Unfortunately, it is not just Mervo. This blog sounds just like my school.

The situation at Mervo illustrates the dark underside of Alsonso's policies. The reluctance of administrators to remove disruptive students from schools have led to chaotic and unsafe situations in some schools. Of course, on the surface, schools appear safer with fewer supsensions and disciplinary removals, but the opposite is true.

Placing 50 teachers on PIP's is outrageous. The leadership at Mervo should be removed and the PIP's should be withdrawn. Mervo used to be a great school and it could be again with new leadership that has the courage to remove students who impede the learning of others.

I am a teacher at Mervo and I can attest to everything that was posted on The Challenge to Care in Charm City blog. Our principal, Magdalen Reyment, has single-handedly ruined the education of hundreds of kids. She should be fired immediately. North Ave. officials have visited Mervo on several occasions per teachers' requests and have said the same things over and over again. Mervo should have a written discipline policy that includes rules and consequences for breaking those rules. Here we are in the middle of March and there still is no discipline policy. The only reason that Mervo is not completely out of control is because North Ave. officials have set up camp at Mervo to try to restore some order.

Reyment, knowing that she has failed at her job, gives more than half of her staff PIPs (performance improvement plans) to pass the buck on them. These PIPs are based soley on attendance because she never steps foot in the hallways or classrooms so, consequently, she has no idea what is going on in her own building. Also, most of the people she gave PIPs to had legitimate and documented reasons for missing work. If Reyment had a shred of intelligence, she would know that there are measures that must be taken before a teacher can be placed on a PIP for attendance. Hey Alonso, just hurry up and fire her already! Let's not let her destroy another kid's chance to learn something.

I am a union member for the legal protection. I am not a union minded person but Mervo teachers,have you contacted the union about the PIP's? Has the union gotten involved in any of your other issues? Do we still have a union? My paycheck says we do but where are they?

To the Mervo staff, I am so sorry you have to endure such an environment. I have been incredibly lucky to have three terrific principals in my BCPS career. They make all the difference. In all three cases, the leaders knew they were only as successful as we were in the classroom. They all believe in serving the staff and the students. None of them was on a power trip and all had high self esteem, high expectations,and true affection and care for their staff. Try another City School! We need good people to stay.

I am a union member for the legal protection. I am not a union minded person but Mervo teachers,have you contacted the union about the PIP's? Has the union gotten involved in any of your other issues? Do we still have a union? My paycheck says we do but where are they?

To the Mervo staff, I am so sorry you have to endure such an environment. I have been incredibly lucky to have three terrific principals in my BCPS career. They make all the difference. In all three cases, the leaders knew they were only as successful as we were in the classroom. They all believe in serving the staff and the students. None of them was on a power trip and all had high self esteem, high expectations,and true affection and care for their staff. Try another City School! We need good people to stay.

I agree with Anon. These conditions exist to some degree in many of the BCPSS schools. The students know exactly what principals are willing to do to deal with disruptive students and push the limits every day. Alonzo has stated in his afternoon meetings with teachers that he has never told principals not to suspend students--and that is true--however he also said that alternatives would be provided for the truly disruptive students and that has not happened. Parents have said that they have tried to place students in alternative settings only to be told that there is no room and a huge waiting list. So, the students return to schools where they are causing problems and nothing can be done. Also there are some serious neighborhood issues that are creeping into the schools that regardless of what we do will not go away. And the use of PIPs at Mervo--where the heck is the BTU? Probably on convention--again. But that is an issue for another blog.

Where has Dr. Alonso been during all of this? I hold him and his absurd policies accountable for the downfall of Mervo. Alonso thinks that students with severe behavior problems should remain in city-wide schools simply because they were accepted. The only thing this is doing is ruining the education of the kids who choose to behave and do their work. Alonso is punishing responsible parents who raised their kids properly. The students that achieve at a high level are not learning as much as they would because of constant classroom disruptions. Again, the parents are punished because they now have to pay for another year of college because their kids have to take numerous remedial classes. When are we going to cater to the kids that actually follow the rules?

Alonso has also mislead the public. He brags about the suspension rates across the city going down. What he does not talk about is that even more punishable incidents are taking place in schools but they are just being swept under the rug. By not dealing with minor infractions from the beginning we get situations like the murder at Lemmel Middle School.

Again, I ask, where have you been Dr. Alonso? You have created this mess yet you won't even show up to a faculty meeting at Mervo despite the fact that your presence has been repeatedly requested by numerous staff members. You send the same useless North Avenue people over and over again. These North Avenue people have not provided a single solution to a single problem at Mervo.

I agree with Mervo Teacher that our principal is totally incompetent but I again put the blame on Dr. Alsonso. How has she been allowed to remain in her position for this long? She has proven to be an absolute failure for two years now.

On the note of suspensions--while he may brag that suspensions are down, my guess is that many Baltimore Schools are doing what mine does, which is suspend kids without documenting it--so while on paper we only have a few suspensions, in reality, we have many many more. In some instances, one might believe that this at least creates a consequence for student behavior, but it also leads to incredible inconsistency in discipline. One child might be "suspended" for an infraction that others then get away with--all based on the mood of the administrator who deals with them, and the level of involvement of the parent.

To the staff at Mervo who have been put on PIPs for attendance: check your contract carefully. I have been a Baltimore City Schools teacher for 12 years now, and every year, my school administrator provides training in the attendance and reliability analysis program. A copy is provided to us in our school handbooks. There is a distinct difference between absences and occasions. If you were, for example, hit by a car (as the teacher in the blog), and missed 7 days of work in a row - that is ONE OCCASION. You cannot be put on a PIP for one occasion. The program stipulates that your administrator should conference with you after 3 occasions, and then a PIP may be in order. I'm so sorry for the situation that you have to endure at Mervo. I've been fortunate to have supportive administrators throughout my career in the city.

For all those who claim to hate unions, this is exactly why they are in existence: to protect even good teachers from the many illiterate administrators who are in charge simply because we dont have enough good ones to fill all positions. Those clueless administrators can abuse their evaluative power -- we need the unions and the contracts to protect us from those administrators. Not all administrators are like this, but look at what's happening here???? Still think we dont need unions to protect GOOD teachers?!?!

@ Another Mervo Teacher:

Before you lay all the blame on the inability of city-wide schools to kick kids out, you need to carry that out in your head first: when disruptive students are kicked out of city-wide schools, where do they go? Back to zone schools. But why should zone schools have more of a responsibility to deal with students who are behavior problems than city-wide schools? City-wide schools should have the same discipline and support systems in place to keep kids from dropping out or being kicked out as any other school in the city...in fact, it's probably even MORE important for a school like Mervo to have these supports because a student who graduates from Mervo probably has a higher probability for post-high school success than a student at another school.

Having been a teacher at both a zone school and a city-wide school in Baltimore, I have seen this issue from both sides. You cannot push all responsibility to manage students with behavior problems to the zone schools because you do just as much of a disservice to the students who are working hard in those schools as you do to the hard-working students at Mervo. Ultimately, what's best for everyone is if high achieving, poorly behaving students can stay at their city-wide schools and reform their behavior through sensible and consistent behavior management strategies. That's a win for everyone.

As always, Simon, well said.

@simon - As a city-wide grad ('80) and a parent of a city-wide student I'll agree that behavior supports (or any other 503/IEP type support) belong in the city-wides as much as they do at any school (charters included). It's also a given that academic achievement is a criteria to get into and stay in a city-wide school. The problem is when the two start to merge. For example a behavior problem of refusing to do homework becomes an academic problem because homework is part of your grade. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's essential for city-wides to be able transfer a student for academic issues, or the meaning and value of a city-wide diploma will be greatly diminished.

Simon, You are so correct! I, too have been at a a few different kinds of schools, in and out of Baltimore. In the end, we are talking about children! Most of the kids who are such a problem have had horrific problems as young children. They are not born bad. We all need to do our best to deal with every student as an individual! I think most of the folks who post here are already going many extra miles on behalf of kids. We just need to keep pushing. For every "horror" story in BCPS involving kids, I could tell you a "happily ever after" story.

@ Simon and Bill:

Let's be honest, how many high achieving, poorly behaving students are there? The answer is not too many. The vast majority or poorly behaving students do not achieve at a high level. How can you be a high achieving student if you're in the hallway fighting, doing drugs, gambling, having sex, etc. when you should be in class? Let's leave out those serious offenses. How can you be a high achieving student if you're disrupting class when you should be listening, taking notes, participating, or doing classwork?

I'm talking about the kids that prove time and time again that they do not have what it takes, academically and/or behaviorally, to make it in a city-wide school. These students need to be removed from that setting for the benefit of the hundreds of other students that do have what it takes.

This policy of keeping the low achieving and/or poorly behaving students in city-wide schools is exactly the reason why we need to take a look back at Liz Bowie's article titled Gaps persist on Advanced Placement in Md. Read the following excerpt:

Even among some of the best schools in the Baltimore region - and from one high school to the next within the same counties - students have widely different course offerings and results. For example, 46 percent of the graduates last spring at Broadneck High School in Annapolis had passed at least one AP test compared with less than half that percentage at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. In Baltimore County, nearly 48 percent of the seniors at Towson High School had passed an Advanced Placement exam compared with less than 5 percent at New Town High School.

Towson High School is a zone school with a very small magnet program while Poly gets the best kids in the entire city of Baltimore yet Poly has less than half the percentage of seniors passing at least one AP exam. A huge part of the reason why this happens is because there are kids at Poly that simply can't hack it for one reason or another and they drag everyone else down with them. Those kids need to be removed. You two need to stop living in a fantasy world where every kid has what it takes to go to Harvard. There are good students, mediocre students, and bad students. Let's, for once, do something for the good students.

AMT: First, I take issue with your reasoning: You're not comparing equal things when you compare Poly with Towson, especially if you want to support the argument that kids should be kicked out of city-wide schools. We don't know anything about Towson's "small magnet program." Maybe they don't kick kids out either, but they do a better job of keeping them from getting out of line? Maybe their standards are higher for admission? Maybe they have a higher quality of students to pull from initially? Maybe they have small class sizes? The point is, there are MANY variable at play there, and you can't just point to one issue and say "this is the cause."

I also disagree with you philosophically. I completely agree that there are VERY few students who are behavior problems who are successful. Your response is kick them out and let someone else (the zone schools) deal with them. My response is stop their behavior problems so that they can be successful. This is no easy task, as any teacher/administrator/parent will tell you, but it's absolutely a fight worth fighting. You ask the question, "how many high achieving, poorly behaving students are there?" I ask you a very similar question, "how many poorly behaving students have the POTENTIAL to be high achieving?" Ask any zone school teacher and they'll tell you: thousands.

While I might be, I'm pretty sure Simon doesn't live in a fantasy world. In fact, I'm pretty sure he teaches everyday at one of the schools you're talking about.

What's good? What's mediocre? What's bad? What if a student is great in one class because the teacher has connected with the student while the student is a disaster in another teacher's class? Is that student good or bad? Do we defer to bad to always protect the "good"? What if I said that a senior who was doing exceptional work had two felony charges - but the felonies were committed when he was 14? Is that a good or bad student? We just don't have clear enough standards across the City to readily define a kid as "good" or "bad" if the consequences are as stark as you propose. I definitely understand your frustration, though, and of course I think kids have varying levels of ability (behavior-wise and academics-wise). It's just the response to those differences where I think we disagree.

Often, the most challenged teachers citywide believe that they just have bad kids, it's not a personal problem it's the kids' problems. But when those same kids go into a different classroom, like a miracle, they're on-task and working. I'm just not willing to give up on kids (and if we're being honest, just sending the kid to another school without a clear plan is really just saying, "Put them somewhere just so long as they're not here"), especially the ones who have demonstrated that they have the mental capacity to excel at a citywide. This is just the basis of my opinion and in no way suggests anyone is necessarily giving up on kids otherwise.

At the risk of repeating myself, a diploma from Poly, City, Western needs to mean something special academically. If a student can not perform academically after help from an IEP, BIP, 503, teacher coach classes...whatever, they can't be allowed to get a diploma or the reputation of these schools will be diminished. I'm saying that not because of the working conditions of the teachers, but because Baltimore needs to have options for kids who want to got to JHU or MIT. Otherwise all the arguments I have against the economic elitism of private schools will be pointless. If the city-wides can't be academically elite there is no hope for keeping anyone who has hopes for their kids and has options in the City Schools.

Simon and Bill,

I must say that I have never thought that some teachers could think in such bizarre ways.

Being a teacher in those citywide schools and also a teacher who has taught in zoned schools for many years, I got to say that I have seen many teachers suffer with the mindset that you are advocating. I have been in a school where you can use tools of behavior modifications, tricks and tactics to rein these students but many of the same students refuse to listen.
The students are defiant because they are defiant. We have allowed our school systems for too long to be destroyed by five year improvements that work for one year. We have too many people that have been far from classroom for so long, they do not understand the problems that arise in our schools. I think that we need to deal with the problems seriously and stop placing blame on teachers. We try really hard to deal with these students along with coping with the ineffectiveness of some administrators, the inconsistency of school rules and policies, and the fear of reprisal from administrators for doing what is right.

Now speaking as a graduate of a citywide school and teacher of a citywide school, I think that the quality of some students are not on par for this schools. I know that you believe that once they have been accepted these schools, the students should not be removed. I personally know students who do not attend regularly and are still allowed to be at my school.

Do you think that is right?

When you were accepted to a citywide school, you knew that you were picked from many of the city's best and brightest. You also knew that if you do not keep your grades in good standing or your behavior in check, you would go back to your zoned school. Zoned schools were not bad schools though, but were not as challenging in their studies and did not provide as many opportunities to be more successful as citywide schools. I really believed that attending a citywide school was a privilege not a right that was valued because there was a consequence for not maintaining. I think that in this era of self-entitlement students do not understand the importance of maintaining good grades and behavior to stay in these schools.

Do you not think it is unfair to deny other students the opportunity to take the spot of the student who obviously does not want to be there?

I do believe that we teachers should take needs of the students seriously and help them when they have lost their way, but when will we hold the students and parents responsible for the bad behavior and terrible grades that is being exhibited in citywide schools.

Would you not agree that some consequences should be enforced for these students?

Another parent totally with a parent. Elite needs to mean elite. Standards need to mean standards. There are some places were we hold up the highest standards. Here is what they are. It's very clear. No exceptions. No pandering or dicking around. You cut it or you don't. Sorry for all the troubled tykes who had a hard upbringing and feel the need to start fires or whatever, but that's life, folks. Clear rules, clear boundaries, clear counsequences. Nothing fuzzy about it. BCPSS needs to get back to this. Children, as well as staff, must be held accountable. If they don't learn it now, they will most definately learn it later. (Unless, of course, Dr A sets up his own private scholarship fund for wayward young adults and teens.)

All decisions made by BCPSS should always be made with kids' best interest in mind.

What I always think is missing from the reassignment conversation is that, sometimes, reassignment is the best thing for the student. If a student is constantly failing at a citywide school, or is constantly a behavior problem, or both, than that school isn't meeting the needs of the student. Sometimes, kids need a fresh start. Sometimes, they just need to go to a school that better fits their needs. I have seen it happen many times. Keeping them around when behavior modifications are not working is just doing them and the rest of the students a disservice.

I'm not advocating a return to the sweeping former policy of re-assigning all students who fail to average a 70 or who fail three or more classes. However, that was a clear policy, which is something the system now lacks. During that time, I saw many kids go to their zone school for a year, work their butt off, and return to the citywide school from which they were reassigned, and be successful. Or, they simply were much more successful at their zone schools, which better fit their needs than the citywide. Not having a clear policy now is harmful to those students, and helps to defeat the purpose of attending an elite magnet school.

Never once in high school, college, or my professional life have I been allowed to use my troubled past as an excuse to not succeed or do my job.

Just because students are from Baltimore doesn't give them a free pass to suffer more greatly than any other teenager in this country. Missing parent, foster care, deaths in the family... these are all horrible things to happen to a child. They shouldn't be used as an excuse to do less, however, and when we make that the case we have depreciated the child to a Lifetime movie character deserving of Rosie O'Donnell's attention.

I agree with Bmoreteach. I teach at a zone school and we receive a good number of students who were reassigned from citywide schools. These students seem to thrive in the new environment, and often become academic leaders within the school. It's not as if citywide schools are the only schools in Baltimore offering challenging classes. Tell that to my AP Stats class. A third of that class are former citywide students. They told me that the test they took today was the hardest test they've ever taken.

A lot to respond to here...

First off, let me be clear: I'm NOT for lowering standards. If anything, I'm for creating them in the first place. I think that what we can all agree on is that there is a definite lack of a clear and consistent set of rules and consequences that are uniformly enforced across the system. That's not just when it comes to kicking kids out of school; I'm sure that every stakeholder reading this right now is thinking of 200 examples of unclear and unenforced standards (see: the cell phone discussion a few days ago). I'm also not saying that no one should ever be kicked out of a city-wide school. City-wide schools should have ambitious and challenging curricula and should take some chances on pushing some kids into these programs, and sometimes the academic rigors will be too much. The rigor of a city-wide school almost by definition should be higher than most students can reasonably reach and for a very few number of students, the best choice for them is to return to a zone school. But that's a decision that should be made in conjunction with the student, parents, teachers and administration, not necessarily a decree handed down from on high.

However - and this a big however - no student should be sent packing without SIGNIFICANT attempts to REFORM their behavior or academic problems. We can't just skip from "you failed a class" or "you skipped school once" to "you're kicked out of school." Mitch, I don't think that "I'm going to do whatever I can to help my students succeed" is necessarily a "bizarre" mindset to "suffer" from. I'm sure that as a teacher, you would never let your students give up on material as quickly as some people out there at our city-wide schools are looking to give up on some students.

This isn't about making excuses. This is about understanding what the problems are and working to fix them. It's about setting up a system that gives students the structure they need to be successful and ALSO provides a pathway for rehabilitation when students stray. Like so many things, there's a middle ground here to be explored. City-wide schools have a responsibility to do everything they can to prevent kids from dropping out (and being kicked out). Maybe that means tutoring programs. Maybe that means mentoring programs. Maybe that means behavior contracts or incentives or working with parents to take privileges away...most likely it will be different strategies for different students. All I'm saying is that schools - ALL schools - need to make every effort to find what works for their students without resorting to such a permanent and final punishment as expulsion.

I keep on returning to this quote from BmoreTeach - "I'm not advocating a return to the sweeping former policy of re-assigning all students who fail to average a 70 or who fail three or more classes". Why is this such a bad rule? Maybe there should be a proviso of some number of consecutive quarters or semesters. A requirement for the school to establish an improvement plan after some number of quarters with manditory participation and meeting commitments on the part of the student and staff. Maybe a waiver if there has been a trend of significant improvement after following the improvment plan. A set of rules that is clear and is followed is helpful for everybody concerned.

I work in a middle school. Today was a very emotional day because all of the 8th graders came back to school with their high school assignments.
"I got City!" and "I got Poly!" could be heard yelled down the hallway.
All I know is, I remember teaching those students last year, and when they came running back to me today, I felt such relief that those kids who have put up with SO MUCH crap from our chaotic, unorganized mess of a middle school FINALLY get to go somewhere where learning is appreciated and standards are uniformly high. If I find out that next year, they are still dealing with the same problems, I will be incredibly upset. In a city that is so messed up educationally, there should be a place for kids who want to learn.

That doesn't mean that we don't have an obligation to try our hardest to help those that don't want to learn. But there aren't 1 or 2 high schools in Baltimore, there are MANY. I have no clue what the exact number is, but I know that little pamphlet the 8th graders get is huge. SO, it's not like there's Poly and then City and then everywhere else is a cesspool, that's insulting. You aren't banishing these kids to ends of the earth.

And believe me, it's not like 16 year olds wake up one day and decide to become behavior problems. I'm sure they've been pulled up, counseled, and assisted throughout middle school and maybe elementary school too. Eventually they have to have consequences for their actions. Real ones.

I think we can all agree that giving 50 Mervo teachers PIPs is NOT a solution to the school's problems. Even if all 50 of those teachers deserved to be PIPed, there is a specific protocol that should have been followed before the PIPs were given. The principal at Mervo did not follow this protocol so the PIPs should be withdrawn. Somebody has some explaining to do, whether it's Mervo's principal or somebody from North Ave.

By the way, it takes a sick individual to PIP a teacher that was hit by a car, has cancer, had back surgery, or had bleeding cysts removed from her uterus.

I am going out on a politically incorrect limb here but . . . What we really need is to understand that not every child needs or should go to college. Part of the overarching problem that has been created in the city schools is when the decision was made that we should make all students "college ready." While I realize that what this was intended to do was raise the bar for standards, what it did was to make it appear that every student, regardless of ability, was able to attend college. That is not true and is an insult to those students who are able to go to college. We should be preparing our students to be functioning members of the real world--be on time to work, do your job well, and be responsible for your actions. That is not what we are teaching. Rather we are teaching that, if you show up, you will pass and you will be successful. In other words, the world owes you a living and a place in it. Nothing could be further from the truth and we have done students a disservice for years by teaching them this. Tracking diplomas and allowing students to pursue "real world" alternatives to education instead of learning calculus and foreign language will do far more to improve the behavior of disinterested students than moving them from school to school trying to find a better fit.

@VT: I agree with the majority of what you're saying, my only gripe would be replacing calculus or (especially) foreign language for the internship... Why can't they do both?

As an English teacher I'm constantly asked why it is important to learn Shakespeare, Poetry, Grammar and so on. I prefer to answer honestly, that is to say a person can live their life without reading any works of Shakespeare. What the student has learned is that when confronted with something difficult it takes perseverance and discipline to conquer the task... and 9/10 of my students have read R&J and Midsummer's with great success. Lets not replace knowledge with experience, lets combine both.

Then those students who aren't college bound are disciplined enough to face the world, AND well rounded (and read) enough to start chipping away at the ignorance in their communities.

@VT: I understand your concern, but I think we really need to focus on the value of a college education. In our ever more sophisticated economy, one causal indicator affects moving from poverty to middle class or middle class to wealth more than any other: level of education attained. See this report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Documents/College-ready-education-plan-brochure.pdf. I know it's tempting to think that some students may be better equipped for other types of careers non-college related. However, most careers these days require higher levels of knowledge to attain a sustainable living wage.

In years gone by, students with a high school degree alone could earn living wages without higher education - factory/manufacturing jobs, auto mechanics, construction jobs, business entrepreneurship, etc. But now these jobs either no longer exist (see the closing of manufacturing plants across the country, particularly in Baltimore) or are so technical that higher degrees are required (like mechanics jobs where you need computer science degrees to qualify). If we truly believe that all children have a right to an equal education, as it says in our Maryland Constitution, then we have to be willing to set the minimum bar at a place that realistically takes into account the current economy. Just my two cents.

Bill-
I agree with most of what you say (Never all :)). We all know that a college degree, in the 21st century, is a baseline necessity. It is also known that the link between education and social/financial mobility is well-established.

I take issue with your link of college preparatory skill-building and equality of educational opportunity. Equality of opportunity does not always equal college degree. Yes, it is a global reality, but knowing how to best to accommodate the complex interests/needs/wants of our students dictates that we offer many programs outside of (or in addition to) college-prep material.

If we were to frame the argument around of equality of opportunity, I think we are doing a greater disservice to children who need vocational and technical opportunities by placing them in classes that are much less applied and work-based than theoretical/academic in nature.

I remember earlier this year Dr. Alonso did a presentation on the percentage of students who were accepted into college out of our schools and correlating data on what percentage of those graduated within five years. I do not have the link off hand, but the number was dishearteningly low.

So the question then becomes, "If we myopically focus on college-prep curricula because that is the standard of 'equality', and numbers bear out that many (if not most. I know Bill is a numbers guy and since I dont have the PPT in front of me, I stick with many) of our students are not meeting with success with that barometer, are we not setting them back further in the name of equality and shooting ourselves (and wasting resources) in the process?"

As an aside, I went to trade school out of high school (only 13 years ago), was very engaged and successful without a college degree for 7 years before returning to school. I chose to go back to college to become a teacher (?)It can be a successful route-even more so for our students.

Just my two and half cents.

Number of Mervo teachers believe mission of “help” sent by high school director (former city wide principal with questionable experience) is to keep the lid on the place for the sake of publicity till June and target teachers who complain for PIPs to deflect from failure to get rid of administration last year. Guess Mervo is too big or political to be closed, or it would be gone like the other schools that did not get any support from him or pal from student guidance support department (Code of Conduct supports student disruption) makes visits to target more teachers and more lip service. Teachers sent packing from another school say Mervo is still better shape cause they didn’t get the loud crude drama queen who cut down everyone in sight and bragged how she was sent to clean up the mess. (NOT) Throws her connections “to the top” around barking non sense orders implying threats of job loss.