Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso is making it harder for the city's elite magnet high schools to remove students who are struggling academically.
Alonso says that the schools are already getting the city's brightest students and that they have an obligation to work with them. Historically, he said, a significant number of students who began as freshmen at Polytechnic Institute, City College and Western High were not still enrolled four years later at graduation.
"That's unacceptable," Alonso said in an interview. "It represents a lack of accountability on the part of the school given the fact that they begin with students who by definition are the most academically able students in the city. ... My expectation is that they succeed with them, that they put in place not only extraordinary educational programs but also the interventions that are necessary."
From now on, high schools with academic entrance requirements must demonstrate that they are providing struggling students with academic and behavioral interventions, such as tutoring and mentoring. School representatives must meet with students and their parents before principals can recommend them for removal.
Last spring, before Alonso's arrival in Baltimore in July, the administration at City recommended the transfer of 99 students, most of them freshmen and sophomores. At Poly, 68 students were recommended for transfer, as were 23 at Western and 22 at Dunbar High.
Later in the summer, when Alonso learned of the large number of students due to leave the schools, he put an end to the practice, saying there needed to be clear criteria and a good explanation before a student could be removed. At City, only 31 of the 99 students ended up leaving. At Poly, 22 left; at Western, nine. None left Dunbar.
Despite the decrease in transfers last year, about 20 percent of the freshmen who started at Poly, City and Western in the fall of 2005 - this year's juniors - are no longer enrolled, according to a school system analysis. At Dunbar, 12 percent of the junior class has left.
System officials emphasize that students transfer for many reasons: They move or decide a school's program doesn't interest them. About 90 percent of the students from those junior classes are enrolled somewhere in the Baltimore school system, according to city statistics.
