Monday's announcement that federal oversight of Baltimore City's special education programs will be ending within two years was rightly hailed by civic and educational leaders as a major milestone. It is a testament to how far the city school system has come recently and a reminder of how dysfunctional it was for most of the 26 years the lawsuit has been in effect.
But as good news as the announcement was, one has to ask: Why did it take the city schools so long to persuade the plaintiffs in this case that it was finally prepared to do the things that it should have been doing all along?
As recently as eight years ago, the judge overseeing the case threatened to throw the city schools CEO in jail for her failures, and six years ago, state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick was floating the idea of a complete takeover of the system.
What changed over the last few years to turn around what for decades had seemed a hopeless deadlock?
In fairness, Baltimore isn't the only large, urban school system that has long struggled to overcome a dismal record of underachievement when it comes to educating students with special needs. School systems across the country, including those in New York City and the District of Columbia, are facing long-standing, contentious lawsuits brought by parents and child advocates to force them to improve the quality of instruction and services for special education students. But after its years of litigation, Baltimore is now doing better by its special ed students than many jurisdictions that have never been sued.
It's tempting to ascribe Baltimore's success solely to city schools chief Andrés Alonso, who has engineered a remarkable turnaround in student achievement and test scores throughout the system. Yet, he would probably be the first to say it took the effort of many people to achieve this result. What he undoubtedly did accomplish, however, was to change the tenor of a debate that had long been mired in confrontation and bureaucratic gridlock to one of cooperation and dialogue.
