No Child Left Behind leaves it to the states to define what it means to be a "persistently dangerous" school. In Maryland in general and Baltimore in particular (where all of Maryland's persistently dangerous schools are located), people complain a lot that the state makes it easier than most for a school to earn the dubious label. There are several downsides to that: Schools have an incentive not to suspend students for violent offenses (here, it's the suspension numbers that count against you). If violent schools do report their numbers accurately, they are rewarded with public humiliation.
In this case, though, it paid to be persistently dangerous. While many schools could use a grant for mentoring and internships, only persistently dangerous schools were eligible to apply.
]]>I've also been enjoying the new parent blog Surviving the System lately. And I was sorry for the student blog News From Room 123 to end this spring when the student authors graduated.
If anybody has any other education blogs, local or national, to recommend as we update our blogroll this summer, drop me a line.
]]>KIPP administers the Stanford 9 standardized test to students as they enter fifth grade. In 2003, the incoming fifth-graders scored at the 30th percentile in reading, the 38th percentile in math and the 32nd percentile in language. In 2007, when the incoming fifth-grade class was tested, those scores had declined to the 16th percentile in reading, the 19th percentile in math and the 15th percentile in language. Every year, the students have come less prepared than the class before.
I asked Jason Botel, executive director of KIPP Baltimore, why he thinks that is. He doesn't know for sure, but he has two theories. One is that elementary schools are spending so much time and emphasis preparing students for the Maryland School Assessments that they aren't teaching them other basic skills that would be measured on a test like the Stanford 9. A second theory is that parents of needier students are choosing to send their kids to a charter school because the traditional public schools aren't working for them.
In any case, KIPP believes it needs to get students younger so there's less ground to make up when they arrive in middle school.
]]>A 12-year-old seventh-grader in the Chicago public school system has won a Dodge Caliber for good attendance, four years before she's old enough to drive. (In the meantime, her parents are excited to use it.) Chicago students who had perfect attendance for any one of three three-month periods were eligible to win the car, which was donated to the school system, according to the Chicago Tribune. The girl, Ashley Martinez, won from a pool of 189,115 students eligible.
In the past, according to the Tribune article, the Chicago schools have offered attendance awards including "vacations to Wisconsin resorts, laptops, iPods and even paying a family's rent or mortgage for a month."
]]>Kate Walsh, president of the council, said in a statement: "As a nation, our dislike and discomfort with math is so endemic that we do not even find it troubling when elementary teachers admit to their own weakness in basic mathematics. Not only are our education schools not tackling these weaknesses, they accommodate them with low expectations and insufficient content."
But there's good news for Maryland: The University of Maryland at College Park is among the 10 schools where the council determined the math preparation was adequate. Towson University is one of five that the report said would pass muster with improved focus and textbooks. That's better than the 37 schools, among them American University, that were found to fail on all measures. Some schools, including Hampton University and University of Richmond, don't require prospective elementary teachers to take any math classes at all.
Think you're qualified to teach elementary school math? See how you do on this test that the council says all elementary math teachers should be able to pass.
UPDATE, 6/30: See the comments for a rebuttal from the dean of Amerian University's education school, who says the report was not compiled responsibly.
]]>The Baltimore Truancy Assessment Center, designed to provide social services to truant kids and their families to get the kids back in school, has been the subject of much political bickering and restructuring since its founding in 2003. Originally, truancy officers who picked up students on the street during the school day dropped them off at the center in East Baltimore. Then, to target assistance to the worst offenders, officers instead began making house calls to students who had been out of school for prolonged periods. The building where the center operates had no heat and other basic necessities this year, and the executive director got fed up and retired a few months ago. The money that was used to run BTAC will instead be used toward the system's new alternative schools and programs, which serve truant kids.
Meanwhile, the fate of another program -- Blum Mentoring -- remains up in the air. Established nine years ago, the Blum program grew over time to 40 full-time mentors, who were placed in schools with a high percentage of new teachers. Under the reorganization, mentoring will still be required in schools where 20 percent or more of the teachers have three years of experience or less. But principals will be in charge of hiring the mentors, and many are saying they don't have the money in their budgets. Assuming North Avenue follows through and mandates their hiring, the question is whether the mentors will report to the principals or to a central mentorship coordinator. That's an important distinction. As one of the mentors wrote in an e-mail to me: "One of the strengths of our program was that, because we were not under the principal's control, we were able to maintain a confidential relationship with our mentees.... In addition, principals could not pull us to be substitute teachers, cafeteria monitors or test coordinators, thus taking us away from our main focus -- new teachers." There's talk that a grant might pay for a person to oversee the mentors centrally so the Blum program can continue. For now, the mentors don't know what their role will be when school resumes Aug. 25.
Keep reading to see a profile I wrote of the Baltimore Truancy Assessment Center last year.
]]> The Baltimore SunFebruary 18, 2007 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
TRACKING DOWN TRUANTS;
CASES OF HOMELESS, STARVING KIDS HINT AT LARGER ISSUES
BYLINE: Sara Neufeld, Sun reporter
SECTION: TELEGRAPH; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1733 words
About 10:30 a.m. on a school day, three teenage boys in black hats, hooded sweatshirts and puffy coats are standing on a corner known for drug-dealing. Down the block, an eviction is under way, with men throwing mattresses out an upstairs window.
The blue van pulls up to one of the few rowhouses on this West Baltimore street that isn't boarded up. Charles Washington, 69, slides out of the back seat, knocks on the door and introduces himself: a truancy officer from the city public schools.
He is looking for a 12-year-old girl who has missed 31 days of classes at William H. Lemmel Middle, but she doesn't live there anymore. The man at the door says his family took in the girl as an abandoned infant, but last summer her mother came back for her. Now, he believes she's "running wild."
"They love her like it was their own child," Washington says as he reports back to the van's driver, fellow truancy officer Walter Barnes III, 55. "They want the child back."
The men work for the Baltimore Truancy Assessment Center, a division of the city school police department and the only program of its kind in Maryland. The center works to track down chronic truants in a school system where an estimated 4,500 students - more than 5 percent of the total enrolled - are absent each day without a valid excuse.
Truancy, a problem often seen as the precursor to crime and other social ills, has gained attention in recent weeks as the state's new first lady, Baltimore District Judge Catherine Curran O'Malley, made it her signature cause. She has not proposed any specific action, but she says she wants to draw attention to the issue.
The attention couldn't come at a better time for the truancy center, which costs $1.1 million a year to operate and is trying to secure funding for a second location. City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr., one of the center's founders, plans to introduce a resolution later this month asking for Mayor Sheila Dixon's support.
Every weekday, Washington and Barnes ride through the city's most economically depressed and drug-infested neighborhoods trying to locate chronic truants, students between the ages of 5 and 15 who've had 20 or more unexcused absences. After students turn 16, they are free to drop out of school.
Both retired city police officers, they seek to provide whatever help is needed to get truant kids back in school. They link families with the center's in-house service providers, including counselors from the state departments of social and juvenile services and the city housing department. They also inform parents that they can face jail time for their children's prolonged absences.
The truancy center is made possible by a city curfew law prohibiting students from being on the streets between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. on school days. Officials from other school systems have visited, expressing interest in starting something similar.
Joe Sacco, the center's executive director, says unexcused absences have dropped since his program started in 2003, when the daily figure was between 6,000 and 7,000. But no other Maryland system except Prince George's County has a problem comparable to the city's.
Nationally, Sacco says, about 3.2 million students are absent from school each day. Communities use a variety of strategies to combat truancy, from denying driver's licenses for bad attendance to offering cars for good attendance. In Norwalk, Conn., families can be evicted from public housing if their children are truant.
Two Baltimore initiatives, the truancy center and a truancy court run by the University of Baltimore, focus on the problems leading to chronic absenteeism.
With a staff of 18, the center operates out of a former day care and administrative building for Sojourner-Douglass College in East Baltimore. When it first opened, kids swept off the street during the school day were transported there for a service assessment while they waited for their parents to pick them up.
But the need was overwhelming and the center was crowded, with kids waiting for hours and those from rival gangs sometimes trying to fight each other. So officials tried a new approach this year.
Now, city police officers take the kids they round up on the street - 2,604 between October and December - back to school. They forward the students' names to the truancy center, which pulls their attendance records. Then Sacco's eight truancy officers make house calls for the worst cases.
They find students who are homeless, students who are home baby-sitting younger siblings, students who are on the corners selling drugs, sometimes under orders from a parent.
Once, they found a 12-year-old girl in a bathrobe, prostituting herself to get by. Another time, they found a filthy 7-year-old boy starving and abandoned by his mother.
Barnes, who also served as a state trooper, has a quiet, gentle demeanor. He works three jobs: a truancy officer by day, a Johns Hopkins campus guard by night, and a Pentecostal church pastor on Sundays.
Washington, a witty and talkative Air Force veteran who writes novels and poetry, tries to keep Barnes laughing amid the despair they witness. But he struggles to contain his outrage.
Heading north to the Park Heights neighborhood, they pull up to another set of rowhouses. Made of brick and stone, these are all occupied, with porches and grass in front. Washington walks through a chain-link gate, past swan-shaped plant holders and a wilting poinsettia.
Inside, he finds a man sitting in a cramped living room, watching the evangelist Benny Hinn preach on television.
His name is Ernest Young, grandfather of a Northwestern High freshman who has missed 23 days. He and his wife have been caring for the boy and his twin sister since at least 2003, when their daughter - the children's mother - went to prison. She was released last fall, but she wouldn't take them back.
Young says he has lost control of the household. The twins come and go as they please. He doesn't know if they are in school.
"I don't really know what to tell you," Young tells Washington. "I'm too old to be fooling with hard-headed kids."
Washington asks Young several questions, trying to determine who's legally responsible for the twins. He explains that the responsible person can face fines and up to 30 days in jail.
He gives Young the name of a social worker who will contact him about his grandson.
"I'll see if we can help you with this," he says.
"I hope you can help me and get him out of here," Young replies.
At the next house, a wooden canopy over the doorway is collapsing. It's the home of a Garrison Middle sixth-grader, recorded absent 31 times. The boy's mother tells Washington he's probably on the corner selling drugs.
"He ain't in school - he won't go to school," Washington reports back to Barnes in the van. He says he feels grateful that his three kids are grown.
"You know what people don't understand?" Washington asks. "If jail is a step up from where you live, how can it be a deterrent? Jail is a step up for these people. You're there with your homies, three meals a day."
He sighs.
"It's depressing. That's all I can say."
A week later, Washington and Barnes are back in Park Heights. Washington is talking about how a lot of parents have been surprised lately to learn that their kids aren't in school, how administrators aren't always sending home letters and calling as they're supposed to.
When a child has three unexcused absences, someone from the school is supposed to send a letter or call home. At five absences, there's supposed to be a parent conference. After 10, legal action can be taken.
But that follow-through varies by school. The city schools' central attendance office was dismantled during a budget crisis in 2003, a few months after the truancy center opened. The office reopened this school year with a director but no employees.
The director, Tina Spears, says plans are in the works for her to hire three staff members, plus a truancy and attendance monitor at all city middle schools, which have the highest truancy rates.
The school system has an incentive to address the issue: the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which monitors attendance, in addition to test scores. Schools could face sanctions for failure to meet standards.
For Washington and Barnes, the first case of the new day is a 13-year-old boy, address unknown. He has missed 47 days of school, but the file doesn't say where. Washington knocks on one door, but the man who answers says it's the wrong house.
A mile away, Washington tries again, at a rowhouse with some windows boarded, others covered in plastic. A mattress, a box spring and garbage fill the porch, and dozens of bikes are piled on the ground. "Looks like a lot of stolen bikes to me," Washington says.
The woman who answers first says she doesn't know the boy. Moments later, she changes the story, saying she's his aunt and can get a letter to him. She says he used to live there, but moved. Washington doesn't buy it.
"I think it is the mother, so she got the riot act read to her," he tells Barnes as he gets back in the van, stepping over a muddy brown boot in the middle of the street. "She don't care. Human nature's not a pretty thing."
The van passes through the streets where Washington used to patrol as a city police officer. He marvels at the number of people outside doing nothing in the middle of the day.
No one answers at the next house, which has visible cracks between the bricks and cages over the windows. It stands next to an alley strewn with soda cans, empty bags of chips, plastic bags and burger wrappers. Two pit bulls roam amid the trash and growl.
"Can you imagine people living like this?" Barnes asks.
"Tell me that jail is a deterrent to that, somebody," Washington says. "I'd put in an application to go to jail if I lived here. The whole thing should be condemned."
"The whole block," Barnes replies.
They visit the home of a Garrison Middle seventh-grader who has missed 26 days. "Mother and father live there and they can't do nothing with him," Washington says. "What do you do when both the parents can't do nothing with a 13-year-old? Jesus, Lord."
Another house is filled with roaches. At the last stop of the day, the girl has been shut out of school because she's not up to date on her immunizations.
"You can see what we went through today," Washington says on the ride back to the truancy center. "We've got some real problems."
GRAPHIC: Photo(s)
1. Truancy officer Charles Washington walks through Park Heights as he tries to find the home of a child who has missed a number of days this school year. 2. A Park Heights resident answers the door as truancy officer Charles Washington (left) tries to find a student who has missed school. Guardians of truant children can face fines and jail time. 3. Truancy officer Charles Washington (right) explains to Ernest Young the possible consequences of his grandson's absences in school. Young said his grandson was beyond his control.
Photos by Glenn Fawcett : Sun photographer
Copyright 2007 The Baltimore Sun Company
All Rights Reserved
In Maryland, the report found that the percentage of students passing the standardized tests grew at a "moderate to large rate" in reading and math in nearly every grade level analyzed. The exception was high school math, where -- the report says -- too few years of data were available to determine a trend.
The gap between the performance of Maryland's African-American and white students narrowed in every grade analyzed in reading. In math, that gap narrowed in elementary school but widened in middle school.
A variety of interest groups quickly issued statements reacting to the study's findings. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, criticized the study for not taking into account the results of the international tests known as PISA and PIRLS, which show the performance of American students declining in every grade and subject since the passage of No Child Left Behind. Meanwhile, the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, said the study was proof that American educators are making an impact in spite of NCLB.
]]>In two hours, the documentary covers virtually every challenge facing an urban school. The boy repeating ninth grade who refused to go to his remedial reading class. The statistics on how many ninth-graders need remedial reading -- all but three or four of more than 300 tested, and most come in at a third-, fourth- or fifth-grade level. The virtually empty classrooms on back-to-school night. The tardiness, the hall wandering and truancy (200-300 absent daily in a school of 1,100). The girl who just had a baby and was feeling overwhelmed to be back at school. The frustrated, overwhelmed teacher who quit in the middle of the year. The fights. The fact that only half of the school's 500 freshmen would return for sophomore year. The fact that 66 percent of the school's teachers were not certified. The boy who told his teacher to pass him for doing "nothin'." The dismal SAT scores (one student scored a 440 out of 1,600, and you get 200 points for writing your name; only one student in the school scored above 1,000). The students who sat for the High School Assessments but didn't write anything (this was before the tests counted for graduation, but they still counted for a school's AYP). The pressure at the end of the year for teachers to pass failing seniors: Within a few days, the school went from having 138 eligible graduates to 200. The triumph of graduation for students from unspeakably awful home lives: One boy didn't need any graduation tickets because he didn't have anyone to come.
The film also touches on the triumphs of the school, though there are fewer. It takes you inside the classroom of an excellent teacher. It features the school's award-winning music program. It follows a student on the debate team who's determined to make something of his life.
Of all the schools in America to feature in a film like this, Frederick Douglass was a symbolic choice. It is the alma mater of Thurgood Marshall, and more than a half-century after Marshall won the Brown vs. Board of Ed case, Douglass is still a school that's separate and unequal. No Child Left Behind provides the backdrop for "Hard Times," but the film could just as easily stand as a profile of the school without that context. Coincidentally (or not), after filming was completed -- the documentary was shot during the 2004-2005 school year -- Douglass became one of 11 Baltimore schools that the state tried to take over as a result of repeated years of failure on standardized tests. It was the first time a state attempted such drastic action under NCLB. The move was blocked by the General Assembly, and the school system restructured Douglass on its own, replacing the administration and implementing the Talent Development school model. I was surprised, though, that the film made it sound as though Isabelle Grant, the principal during the year the documentary was shot, was the one who was replaced. Grant was forced to resign during the 2005-2006 school year in connection with an academically ineligible student being allowed to play football and the school football team having to forfeit its first winning season since 1998. Students who looked to her like a mother were heartbroken when she left. The principal who replaced her was the one to be removed when the school was restructured.
Oscar-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond clearly spent a lot of time at the school to get students comfortable being around them and the camera. None of the scenes seemed like it would have played out any differently if the subjects weren't being videotaped. In an article in The Sun on Sunday, the Raymonds said the students were initially afraid the film would make them look dumb, and they had to spend time focusing on their successes as a result. But the overall picture is pretty bleak. I'd be interested to know (if anyone associated with Douglass is reading) the school's reaction to "Hard Times."
]]>"Produced and directed by Oscar-winners Alan and Susan Raymond, Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card reveals troubles and triumphs in the classrooms, hallways and offices of Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, MD – from the celebrations of drum lines and debate teams to the worries of faculty who know that 50% of their freshman will not return for their sophomore year."
A clip from the documentary is here. The Sun's review is here, and a story about how the film was made is here.
I'll be tuning in tonight and will post thoughts on the documentary tomorrow. In the meantime, keep reading to see a story I wrote two years ago about the challenges Douglass faced during the 2005-2006 school year.
]]> THE BALTIMORE SUNDate: Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Section: LOCAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: 1B
Source: SUN REPORTER
Byline: SARA NEUFELD
Illustration: Photo(s)
Graph Source: 1. - 2. MONICA LOPOSSAY : SUN PHOTOGRAPHER
Caption: 1. Ebony Peacock (right), who just graduated from Frederick Douglass High School, makes a point about issues concerning the school at a meeting of the Student Concern Committee as Dannille Foster lis tens. Seven students formed the committee.
2. A student walks past signs on the Frederick Douglass High School building in West Baltimore. Alumni of Douglass include Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and entertainer Cab Calloway.
It's been a tough school year at Frederick Douglass High.
In the fall, the football team was forced to forfeit its first winning season since 1998 over allegations that an academically ineligible student was permitted to play.In the winter, the West Baltimore school became a political battleground after Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele visited and accused the city school system of shortchanging Douglass students.
In the spring, Douglass turned up on a list of 11 failing city schools that the state was targeting for outside takeovers. Then the principal was removed from her job. And some of the students decided enough was enough.
Seven of them formed a group they call the Student Concern Committee. They want the powers-that-be to know what they can do to really help their school, and why what they've been doing is not helpful.
Group members have gone on television and radio shows, met with administrators and spoken at a school board meeting to get their views across. They say they represent the views of students, as well as teachers who fear they'll put their jobs at risk if they speak out.
Douglass, the alma mater of such luminaries as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and entertainer Cab Calloway, has a proud and storied tradition in Baltimore's African-American community. But the school, with a student body that's still almost entirely black, has resources far inferior to those in the city's elite magnet high schools or in suburban schools.
"It feels like being in segregation," said Lewis Peterson III, 17, a Student Concern Committee member who is also trying to start his own newspaper. He plans to call it The Frederick Douglass Crisis.
Peterson, finishing his junior year, is one of the students who plan to keep the Student Concern Committee going next school year; three of the founding members were seniors who just graduated.
Students on the committee say the school needs more books, band instruments, science supplies and an oven that doesn't burn the cafeteria food, which, they add, is always pizza. A little variety in the menu would be nice, too.
Ebony Peacock, 17, one of the committee's graduating members, wishes that her senior English class had had enough books to go around, and that students could take books home. She had to share copies of Beowulf and The Merchant of Venice with two or three other classmates.
Junior Ignacio Evans, another Student Concern Committee founder, plays the tuba in Douglass' acclaimed marching band. But his instrument is so old he has to tape it together. Also, the biology teacher had to buy all her own lab materials this school year, including frogs and a gecko.
"We don't have a swim team because the pool is broken," Peterson said one recent afternoon, as the group gathered in the cafeteria.
"If we don't have books, how are we going to have a swim team?" asked Evans, 16, who competes in debate and wrestling and was recently part of a project to build a community garden.
The committee would also like some explanation about what happened with the football season and the principal.
Douglass' football team had won the city's Division II championship when an allegation emerged in November that it was using an academically ineligible player. Though nearly seven months have passed since the season forfeiture, students' wounds are still raw.
Graduated senior Edward Pullen, 17, the football team's scholar-athlete, said he's embarrassed to take a tape of himself playing to the coach at Towson University, where he plans to study computer science: "He'll say, `Ohhh. Douglass.' I wouldn't take no tape up there because it would just hurt. All that work I did. ... It feels like all that work went down the drain."
In April, while the students were away on spring break, Principal Isabelle Grant was removed from her job a day after she appeared at an appeals hearing about the season forfeiture. Officials have declined to comment on her dismissal.
At a school where many students have unstable home lives and look to teachers and administrators as surrogate parents, Grant's abrupt departure was a tough blow. Several dozen Douglass students protested outside school system headquarters one late April afternoon. Evans spoke at a school board meeting that night, saying the students wanted a chance to say goodbye.
"She helped me out when my mother left me," he said of Grant. "She extended her arm and was like, `Whatever you need, I'm there.' She pushed the papers so I could become a foster child, and now I am."
He said she believed in students who "come from broken homes or from areas where we're not supposed to succeed."
That brings the Student Concern Committee to another suggestion: The school should offer a pregnancy-prevention program. Peacock said some girls at Douglass want so badly to be loved that they try to get pregnant while still in high school.
"A lot of girls think their baby will love you," she said. "A child can grow up to hate you if you don't provide the right living conditions. Nobody tells them things like that."
Then there are the things the students say officials should stop doing, such as beating Douglass up for its low test scores and making promises they don't keep.
Until this year, the state required students to take - not to pass - four High School Assessments to graduate. At Douglass, students said they were told they needed only to sit for the exams, not do well on them. They said it's no wonder scores were so low: The pass rate on last year's algebra exam was 4.8 percent; in biology, 1.4 percent.
"What a lot of kids did was just bubble in answers and leave when they found out it doesn't count, until we found out it makes the actual school look bad," Peterson said.
The scores were the major reason Douglass was included on a list of 11 schools targeted by the State Department of Education in March for outside takeovers. The General Assembly passed emergency legislation imposing a one-year moratorium on the action.
Test scores were intensely criticized by Steele when he visited the school in February. The lieutenant governor threw his support behind a proposal for neighboring Coppin State University to manage the school and made a personal commitment to turn Douglass around.
"We were really excited because he really made it seem like he was gonna help our school," Peacock said. "We haven't heard anything since."
Bryon Johnston, a spokesman for Steele, said the lieutenant governor maintains his commitment, but "it's been a frustrating and disappointing process so far." He blamed the city school system for being too slow to act.
Ursula Battle, a spokeswoman for Coppin, said the university is still interested in a partnership with Douglass, but she does not know what that would entail.
Last week, city school system officials outlined their intent to overhaul Douglass in the fall of 2007, with next school year as a planning period. Johnston said that's too long to wait.
"To sentence these students to another year of inadequate education is totally unacceptable," he said. "This is a crisis, and it deserves to be treated as such."
Linda Chinnia, the system's chief academic officer, said it's impossible to start a new school - and that's effectively what will be happening at Douglass - in any less than a year. She pointed out that the state's plan for an outside takeover also would not have taken effect until the fall of 2007 to allow time for planning.
She also said she has trouble believing that Douglass doesn't have the books and other supplies it needs. "That's paid for centrally," she said, adding that the school needs only to let the central office know what it needs.
Peacock, who is headed for Wilberforce University in Ohio, said she hopes officials will be able to stop bickering over Douglass and recognize the contribution its students are trying to make to their community.
"We kinda feel neglected," she said. "We kinda feel used."
Sun reporter Lem Satterfield contributed to this article.
All content herein is © 2008 The Baltimore Sun and may not be republished without permission.
]]>Despite individual schedule changes, all county schools and offices will be open from the usual 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., five days a week.
The pilot program, which is voluntary, started this week and runs through Aug. 8, according to a memo from Superintendent Charles I. Ecker. Employees can either opt for working extended hours Monday-Thursday or Tuesday-Friday, a schedule that also accommodates three-day weekend getaways.
]]> ]]>The PTA council is one of the organizations allotted a five-minute slot during the public comment portion of each board meeting. In recent months, the president of the council, Eric White, has voiced opposition to a number of system projects. As I said in my story, he called into a local radio show recently to give Dr. Alonso a poor midterm progress report. (On the air, he was identified by host Marc Steiner as "Amos;" White said later that Steiner made a mistake. But he also didn't do anything to correct it.)
What's unclear is whether White is presenting the views of anyone other than himself when he speaks in public. The PTA council's charter requires him to speak for the organization.
One unlikely fight involves BoardDocs, the Web site where school board agendas and exhibits are posted. White is upset that the site was developed without parental input and is demanding a public forum on the issue. But before BoardDocs, it was like pulling teeth for the public to get any school board documents at all (as I know all too well from firsthand experience). Now the system is doing what every other district in the area does, posting the documents online.
Last week, White rallied against the system's new parent engagement initiative. Charging that the board was abdicating its own responsibility by contracting with a third party to engage parents, White demanded that board members on a parent and community subcommittee raise their hands. He also insisted that the time it took to get the BoardDocs site projected on a screen in the board room not be deducted from his five minutes for public comment, and he asked that the meeting minutes note that a system employee was “blocking my access” when the screen was changed to say his time was almost up. (He wanted to highlight the procurement item on the agenda.)
As White asked Alonso to respond to his progress report on the radio, he asked the board members to respond to his presentation at the board meeting.
"The bait that you've thrown out there is not gonna be taken," said the board chairman, Brian Morris.
"This is not bait," White replied. "This is information for the public. We don’t put out bait. We put out information."
The report also has some fascinating data about what teachers think about their high-achieving students. For instance, teachers say that their schools do not make high-achieving students a top priority. And that apparently happens much more frequently at urban schools where there are high numbers of students in poverty. So that means that if you a high-achieving, minority student in an urban school, you are much less likely to have a chance to be challenged than if you go to a suburban school. That may not be particularly surprising, but it documents what has been believed for years.
In addition, teachers told the researchers that they feel guilty about the fact that their most gifted students don't get challenged enough. "I feel like sometimes we are cheating them ... cheating them out of their own personal glory.... They could be so much more magnificent in their own right and happier, because I think they feel a level of frustration that they have to sit by while we are babysitting," said one teacher who was quoted in the report by researchers Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett.
Interesting, too, is that while most teachers say the low achievers are getting more attention than others, they also don't think that is right. About half of teachers reported they thought every student should get equal attention.
In the same study, about half of high school teachers surveyed said they believe the advanced-level classes at their school are truly rigorous and challenging. Another 40 percent said they are watered down.
Teachers also said that too often parents push their children into the advanced classes they are unprepared for or don't want to be in.
]]>1) There may be students going to school alonside administrators in 2008-2009, if the plans to put a new alternative middle school inside the central office materialize. But eventually (i.e., after another round of downsizing next year), Dr. Alonso wants to move the administration out of North Avenue entirely. The New York City school system did this in 2002 as both a symbolic and cost-saving move, abandoning the old board of education building in Brooklyn in favor of a beautiful office space in the restored Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan.
2) Reginald Lewis High, the school that got all the media attention when its art teacher was assaulted on cell phone camera, is getting a new principal. The job opening was just posted on the system's Web site.
]]>Click here for my article from last week about the school board's decision to nix the expansion plan at Loch Raven High School. And here for my article on County Executive James T. Smith Jr.'s response to the board's action.
]]>Joseph -- who remarks that even the doctors want to know his secret to long life -- offered this gem of wisdom: Keep busy.
"You have to continue using the brain and the body for the circulation of the blood," he said.
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