NEWS
By Liz Bowie and Childs Walker | August 26, 2009
While SAT scores in Maryland remained relatively stable, the number of students taking and passing an Advanced Placement exam rose significantly this past school year, reflecting a national trend in the use of the rigorous high school exams. In the data released Tuesday by the College Board, African-Americans showed progress on both tests. Although they represent only 16 percent of all the students taking AP tests in Maryland, there was a 10 percent increase in their participation over one school year.
NEWS
By Stephen Kiehl | March 11, 2009
African-American students are falling further behind their peers at state universities, according to data released yesterday that show a widening gap in graduation rates despite efforts to close it. The state university system reported that 40 percent of black students earn a degree within six years of entering college, compared with 65 percent of all students. That 25-point gap is a significant increase over three years ago, when the gap was 15 percentage points. Officials said the system is enrolling thousands more African-American students, and particularly more lower-income students who often have to drop out for financial reasons.
NEWS
By Nicole Fuller | October 5, 2008
The participation rate among Anne Arundel County public school students on the PSAT and scores on the SAT and AP exams declined slightly in the 2007-2008 school year, though the school system made some gains in participation rates among black students in more advanced course work and college-entry exams, according to school department figures released this week. The average SAT score declined 12 points during the past three years among seniors, and the percentage of students passing Advanced Placement tests fell 8 percent in the 2007-08 school year from the previous year.
NEWS
By Susan Gvozdas | May 11, 2008
Black students in Anne Arundel County schools are doing better in reading, English and math, but they still get punished more frequently and get placed into special education at a higher rate than their majority peers, according to school officials. A progress report released Thursday comes three years after a landmark mediation agreement was reached between Anne Arundel County schools and black advocacy groups to tackle those problems. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the parties in the mediation agreement, viewed the positive results in the report with skepticism and lamented the lack of progress in other areas.
NEWS
By Liz Bowie | May 11, 2008
Under pressure to reduce the suspension rate of black students, Anne Arundel County is making progress by training staff in how to work with people of different backgrounds and giving troublesome students more support. Experts say such training is a key to keeping African-American students throughout Maryland in school. Last year, 13.9 percent of black children were suspended statewide, compared with 5.8 percent of white kids. Studies have linked suspensions and expulsions to lower academic achievement and higher dropout rates.
NEWS
By John-John Williams IV | May 4, 2008
As a third-grader, Adejire Bademosi didn't hesitate to contact then-Superintendent John R. O'Rourke with concerns about the suspension rates of her fellow students. In middle school, she approached state Sen. Allan H. Kittleman about the dangers of Internet predators. That overture resulted in her speaking to teachers throughout the county during Internet safety training sessions. And Kittleman introduced legislation dealing with the issue during the recent General Assembly session. As the newly elected student member of the Howard County Board of Education, the 16-year-old sophomore at Marriotts Ridge High School hopes to continue to have her voice heard by adults.
NEWS
By Kelly Brewington | April 4, 2008
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was dead, Baltimore was ablaze and four teens at Loyola Blakefield High School responded with their version of rebellion. They began asserting their racial identity, challenging authority and reading militant authors. They grew Afros. In the days and months after King's murder 40 years ago today, consciousness spread nationwide as the word black replaced Negro and clenched fists were raised with pride. But the elite Jesuit school in Towson was caught off guard by the assault on its dress code.
NEWS
By David Zenlea | February 27, 2008
The new Frank Hebron-Harman Elementary School bears the name of the man who attended, taught at, then led the school for the community's black students. Since the $18 million building opened last spring in Hanover, however, his survivors have wondered if the schoolchildren inside know enough about the man who guided their predecessors through decades of segregation. Hebron's relatives, who led the effort to have the school named for Hebron, commissioned a mural about the school's heritage, and it will be unveiled today in the lobby, for all to see every day. "We wanted a lasting memorial for the children," said niece Patricia Hebron-Handy.
NEWS
By Howard Witt | October 17, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Under pointed questioning from Democratic House members who decried the lack of federal intervention in the racially charged Jena 6 case, U.S. Justice Department officials revealed yesterday that they are weighing an investigation into allegations of systemic racial bias in the administration of justice in the small, mostly white Louisiana town. U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington also said for the first time that the hanging of nooses from a shade tree in the Jena High School courtyard in September 2006 by three white students - a warning directed at black students to stay away from the tree, which triggered interracial fights in the town - constituted a federal hate crime, but that federal authorities chose not to prosecute the case because of the ages of the white youths involved.
NEWS
October 12, 2007
Suitland -- Pointing to statistics that black students are three times more likely than whites to be expelled from school, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson urged Suitland High School students yesterday to commit to school. "We have no control over our date of birth or our race or our gender," Jackson said at the school, whose student body is 97 percent black. "But we have control over the choices we make." Recalling the fight by black children to integrate white schools in then-segregated Little Rock, Ark., Jackson castigated students today who skip school or drop out altogether.