I came back from a long vacation to some devastating news.

Natalie Wise Woodson, the education chair for the Maryland chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a retired Baltimore City principal, died Tuesday after a near two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 79.

She was a great advocate for children and was a proponent for closing the achievement gap long before No Child Left Behind mandates. She will be missed.

Mrs. Woodson came from a long line of educators.

At one point during her employment as a principal in Baltimore City, five of her cousins were also principals; four more worked as teachers.

"We were all instilled with the importance of education," she said in an interview I had with her for a profile I wrote about her in June. Mrs. Woodson was also featured on this blog’s Educator Spotlight June 26.

Mrs. Woodson was instrumental in leading several initiatives to help improve student achievement for African-American students.

In 1990 she launched Education Advocates for African Americans, an advocacy organization in which members accompanied African-American parents in Howard County to teacher conferences and meetings about individual education plans. She also worked with the Black Student Achievement Program, another Howard County school system initiative.

In 2000, Mrs. Woodson completed the first NAACP Education Report Card, a comprehensive look at attendance, graduation rate, drop-out rate, suspensions and assessment scores for African-
American students.

I saw Mrs. Woodson just before I went on vacation in December. She was at a Howard County school board meeting talking to board members about improving student achievement.

A viewing will be held Sunday from 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. at Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Home, 4101 Edmondson Avenue at Wildwood Parkway in Baltimore.

Services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Celebration Church, 6080 Foreland Garth, in Columbia.

In lieu of flowers, the Mrs. Woodson’s family requests that contributions be made to:
Natalie W. Woodson Scholarship Fund
c/o Mrs. JoAnn Branche
P.O. Box 8621
Elkridge, MD 21075