The much-ballyhooed back-to-school kickoff conference took place yesterday, but not before the administrators union called an emergency membership meeting Monday night to gauge its members' outrage over the fact that its president, Jimmy Gittings, was not being permitted to speak. Gittings and his supporters floated the idea of withholding applause for Dr. Alonso yesterday but ultimately did not. (Gittings says Alonso was "shrewd" by having students read poems before and after he spoke, since no one would want to withhold applause from children.) Alonso did acknowledge Gittings in the audience in his introductory remarks.

Anyway.

Alonso gave a nearly two-hour presentation with a treasure trove of data about the city schools. The presentation is scheduled to be posted by today on the system's Web site. One slide that I found astounding detailed what's happened to the class of 2009, the students who should be incoming seniors. Of 8,031 who started as freshmen in 2005, only 5,091 are still enrolled. Of that, 3,855 will be seniors, 689 are still juniors, 405 are still sophomores, and 142 are still freshmen.

Of the 3,855 seniors, 1,653 have passed all four High School Assessments (they'll be the first class that needs to pass or complete a project to graduate), 677 have earned a high enough combined score on the exam to graduate, 177 have passed three of the four tests, 288 have passed two, 394 have passed one, and 666 haven't passed any.  

As I report in my story today about the principal coaches, Alonso said at yesterday's event that he's found an extra $22 million to give to elementary and middle schools -- much of it Title 1 and Title 2 money that was distributed too late last year and therefore not spent. 

Now, just as things are getting interesting... I'll be off until Labor Day. I know, it's bad timing to miss the opening of school, but my colleagues will keep up the discussion while I'm gone.

See you in September.

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These are the 15 people who have been chosen "to facilitate and lead small learning communities of principals throughout the 2008-2009 school year," officials announced. They'll each receive a $5,000 stipend and an intern from New Leaders for New Schools in exchange for providing support to their colleagues.

Sean Conley, Morrell Park Elementary/Middle  
Carolyn Smith, Empowerment Academy
Matthew Riley, Cross Country Elementary/Middle  
Edward English, Northwood Elementary  
Wayne Law, Graceland Park/O'Donnell Heights Elementary/Middle   
Sandra Adams, Calvin Rodwell Elementary  
Angela Faltz, Abbottston Elementary
Yetty Goodwin, Garrett Heights Elementary
Delores Berry, W.E.B. DuBois High  
Karen Webber-Ndour, National Academy Foundation High   
Ivor Mitchell, Academy of College and Career Exploration 
Will McKenna, Afya Public Charter School (new school)   
Brian Eyer, Digital Harbor High  
Starletta Jackson, Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy 
Karen Lawrence, Heritage High 

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In reporting my story for today's paper, I learned that the city school system's budget reorganization has played out in some unpredictable ways.

1) Of the 310 central office employees whose positions were eliminated, all but 14 of them chose to stay in the school system (and six, still not placed, face the prospect of layoffs). I wonder how much the economy played a part in their reluctance to enter a lean job market now, and how many people will leave next year when their pay cuts go into effect.

2) Principals cut 500 school-based positions (initially; some have been restored) and increased money for programs. Over the spring, I heard a lot of concern from program operators who were being told by principals that they didn't have the money to keep them on. The concern at North Avenue was that principals were reluctant to cut positions occupied by their colleagues. But that didn't turn out to be the case. I predict we'll now hear accusations that principals cut the jobs of employees they don't like personally. Union seniority rules prevents this in some cases, but not all.

The class-size estimates are interesting but not surprising, given that we knew that high schools were getting more money and some small elementary schools were getting less. Keep reading to see the figures for elementary, K-8, middle and high schools.

Continue reading "Fallout from Baltimore's budget reorganization" »

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Dr. Alonso's executive assistant sent out two e-mails to staff on Friday regarding tomorrow's back-to-school professional development day for administrators. The first, sent at 12:41 p.m., said this:

Principals, assistant principals and central office staff are invited to attend the CEO’s Leadership School Year 2008-2009 Launch at Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center at Morgan State University on Tuesday, August 12, 2008. 

At 12:57 p.m., she resent the message. It said:

Principals, assistant principals and central office leadership (directors) are invited and required to attend the CEO’s Leadership School Year 2008-2009 Launch at Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center at Morgan State University on Tuesday, August 12, 2008.

Not being a director at the central office, Jimmy Gittings took that as a snub that he and 80 percent of the rest of North Avenue were not invited to the event. I just checked with Dr. Alonso. He said everyone from the central office is invited, but principals, assistant principals and central office directors are required to attend.

Gittings also accused Alonso of writing some of the negative comments posted about him on this blog last week. I clarified that most of those commenting had submitted their e-mail addresses along with their posts.

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As I report today, the Maryland PTA has revoked the charter of the Baltimore City Council of PTAs. Technically, the reasons for the action were the same reasons the group was made inactive in June: It failed to produce meeting minutes and budgets, and it was operating without a secretary or a treasurer as required. But officials at the statewide organization were clearly peeved that president Eric White and his sidekick, first vice president LaV'ernee Curley, were continuing to operate as though nothing has changed.

In light of the decision, I wonder whether Mayor Dixon will still take White's recommendations into account as she decides whom to appoint to the school board. White was a member of Dixon's panel to interview candidates.

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Jimmy Gittings and Marietta English both bashed the Alonso administration as they were interviewed last night on WEAA's "At Issue" show with George Collins. English, co-president of the Baltimore Teachers Union, described the city school system's new structure giving principals budgetary authority "a train wreck getting ready to happen." Both she and Gittings, the president of the administrators union, called for an elected school board, saying the current board is letting Dr. Alonso dismantle a structure that was leading to higher test scores.

As expected, Gittings railed about not being allowed to speak at next week's back-to-school event for administrators. While Alonso has said he had to shorten the speaker list to make the day one of meaningful professional development, Gittings contends that he was given short shrift because of his public criticism of Alonso and his budget restructuring.

Saying it "hurt me to my heart" when Alonso was named CEO instead of Charlene Cooper Boston, Gittings gave her and Bonnie Copeland credit for the recent increase in test scores. "I am not going to sit idly back and have someone else take the glory from these two ladies and their administration," he said.

Gittings was followed on the program by English, who said several teachers in the city still do not know which schools they'll be working at when classes resume Aug. 25. (This is because several principals eliminated positions at their schools as a result of the budget shortfall and reorganization. On the bright side, officials in the human resources department told me a few days ago, the system is poised to start the new year without the teaching vacancies it normally has.)

English acknowledged that no teachers will be out of a job (other than those who were terminated because they'd had conditional certification dating back to at least 2005). She also acknowledged that it will be a good thing if the system ends up having enough teachers to put two in some larger classrooms. (If there are surplus teachers, I've been told, some first-year teachers might be placed alongside veterans.) She praised Alonso's initiative to create more alternative schools but did not give him credit for it.

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One of the issues that Jimmy Gittings is furious over and plans to take up in his back-to-school radio address tonight: The city school system has hired three investigators to take anonymous complaints about BCPSS employees, and they seem to be targeting principals. "It's deplorable," the administrators union president told me. "You have vindictive people that are gonna send letters in."

Prince George's County schools also have a complaint unit, but Gittings said the administrators union there was involved in developing the structure for it. He said he was not notified of the investigators' hiring in Baltimore.

I asked Dr. Alonso about these "private eyes," and his explanation made the arrangement sound less clandestine than Gittings made it seem. During the budget reorganization, Alonso said, the system added five people (not three) to its legal department to investigate complaints of fraud anywhere in the system. Previously, when there was a complaint of fraud at a school, the area academic officers were in charge of investigating. That's no longer possible because the area offices were eliminated. More importantly, Alonso said a conflict of interest had been inherent in having the people who supervise schools investigating them, especially since, in some cases, the AAOs were implicated in complaints. When the complaint was about someone in the central office, the conflict of interest had the potential to be even worse.

Alonso acknowledged that most of the complaints coming in this summer have been about principals, since people whose jobs that principals eliminated from their budgets have an ax to grind. He predicted that, once the school year starts, the distribution will be more equal among all groups of employees.

Gittings and Alonso are in agreement that most complaints turn out to be unfounded. But Gittings disagrees vehemently with the way that Alonso has chosen to fulfill the school system's responsibility to check them out.

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Jim Campbell, the former state delegate and current city school board member, stopped by Linda Eberhart's office some months back and started up a conversation that led to the two of them making a bet.

Campbell had been looking at the 2007 test scores for Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School, and the math results in the middle grades were dismal: Just 13 percent of seventh-graders had passed their exam, and no one passed in eighth grade. That's right; the failure rate was 100 percent.

The board member asked the system's new director of mathematics what could be done. Eberhart, a former state teacher of the year, said she could get the pass rate for both grades above 50 percent. Campbell said no way, especially because the school's seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher was in his first year of teaching. They made a bet, with a dinner as their wager.

Eberhart invited the teacher, Matt Kalthoff, to join Math Works, a program she founded in 2003 to bring math teachers from around the city together to talk about what's working in their classrooms and what's not. Each month, the group makes a CD with teachers' best practices that gets distributed to everyone there. A study released last fall showed that city students whose teachers participated in Math Works posted significantly higher test scores than their peers. Among sixth-graders whose teachers attended monthly sessions, 70 percent passed the state math test, compared with 39 percent of sixth-graders whose teachers did not attend.

When the latest round of Maryland School Assessment scores were released last month, 68 percent of Morrell Park's seventh-graders had passed their math test, as had 61 percent of eighth-graders.

And so tonight, Campbell will be picking up the tab at Cafe Hon as he dines with Kalthoff, Eberhart and Maggie McIntosh, a state delegate and friend of Campbell's who took an interest in helping the school.  

For a feature I did on Math Works a few years back, keep reading.

Continue reading "Jim Campbell loses bet, pays for dinner" »

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Though the Maryland PTA has made the Baltimore City Council of PTAs an inactive organization, the council's president, Eric White, is acting as though nothing has changed. He was at yesterday's City Council education committee briefing on back-to-school preparations, and he introduced himself as PTA Council president when he spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting. The mayor's office also invited him to be on a school board interviewing panel as though he were still the president of an active parent group.

The Maryland PTA says White is not supposed to be acting as though the PTA Council is still operational. But will it use its authority to stop him? Will school PTAs continue paying their council dues? 

Conveniently, the PTA Council office at North Avenue just so happens to be in the wing being converted into a new alternative school. Office space aside, will the school board continue giving White a slot when organized parent and employee groups speak at its meetings?

This promises to be an interesting saga to follow as the new school year approaches.

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The executive board members of the Public School Administrators and Supervisors Association are incensed. For the first time in the history of an annual back-to-school event for Baltimore's principals, assistant principals, and other middle management, the president of their union will not be permitted to bring greetings.

Jimmy Gittings, president of PSASA, says he was told late last week by Dr. Alonso's executive assistant that only Alonso and Brian Morris, the school board chairman, would speak at the "CEO's Academy," to be held Aug. 12 at Morgan State University. Gittings has spoken at the event every year for the six years he's been in his position, and he said his predecessors spoke every year before that.

A letter went out today to all PSASA members saying, "Jimmy's voice will not be silenced." Gittings has arranged to deliver his back-to-school address at 7 p.m. Thursday on Morgan's radio station, WEAA (88.9 FM).

For those of you who haven't been tuning into city school board meetings in recent months, Gittings and Alonso have had a series of heated public exchanges about the future of the system. Gittings has been a strong critic of Alonso's budget reorganization because of the extra responsibilities placed on principals, and he generally believes the CEO is changing the system too fast.

Don't expect Gittings to mince words when he goes on air. He wants to give credit for the recent increase in test scores to the two previous CEOs, Bonnie Copeland and Charlene Cooper Boston, and the administrators who worked under them. He said he won't "sit back and let the public think that this administration is responsible."

Gittings and Orrester Shaw, the vice president of PSASA and principal of Pimlico Elementary/Middle School, said they believe Alonso and Morris are trying to quash the union. (Shaw said he was contacting the media on behalf of PSASA's executive board.)

Alonso said they're overreacting. "It just completely misunderstands how I think and how I function," he said. He said the CEO's Academy has traditionally been a ceremonial event, but this year, he wants it to be a day of meaningful professional development -- meaning he needed to cut back on the number of speakers. He said his own remarks will be about data analyzing student performance. "This is a day of professional develpment," he said, "and I didn't want to make it ceremonial." Learning of the planned radio address, Alonso said Gittings will have a far bigger audience.

Meanwhile, Alonso is traveling to Atlantic City tomorrow to address the other union he's clashed with in the past year: the Baltimore Teachers Union, which is having its annual convention there.

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Today is the last day at The Sun for more than 40 of my colleagues who accepted a voluntary buyout. One of them is Gina Davis, who's done a great job covering Baltimore County education the past few years. Someone else leaving has been integral to this blog, though you've never seen his name on the site.

Mike Adams, a quarter-century veteran of the newspaper, served as our education editor, and since I started covering the Baltimore schools three years ago, he's been my direct supervisor. In recent months, he overcame his aversion to technology to edit and schedule our daily postings.

A native of Turners Station, Mike comes from a long line of educators in Baltimore city and county public schools. I first sent him an interoffice message when I was working in the Towson bureau and trying to land an interview with his cousin, who was principal of Woodlawn Middle School at the time. 

Mike was a terrific choice to oversee a young out-of-towner like me because he has so much institutional knowledge to share – about our workplace, the city schools and Baltimore in general. And as a white reporter covering a predominantly black school system, it was extremely helpful for me to have an African-American editor with whom I could frankly discuss racially sensitive issues.

I love how Mike knows the history of seemingly every person whose name is on a Baltimore school building. The first time I wrote a story about Dr. Samuel L. Banks High, he told me about how Sam Banks used to write long-winded letters to the editor of The Sun using the biggest words in the dictionary. Once, when an article of mine mentioned Tench Tilghman Elementary, Mike was upset he didn't know who Tench Tilghman was. We had to stop right there and look it up. (We learned that Tilghman was an Army officer in the Revolutionary War who was born in Maryland.)

Can you tell we had fun?

Mike's wisdom and insight helped me to tell stories with greater nuance and sophistication. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with him.

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National Public Radio had a story earlier this week about Barack Obama and John McCain's education platforms. A transcript is posted here, along with an audio link.

A couple interesting points the story made: Both of the candidates support merit pay for teachers. Obama has taken this position even though unions tend to oppose merit pay and the two major teachers unions are supporting him.

Obama has also proposed requiring all colleges of education to be accredited and rating how they do in preparing teachers. According to the story, one of his advisers is Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford education professor who believes strongly in the importance of teacher preparation. Darling-Hammond is a leading critic of alternative certification programs such as Teach for America (which, incidentally, is holding a press conference in Baltimore today to announce financial support for the program from the City Council). However, another of Obama's advisers is Michael Johnston from New Leaders for New Schools, which is essentially an alternative certification program for principals.

Both Obama and McCain support changing No Child Left Behind, but neither wants to scrap it altogether. McCain is interested in providing more tutoring to struggling students. Obama says NCLB is inadequately funded, and he wants to work with states to develop better tests measuring what students have learned and where they have weaknesses.

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I've heard from multiple sources that one of the three candidates in the running to succeed Buzzy Hettleman on the Baltimore school board is David Stone. This is interesting because Hettleman was first appointed to the board in January 2005 to fill the seat left by Stone, who resigned because he was applying for a job in the system. He served as head of charter schools before leaving to work for the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

If Stone is appointed -- and keep in mind, there aer two other candidates -- I can't imagine he would stand in the way of Dr. Alonso's agenda, as some people have feared given the membership of the community interviewing panel. But time will tell.

Meanwhile, since we're printing letters this week from people who won't be serving on school boards, keep reading to see the one Hettleman sent to supporters on Tuesday.

Continue reading "Swapping a city school board seat?" »

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After my story yesterday, I had a call from Jimmy Gittings, president of the city school system's administrators union. He said he was disturbed to read in my article that he's a member of the panel interviewing school board candidates but didn't show up to the interviews on Friday. (I reported that only four of the seven panel members attended.) In fact, Gittings said, Mayor Dixon didn't invite him to be on the panel until he saw her at an event Monday afternoon -- three days after the bulk of the interviews occurred. An interview with one more candidate is to be held this week.

Had Gittings known he was invited to the interviews on Friday, he said, "believe me, I would have certainly been there with bells on, to get someone in there (on the board) that would support us." Having missed the session, he said, he would trust the recommendations of Marietta English, co-president of the Baltimore Teachers Union.

No comment back from City Hall on the mixup.

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In public, Mayor Sheila Dixon has been very supportive of Dr. Alonso and the work his administration is doing. But now she's appointed a panel to screen school board candidates that includes some of the CEO's most formidable adversaries: Marietta English, Glen Middleton, Jimmy Gittings, Eric White. 

Eric White? I was surprised to see his name on the list of panel members, given that his organization, the Baltimore City Council of PTAs, has been put on inactive status by the Maryland PTA as a result of his actions. Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the mayor, said Dixon believes he still has something to offer.

It appears the mayor is keeping two of Alonso's supporters on the board, Bob Heck and Anirban Basu, since she did not solicit applications for their seats. But yesterday it became official that the board is losing another Alonso supporter and perhaps its most outspoken member: Buzzy Hettleman. He was one of four candidates under consideration for his seat, but he decided to withdraw his application.

Whether the mayor officially gains control of the city school system or Gov. O'Malley allows her to unofficially control the school board appointment process, as she's doing now, Dixon will be in charge once she has a board majority. If this panel is advising her, Alonso may have his hands full.

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Liz reports today that Mayor Dixon is potentially interested in taking back control of the Baltimore school system, replacing the current structure where the mayor and the governor jointly appoint a school board. With the recent increase in test scores and the political capital they bring, who can blame her?

When he was mayor, Gov. Martin O'Malley expressed support for mayoral control of schools, so Dixon would likely find an empathetic ally in Annapolis. Already, O'Malley seems to be deferring to Dixon to take the lead on school board appointments.

A growing number of big city mayors, including those in New York and Washington, have gained control of their schools. Education experts say the success of these arrangements hinges on whether the mayor has the will to support changes that are not politically popular. As Paul Hill, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said in the story today, "one of the big issues is, does the mayor have the stomach for expending a fair amount of political capital?"

In Baltimore, Dr. Alonso has said he's committed to staying 10 years. But he's also said he'll only stay as long as he has the power to run the system without political interference. In his first year here, the school board was sometimes divided, but a majority always backed him. For as long as he's at the helm, we can count on more controversial decisions. Would Mayor Dixon go along with them?

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The Schott Foundation for Public Education today released a report on the state of education as it pertains to African-American males. It also launched an interactive Web site with all sorts of interesting information about the achievement gap for black boys. Check it out here.

The report contains data not only for the 50 states, but also for their largest school districts. According to Schott's calculations, Maryland's graduation rate for black boys in 2005-2006 was slightly higher than the national average: 55 percent, compared with 47 percent nationally. That's due in part to the fact that Baltimore County reported one of the nation's highest graduation rates for African-American males, 72 percent. Montgomery County's rate was 69 percent and Prince George's was 59 percent. And then there was Baltimore City: 31 percent.

Using data from 2004-2005, the report said white, non-Hispanic boys were admitted to gifted and talented programs in Baltimore at twice the rate of black boys. Four times as many white boys as black participated in math Advanced Placement courses. Nine times as many white boys took science A.P. courses. Although this information is nearly four years old, it highlights the opportunities that have long existed for the small number of white students (less than 10 percent of total enrollment) in the city school system.

The report's release and the Web site launch coincided with this week's UNITY convention of 10,000 journalists of color, who gathered in Chicago.

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