Yesterday, after an hourlong discussion where Raymond Simon, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, met with 19 of Maryland's high-ranking educators and fielded their questions and concerns about the No Child Left Behind Act, several superintendents were left dissatisfied.

While some said they were pleased with the opportunity to dialogue about some of the problems associated with the act, they also said that they were not pleased with some of Simon's responses.

During the discussion, the educators spoke about the shortage of qualified teachers, financial hardships caused by trying to meet the act's goals, and the challenge of closing the achievement gap for foreign-born students and special education students.

Sydney L. Cousin, superintendent of Howard County Schools, asked Simon about providing more testing flexibility for foreign-born students who are learning English.

Cousin explained that research shows that it takes five to seven years for foreign-born students to become fluent enough to take tests in English, yet No Child Left Behind gives them a one-year waiver before applying their test scores as part of a local school's achievement.

Simon launched into a spiel about holding accountable students who have grown up in this country.

Anne Arundel's Superintendent Dr. Kevin Maxwell immediately clarified that Cousin was talking about immigrant students.

“That is an issue that many of us are grappling with,” Maxwell said.

Simon responded that the one-year waiver was the result of a compromise between the federal government, local school systems, and advocates for foreign-born students. He also said that some schools have been able to offer assessment tests in the student’s native language. (Most of the superintendents appeared to be unaware of this option.)

Maxwell later said that Simon did not address the issue.

“I was a little disappointed by the response,” he said.

Cousin also wasn’t pleased with the response, but he said he did not have high expectations for the discussion.

"Given the limited amount of time, there really wasn't an opportunity to go into depth," Cousin said. "I don't know if that was the right forum."

Cousin was impressed by the fact that Simon wanted to meet with local superintendents.

"At least they said they want to hear what we have to say," Cousin said. "The follow-up is the critical question."

If you had the opportunity to talk to Simon about No Child Left Behind, what would you say? One reader e-mailed this morning and said he would have questioned Simon about the achievement gap among African-American students.

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

They hover. And many teachers say that they harass, and disrupt the learning process in the process. Helicopter parents are landing at a school near you!

My article today looks at the overbearing actions of parents in schools.

Take Howard County as an example. For the past two years, 60 percent of the teachers responding to a job satisfaction survey conducted by the Howard County Education Association reported that they have been subjected to harassment. Last year's survey specifically identified parents as the offenders in 60 percent of the cases. This year's survey will report similar results, according to Ann DeLacy, the HCEA president.

Through my research I talked to educators from school systems throughout the state who recalled numerous examples of over-zealous parents who made their lives miserable.

What do you think? Have you witnessed parents who overstep the boundaries and interfere with the learning process? Are you a teacher who has been harassed by a parent? Please share your experiences. Or, are you a helicopter parent?

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Who knew that the story I wrote about TB would be so popular?

The Associated Press picked it up. A newspaper in Delaware linked to it. I’m not even going to talk about the T.V. reporters.

My colleague Dennis O’Brien also did a blog post – with a neat graphic -- about it.

Here are the nuts and bolts of the story: Howard County health officials are investigating whether the county's first tuberculosis case this year, diagnosed in a student, spread the bacterial illness to staff members or other students at Hammond High School in Columbia.

The students and staff members at the Columbia school were told of the diagnosis Monday. The county Health Department sent letters Saturday to 50 students who ride the bus with the student, warning them that they might have been exposed and encouraging them to get tested.

Health officials learned about the infected student four weeks ago.

No one – other than the student – has contracted the disease, according to health officials. 

Do you think that the health department and school officials should have notified students and parents about the student immediately? Do you think they waited too long?

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Need a last-minute biographical sketch about the candidates in the Howard County Board of Education primary? Then check out their comments in this election preview I recently wrote.

The election features a mix of familiar faces – two current board members are trying to extend their stint on the board – and a few new names. Check out this tidbit about how race is playing a factor in this school board primary.

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

For all those students American students who missed the memo from Mama that warned against playing with food, these examples should thwart any future thoughts of food fights.

Seven Wisconsin high school students, ages 17 and 18, are facing fines and four-day suspensions after being involved in a food fight in their cafeteria last month.

In Howard County, a high school principal made news when he offered students a $30 reward for any information about students involved in a food fight in December. Read more here.

While researching the phenomenon, I found a slew of YouTube videos with cafeteria food fights. I also came across this theory that suggests that the popularity of YouTube has contributed to a growth in food fights. Apparently students are trying to one-up one another by starting food fights and then posting the mayhem on the site.

What is going on with all these food fights? Are these just isolated incidents, or are food fights a major problem in U.S. schools?

When I was growing up food fights were almost a rite of passage. I didn’t participate in these childish antics. (Not that I was a goody-goody. I was a fat kid who wouldn’t dream of throwing away his lunch.)

While I can recall dodging french fries and chicken nuggets, I can’t remember students facing court-imposed fines, or principals offering monetary rewards for information leading to the lunch launchers.

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I’ve spent most of the week in court covering the trial of Joseph Samuel Ellis, a 25-year-old former Glenelg High School history teacher accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with several female students. Read more about the outcome of that case here.

Turns out this week has served as a primer for what’s coming up in March, when I will likely cover the trial of Alan Meade Beier.

Beier, for those of you who are not familiar with the case, is a former River Hill teacher accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with students.

All three cases against Beier will take place in Howard County Circuit Court on March 26. Originally one of the cases was scheduled for February 12, but a motion on December 20, 2007, postponed that case, which allowed all three cases to go to trial at the same time.

Beier, 52, a former chemistry and physics, was arrested on January 12, 2007. He is accused of undressing and photographing a 16-year-old boy in his classroom and with fondling a 17-year-old female student. A third student also reported inappropriate contact with Beier.

Beier is the third and final Howard County teacher arrested during a two-month period during the 2006-2007 school year to appear in Circuit Court for allegations of having inappropriate sexual contact with students.

Kirsten Ann Kinley, 28, a former teacher at Marriotts Ridge High School, pleaded guilty in August to having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy while she was a teacher at Hammond Middle School in late 2004 and early 2005. The boy was not a student at Hammond Middle. Kinley was sentenced to serve 18 months at the county detention center in November.

Do you think that there are enough safeguards in place to prevent situations like these? Do you think these incidents are isolated or do they represent a growing problem? Before you comment, check out some of these stories here, here, here, and here.

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

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

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

Mrs. Woodson came from a long line of educators.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Thinking about bringing food or beverages to a sporting event at a Howard County high school? Forget about it!

The school system has just announced that outside food and beverages will be banned at all county athletic venues including gymnasiums and stadiums. The effort is part of the school system’s attempts to thwart alcohol consumption and to keep their facilities clean.

The food and beverage ban in gymnasiums takes effect immediately. The stadiums ban takes effect when the spring sports season begins on March 1, 2008.

Read more about it in The Sun’s online edition.

What are your thoughts about the ban?

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In the debate over the high school assessments, Howard County parent Sara Seifter asked a question that got lost in the shuffle of wider issues. She wanted to know why some highly able students she knows haven't scored in the stratosphere on these exams. She said these are kids who have aced their AP exams, get high scores on the SATs but don't score much above 490 out of 650 on these exams. Mind you, that is still about 100 points above passing. But she still wanted to know from the Maryland state school board why they weren't getting the maximum 650 or close to it. In her testimony to the state board she asked, "How is it that these students who are receiving 800s on their SATs are not receiving at or near a perfect score on the HSAs which are supposedly tests of basic skills?"

I asked Leslie Wilson, who's in charge of testing for the state board of education, to answer this question. She said there are some perfect scorers, but not many. Last year, of the roughly 55,000 students who took the test, 39 students had a perfect 650, the top score. Another 50 students scored in the 550 range or up.

Wilson says that the high school tests aren't designed like the SATs to measure high achievement or very low achievement. They are designed to concentrate on whether students pass or not...That is the English translation of the complexity of scoring.

Seifter would like the state to use a national test with a proved track record that students can look at and see where their weaknesses are.

Posted by Liz Bowie at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Life got your teen stressed, depressed?

Tonight HC DrugFree, a Howard County nonprofit organization, is sponsoring a free program for parents and teens that will address the factors that can lead to stress, depression and substance abuse in teens.

Dr. David Gold, a counselor with Crossroads Psychological Associates in Columbia, will share tips about how to spot signs of teen depression.

Organizers of the program promise plenty of time for parents and teens to converse about their experiences.

If you are interested in going, the 90-minute program starts at 7 p.m. at Atholton High School, 6520 Freetown Rd., Columbia, MD 21044.

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With pressures mounting from religious groups and parents, more schools are abandoning traditional Halloween parties.

Child obesity and wellness policies have also altered the traditional menus of candy corn, and cupcakes. Now, you’re more likely to catch a kid snacking on carrot sticks with reduced fat ranch dressing.

Take Running Brook Elementary School in Columbia for example. Tomorrow I’m heading to the school for their annual vocabulary parade. The school asks students to dress up as vocabulary words. If a student picks the word “rain”, he or she will dress as a rain drop.

The parade will be followed by a party featuring healthy snacks.

This definitely isn’t your mama’s Halloween party!

What are your schools doing this Halloween? Are schools going to far to curb the Halloween tradition?

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Here are some kids who are definitely smarter than I am:

Gabriella Biondo, George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology, Towson

Sarah Kamel, Centennial High School, Ellicott City

David Lai, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Baltimore

Phillip Sandborn, Wilde Lake High School, Columbia

Liv Johannessen, Governor Thomas Johnson High School, Frederick

Paul Kominers and Damjan Korac, Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda

Andrew Kung, Benjamin Lee, Boris Vassilev and Yang Yang, Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring

These 11 students are Maryland's semifinalists in the Siemens Competition, a national science research competition administered by the College Board. They are among 295 semifinalists from 34 states, selected from a pool of 1,641 applicants. Another 95 kids nationwide -- including Benjamin Lu and Louis Wasserman from Montgomery Blair -- earned the even greater distinction as regional finalists. They'll compete to go on to the nationals, where they can earn up to $100,000 in scholarship money.

As evidence of how smart these kids are, check out this descrption of David Lai's project from a press release sent out by the Ingenuity Project, the program at Poly for kids gifted in math and science:

"Mr. Lai’s project, entitled 'Characterization of Genomic Instability in SGS1 Mutants,' is a part of the research on a cell’s ability to efficiently repair damaged DNA. Genes like SGS1 are important for the proper repair of DNA breaks in human cells. Mutations in homologs of SGS1 produce genomic instability syndromes, symptoms of which include premature aging and a predisposition to cancer. In the research, the SGS1 mutant yeast was used as a model for human cells. The results show that this approach can be used to give insight into the dynamics of certain specific cancer pathways."

Anybody care to explain what a homolog of SGS1 is?

Posted by Sara Neufeld at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Today’s installment features Kimberly A. Statham, the former chief academic officer for Howard County Schools who resigned following allegations of a grade changing scandal involving her daughter.

Statham, 49, has resurfaced as deputy superintendent of teaching and learning for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education for the District of Columbia.

Statham's career as Howard County's chief academic officer ended after allegations that she intimidated school staff members at Centennial High School to obtain preferential treatment for her daughter, who was a student there. She resigned in 2004 and eventually was exonerated by the Howard County Board of Education. Statham was a consultant for the Howard County school system the next year.

During that period, Statham, who is African-American, was the victim of an apparent hate crime when someone used a chemical to burn a cross into the front lawn of her Ellicott City home.

Deborah A. Gist, state superintendent of education for the District of Columbia, said she was aware of the events that preceded Statham’s departure from Howard County.

 “We discussed it really briefly,” Gist said. “It seems clear that it was an unfortunate situation, and that Kimberly had done the right thing, and that she did not do anything that would concern me at all.”

Prior to her return to the Beltway, Statham had been working in the Oakland (Calif.) Unified School District. In fact, Statham was working as the interim chief executive officer for the 41,000-student system, when she resigned. She held that position for the final five-months of her 28-month stint.

Statham was instrumental in advancing the performance of Oakland's public school students, according to officials there.

She is credited with requiring all students to take the PSATs. In addition, officials say that the number of Oakland students accepted to the California state college system nearly doubled.

For more, check out today’s article.

Statham, who has never made herself available for an interview with me on numerous occasions during the past two years, was surprisingly not available for comment for today's story.

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

Tomorrow as part of our “Where are they now?” feature, I will update you on the latest accomplishment of a former top-ranking Howard County Schools official who left Maryland shortly after a controversy erupted at a high school.

Turns out this educator has returned to the Beltway. Read about it online tomorrow. Comment about it on the blog after.

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

The AP is reporting that American teachers commit an abusive sexual act at a rate of nearly three times for every school day. Wow!

A seven-month investigation reveals that there were more than 2,500 cases during a five-year-period where educators were disciplined for sexual misconduct.

Of the 2,570 educators, young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases. More than 80 percent of those were students.

This is a subject that I have dealt with extensively in Howard County. During a two-month-period last school year, I reported that three Howard County teachers were arrested for having inappropriate sexual contact with students. Their cases are currently making their way through the judiciary system.

There were also a slew of cases in the counties surrounding Baltimore.

What safeguards do schools need to take to ensure that abusive teachers are kept out of the classrooms?

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

What are you’re thoughts about my story today that delves into digital dirt being used against people?

Were you surprised by the digital dirt that exists in the education community?

Are educators held to an unfair standard? Are employers over reaching in their efforts to monitor the actions of employees outside of the workplace?

I’ll be responding to any comments you have about this story throughout the day.

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 5:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

I informed you about the recent slew of staph outbreaks last week. Here’s an update. A 17-year-old Virginia high school student died after being hospitalized with the infection last week. As a result, officials shut down 21 schools for cleaning to keep the illness from spreading. Read more in this article.

Last week, Ruma reported that four local high schools - Severna Park, Glen Burnie, Old Mill and Chesapeake - had received reports of 28 staphylococcus infections over the past three weeks.

On Friday, Wilde Lake High School in Columbia informed parents that one student had been infected with the staph. The school shared the following safety tips to protect against the infection:

1. Keep your hands clean by washing thoroughly with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

2. Keep cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage until healed.

3. Avoid contact with other people’s wounds or bandages.

4. Avoid sharing personal items such as towels or razors.

5. Use a barrier between your skin and shared equipment.

5:20 p.m. UPDATE: Read this article about a disturbing CDC report. One official believes that deaths tied to the drug-resistant staph "superbug" could exceed those caused by AIDS.

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Today the paper ran a story I wrote about two 11-year-old Howard County boys whom alleged that they were shot by pellets on their way to school last week.

Police now say that the two lied.

At this point police do not know what prompted the two to fabricate the incidents. In addition, no charges have been filed against either youth.

What kind of punishment – if any -- do these two deserve?

The police department used a helicopter and its K-9 units to search for the suspect that the two boys lied about. In addition, the accusations caused a panic in the area. One school held indoor recess. Many said that the incidents reminded them of the sniper attacks of October 2002.

Should the two have to pay the police department for the time and resources spent on these false claims? You decide.

Posted by John-John Williams IV at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
                    

I am on my way to cover the Howard County school board approval of the 2009 fiscal capital budget. One of the hottest ticket items this year is a renovation plan at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City.

Read this story for a brief recap of what's going on at the school.

What is your definition of bad school conditions? Parents, students, and staff at Mount Hebron High School think that their school is in desperate need of repair and attention.

Mount Hebron is among Howard County’s oldest.

Top-ranking school system officials have favored a renovation project at the school that includes mechanical upgrades, full systemic renovations and an expansion of the school's art, athletic and administrative offices.

Many parents at the school want the renovation project to correct a slew of deficiencies, which is in excess of 20, and would essentially require a replacement school.

Advocates have made the conditions sound like the school is a step down from Beirut.

Watch the YouTube video below, which was produced by students at the school. Judge for yourself.
In 2004 students made a video about the school. As a result, the school was featured on a morning television news show. The school later received a renovated auditorium.

Should the squeaky wheel get the oil? Are there other schools that do not get the resources they need because their parents, students, and staff are not as vocal and skilled in the arts of effective communications? You decide.

Do you know of schools with worse conditions that you would think are in more need of attention? Do you think