Black Students

Perceptions of race relations in Baltimore County schools aren't black or white.They're many shades of gray, depending on their source.From the black honor student who believes she must work twice as hard to be considered as successful as white classmates. Or from the white teacher who says he tries to treat every student the same. Or from the black student leader who acknowledges there are racial tensions at school but says that "the good is always going to outweigh the bad here."A recent report showing that the county's black students consistently fail to perform as well as their white peers has opened anew charges of racism, lowered expectations, irrelevant curricula and parents unprepared to shepherd their youngsters through school.

For the fourth year in a row, Maryland ranked No. 1 in the nation in the percentage of its graduating seniors who successfully passed the rigorous Advanced Placement exams, leaping further ahead of other top states. Twenty-nine percent of last year's graduating seniors in Maryland had passed one AP test by the time they walked across the stage last spring, double the percentage of a decade ago and more than one percentage point higher than 2010. The national average was 18 percent.

BY ONE KEY measure -- the isolation of black students -- Baltimore has the most segregated school system in the nation. That finding, from a report issued Friday by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, might not be surprising. Still, it's startling to see Baltimore at the top of a list of American districts with the lowest occurrence of black and white students attending the same schools. How low? In 2000, 5.9 percent of black kids in the city went to school with whites. That's a lower percentage than New York City (6.6 percent)

Members of the Howard County NAACP sharply criticized the county school system last night over its hiring of African-Americans.Armed with protest posters and a detailed position paper, NAACP representatives said the school system has failed to hire an adequate number of African-American teachers and administrators, passed over qualified black candidates for jobs and unfairly demoted an unnamed black assistant principal to a teaching position.The NAACP also objected to the hiring of a retired law enforcement officer who they said exhibited a racist cartoon on the door of his police department office.

MHLWAZI, South Africa - Ten-year-old Lamlile Sithole sat in her fourth-grade civics class at Thembokuhle Primary School on a recent morning, staring at a question scrawled across the chalkboard: "Who is the government?" In unison, Sithole and her 26 classmates recited the answer: "One. The government is the most important body in the country," they chanted. "Two. The government is responsible for many things. Three. They make sure our country is safe for all of us to live in. Four. To provide us with important things like health, education, roads and pensions."

To get a high school education, James A. Grove had to walk alone through the racist name-calling and intimidating stares that became as routine each morning as affixing his pocket protector to his neatly pressed shirt. It was the fall of 1954, a few months after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Grove was the first black student at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School in Northeast Baltimore. Many of Grove's schoolmates weren't happy to see him. "You just couldn't walk to school in peace," Grove, 66, recalled.

When Eric J. Smith became superintendent of the Anne Arundel County school system in 2002, African-American leaders and parents had reason to welcome him. One of Smith's first community meetings was at a black church in Annapolis, where he spoke of eliminating academic disparities between black and white students. But last week - less than two years after that initial meeting - a group of parents and the local branch of the NAACP filed a federal discrimination claim against Smith and the school board, alleging that black students are discriminated against in schools.

A task force set up by Anthony G. Marchione, superintendent of the Baltimore County schools, more than a year ago to help improve the math and reading scores of black students has made progress, but its future role is in doubt. Members of the Minority Achievement Task Force, made up of residents and school administrators, say they have used $500,000 in county money to set up tutoring programs in math and reading at a number of elementary and middle schools. Money also has been used to tutor high school students in preparation for SAT exams.

LOS ANGELES - Law professor Richard H. Sander, author of a new study concluding that affirmative action hurts black law school students, generally seems an unlikely candidate to challenge a leading liberal cause. Sander, 48, is a soft-spoken former VISTA volunteer who for years has studied housing discrimination and championed efforts to fight segregation in Los Angeles. A self-described "pragmatic progressive" who supported Sen. John Kerry for president, the UCLA professor also promoted a local program in the 1990s to help the working poor win more federal aid. Yet Sander's latest research, to be published soon in the Stanford Law Review, is drawing widespread criticism from liberal backers of affirmative action and is roiling law schools around the country.

Students at a Baltimore County high school drew a racially offensive picture on a classroom board last week and then sent it out on Twitter, prompting the principal to call police and suspend several students. The picture, drawn during class at Eastern Technical High School, shows three nooses hanging from the rafters of a building, according to Baltimore County police spokesman Cathy Batton. Beside the ropes are a burning cross with three stick figures in pointed hats, suggesting the Ku Klux Klan.