies here, but the state's method has been criticized for making the numbers look better than they are, while the method used by the Gates researcher has been criticized for making the numbers look worse. Many states, including Maryland, are supposed to start assigning kids a unique student identifier, like a social security number, in attempt to be more accurate in tracking what happens to kids when they leave a school (whether they've dropped out vs. whether they've moved and enrolled elsewhere).

Sara-

Thanks for the clarification. What is the attendance rate for Blaltimore City Scools?

I was in the first graduating class of maritime in 2005 and one of the cadet commanders during that school year. an i would like to comment on a few differant things. First Dr. Clark is a person and we all make mistakes i agree but if you did in to the past of my school one may see a not so clear veiw of things. The Maritime Industries Academy was so name because of it's roots at the Maritime academy of Walbrook high. The NJROTC program at the school was at its prime with the number one ranked drill team in the city and also earning the chance to travel to Norfolk VA to attend the area five Navy JROTC drill competiton. The school would have been fine without Dr. Clark.
This is because of the others we had there. Teachers like the retired Navy Master Cheif, and Marine Gunerry Sargent who tried to take the JROTC program to higher levels. They werent helped at all. I my self have been in an altercation involving Clark over petty rumors. He had me striped of my rank as cadet commander and suspended. Then to add insult to injury called me a 17 year old boy at the time out of my name just to garner a reaction. The actions during Maritimes first year as its own school in my mind alone justifys his leave. If you ask the orignal Cadets of the maritime academy you will surely find were loyalty lies.

Blaze:

Thanks for your thoughtful comments and, judging from what you have written in the past, I assume your dedication to the children of BCPSS.

I am not attacking Dr. Clark and have said in a number of my posts that he most likely has a good heart and made some poor choices. I stand by this statement. I agree that removing qualified African-American school leaders is not an answer in and of itself. Neither is keeping school leaders of any color who do not live up to the standards they should. I am happy to attack North Ave. for all of its many failings (too numerous to count in my many years here in Baltimore), but investigating allegations of wrong doing and having the principal resign is not on their shoulders, in fact I wish that a tighter look at all school employees would be taken to ensure that our kids (yes, mine go to BCPSS schools) get only the best. We could start at North Ave or in any school out there. My hope is that Dr. Alonso is doing just that. I would never support allowing people who break the rules to stay on because of their other good acts. That is a slope too slippery to stand on for me.

As for me tying Dr. Bundly to Dr.. Clark, I am not sure what gave you the impression that I did that. Dr. Clark worked under Dr. Bundly and their relationship is a matter of public record. Dr. Bundly's leadership has some strikingly similar notes to Dr. Clarks. First is that both men care a great deal about the kids they work/worked with. Second is that both men clearly formed very important, even life changing relationships with the students and families they served. Thirdly, it seems, both felt comfortable with doing things that were not in the best interest of their students and their schools. I do not attack Dr. Clarks cerdientials, I didn't know if he was a Dr. or a Mr. thanks for the clarification.

Since I don't work in a high school, my school doesn't have a "graduation rate". We do try to form the types of relationships that all good small schools strive for so that each student and family feels connected, we offer after school programs in a variety of different areas, both academic and physical, we try to hire teachers who care about kids and don't make excuses for not being able to achieve but ballance that with understanding the unique struggles that each child and family comes to us with. We also strive to put children above adult concerns. What we don't do is play games with kids futures.

I would be interested to know where you got your "highest turnover" data. Not that I doubt it since BCPSS doesn't make it easy to be a school leader, but that seems like a bold statement. I wonder if Sara has any data on this or could point us in the right direction.

Thanks, BTW, to Sara for responding and I hope she didn't take my words about the data as harshly as they now read. I know the pressures that reporters and under and do recognize that she did state that the numbers were those put forth by the school and not the state numbers. I appreciate her hard work on shining lights on the things that will make this a better system.

Blaze: According to the state's data (available on www.mdreportcard.org), Baltimore's high school attendance rate is 83 percent. Maritime's is 91 percent.

Doug: Thanks for your response. Regarding principal turnover: This isn't exactly what you're looking for since we're talking about high schools here, but Advocates for Children and Youth just released a study a few weeks ago (covered in The Sun and on this blog) about the high turnover rate among principals in low-performing middle schools in Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Prince George's County. Gina's blog entry about it (with links to her story and the full study) is here:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/education/blog/2007/12/a_principal_problem.html

Doug-
Per your request I have attached a link providing a 2007 case report from Advocates for Children and Youth detailing the high principal turnover rate in Baltimore.

http://www.acy.org/upimages/FINAL%2012%2012%20Bal%20City(1).pdf

Sara-

With the principle turnover rate in Baltimore so high, who is accountable for working and supporting these principles? If Dr. Clark alledgedly had a student teach a class (based on your Jan 3 article) for an entire semester where was his boss Sharon Kanter? If this is true why wouldn't she have known about this sooner? Why isn't she being questioned or forced to resigned? Also, isn't she responsible for approving how funds are spent through Central Office? Funds can't be spent unless it's approved by North Avenue. Sara I would have to question some of your sources and motive to question Dr. Clark's integrity rather than holding North Avenue accountable for providing false information. Like I said to Doug in an earlier post, I think this is more personal rather than North Avenue following due process.

No one seems to have mentioned that there was another reason given as to why Dr. Clark was removed/asked to resign/whatever. That was the use of non-certified personnel to teach classes on a regular basis that contained special education students. Apparently students were used as teachers without an appropriate adult there to oversee the instruction of the class. This action resulted in the disruption of special education services to students in the class. THAT IS THE REAL ISSUE. I am sorry whenever we lose an administrator who could serve as an example to our students--particularly the young, black males. However, one must never lose sight of the fact that, as educators, we must strive to be "Caesar's wife" and not allowed outside pressures to dictate our actions even when we believe that the outcome is for the best. I know that both teachers and principals ARE pressured to have seniors graduate regardless of whether they truly deserve the diplomas. Grades are changed all the time and teachers are seldom consulted; we usually find out after the fact. Until the parents of all BCPSS students begin to take a role in the education of their students and don't expect schools to be everything to them, these types of problems will continue to occur. And that is a sad commentary on our system.

Were the students who were "teaching classes" marked present and on roll in other classes and recieving credit for the other class at the same time?

I don't know all the details but a school without its principal is an unstable environment. If this Dr.Clark is anything like Ms.Grant was then that school's culture and underlining will dissolve and die .After a while a good principle will be able to stabilize the condition because the kids who are effected will bottle it and this means they either graduate ,make the pain external and become another problem child,try to replace him/her with themselves,or drop out .I believe those people in the seats at north ave don't question weather they were in the shoes of those who are being most effect or let a alone keep in mind that for most of these kids school is a healer for all those wounds they receive from the lives they live on the out side,not to mention the piss poor static education that they receive since they first started school. They need to at the least comfort the kids to some degree.The goal of today's schools are to prepare the kids for real life but if you take away probably the only engaged education they my ever get academia how will they ever want to be like them or at the least take your jobs in the future.