Curriculum

Baltimore County school leaders disregarded advice from state officials and forged ahead to overhaul the teaching of English, spending more than $5 million over the past few years to buy textbooks that mostly sit unused and to rewrite a curriculum that has been shelved. The system spent about $2.2 million on a 27-year-old grammar textbook with outdated references to encyclopedias and almanacs, both barely used by today's students, according to school system documents. The textbook and accompanying workbooks remained in a warehouse for nearly a year, and school officials acknowledged they are just now being delivered.

I recently read an article from the Baltimore Sun entitled "St. Mary's College: a cautionary tale for America's bloated higher education system" by Annie Neal. I would like to express my distaste for this article and it's obvious misinformation. I am a student of St. Mary's College, Class of 2014, Anthropology major, Lambda Alpha member, financial aid assistant, resident assistant and peer mentor. I would like to inform the newspaper and the author about how unhappy I am with the Baltimore Sun for publishing these blatant lies about an institution that I hold dear to my heart.

Kudos to the National Science Foundation and the states of Maryland and Delaware for adopting a curriculum to teach the science of global warming and climate change ("A grant to help teach climate change," Aug. 16). We need to address this issue before we witness parts of the Inner Harbor and the Eastern Shore go underwater. Some may dispute the approach, but there's no dispute among the scientific community about whether climate change represents an existential threat to the planet unless humans take drastic steps to reverse the trend.

The recent commentary about St. Mary's College of Maryland, written by Anne Neal, the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is troubling on a number of levels - not least of which is that it's not really about St. Mary's ("Cautionary campus tale," May 30). Instead, through a combination of outright factual inaccuracies and very selectively chosen information, Ms. Neal seizes upon the college's 100-student enrollment shortfall to hammer home one of the ACTA's core messages: that American colleges and universities are failing students by turning away from an education focused on western civilization and traditional American values.

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick's plan to add environmental education to the curriculum of public elementary, middle and high schools is a welcome move toward making all students more aware of our responsibility to care for the planet and the impact our choices have on it. Many important public policy debates — from climate change and conservation to man-made disasters such as BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico —...

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has launched a free, online curriculum for high school teachers to use in their classrooms. Teaching the Food System is designed to be inserted into anything from social studies, to environmental science and biology classes. The center which is part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health is offering $2,000 grants to teachers who need money for materials or field trips. 

Arnold Blumberg plops the zombie head on a table at the front of the small theater. "I brought a friend," says the University of Baltimore professor, clad in an unbuttoned black shirt adorned with red skulls. Blumberg is meeting his class for the first time and it seems appropriate that he greet them beside "old Worm Eye," undead star of the 1979 Italian cult film "Zombi 2. " It was Worm Eye's decaying visage that called to a young Blumberg from the shelf of a Randallstown video store in the 1980s.

Thanks for your report about the National Science Foundation's efforts to increase knowledge of global warming in the mid-Atlantic region ("Maryland gets grant to help teach climate change," Aug. 15). Climate change is indeed a "touchy" subject to the uninformed; this initiative is necessary to combat such shortsightedness. Here's hoping that a discussion about "what our options are" to deal with the problem includes a discussion of the fee-and-dividend model to reduce emissions.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Now that Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has ruled that our moral, ethical, even legal framework in the matter of capital punishment for murderers under 18 is to be determined by "evolving standards," let us move on to another application of that flawed philosophy: sex. In the produce section of the grocery store, the lowly cucumber is about to achieve an elevated position in some Montgomery County public schools. Montgomery County has long been known as a "bedroom community" in the affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs - an appropriate moniker given what young students are about to be taught.

Beginning today, fifth-graders attending city schools will no longer be told that generations of black people were "born" into slavery.Instead, they will be reminded that all people are born free and that slavery is a condition imposed upon free individuals by the "perpetrators of slavery" through man-made laws.Also beginning today, fifth-graders will learn about the ancient African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhay and about the learned men and the great universities of Timbuktu.They will listen to, and contemplate the intricacies of jazz music and gospel music and scat singing.

It is premature to attribute gains in kindergarten readiness to basing pre-K on the common core curriculum introduced two years ago ("City's revamped pre-K showing promise," April 27). Contrary to The Sun's report, the rise in readiness scores was not "unprecedented. " Examination of the data available from a recent Baltimore City Public Schools press release shows that the 4 percent gain seen from 2011 to 2012 is part of a general trend of increased readiness in test scores since 2007 for all children entering kindergarten in Baltimore, whether enrolled in common core aligned pre-K or not. In fact, most of the gains in non-common-core-aligned pre-K programs were larger than those seen in common-core pre-K programs.

When today's high school seniors started kindergarten in 2000, there was no iPhone, text messaging was hardly used, and very few K-12 students took online classes. While virtually every other arena has seen rapid change over the past decade, K-12 education has remained virtually the same. However, we cannot successfully educate today's students to succeed in tomorrow's world with yesterday's curriculum and instructional methods. Together, we at the Baltimore County Board of Education and Baltimore County Public Schools propose to propel our school system and students forward with a bold new theory of action.

A couple of years ago at Slate , Farhad Manjoo posted a little rant about people who insist on typing two spaces after a period, even though in our age of computerized proportional type it is not only unnecessary but contraindicated. The article proved to be so successful at what H.L. Mencken liked to call "stirring up the animals" that Slate republished it last month . The recent results were equally gratifying. Though somewhat more literate than the "your a moron" comments one commonly encounters on the Internet, the responses nicely match intemperance with ignorance.

Courtney Watson's commentary regarding cyberbullying ("Cyberbullying requires a stronger response," Jan. 3) makes some excellent points about the intense need to develop mechanisms to address the dramatically increasing problem of cyberbullying. However, the implication that the Maryland Safe Schools Acts have resulted in widespread vigilance among teachers who intervene to stop bullying is simply not true. Student surveys indicate that a great deal of training, among staff and students, is needed in order to make schools safe for students, especially those who stand out as different.

Last night, I presented a $1.3 billion operating budget proposal for Baltimore County Public Schools for fiscal 2014. Due to financial limitations, the proposed budget does not meet all of our needs, but it provides a good foundation related to our three budget priorities: managing continued growth in student enrollment; raising the bar and closing gaps in student academic achievement; and investing in our future by strengthening our infrastructure....

In reporter Annie Linskey 's analysis of an opposition ad against Question 6 ("Claim about marriage referendum is disputed," Oct. 30), she concludes that consequences are not part of the decision to vote on a referendum, but part of a "broader narrative. " Her statement ignores the consequences demonstrated by the ad she criticizes were the result of a federal judge's decision permitting inclusion of same-sex marriage in the curriculum after same-sex marriage was approved in another state.

The Anne Arundel County school board has approved two new textbooks for use in its family life curriculum.The board voted Wednesday to add "Married and Single Life" and "Education in Sexuality" to its list of approved materials for the curriculum.The textbooks were among 17 pamphlets, books, videodiscs and videotapes that are up for board approval.The entire list was to have been approved during the summer and early fall, but not all of the board members were able to review the material in time.

About a dozen parents showed up yesterday at the school board meeting to object to the "Exit Outcomes," a proposed blueprint for what Carroll County students should know by graduation."

Opponents of Question 6 are airing a television commercial that claims same-sex marriage could be "taught in schools" if the law is upheld in the November election. What the ad says: The commercial features David and Tonia Parker, a Massachusetts couple who sued the school board when their son brought home a book that discussed gay married couples. A federal judge tossed out the lawsuit, saying schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens.

This week was pretty busy in the land of Baltimore technology. Here are some of the cool things that happened. * Baltimore Tweet maps : Dave Troy, 410 Labs cofounder , and Chris Whong, head of Charm City Networks , collaborated online to develop a map of Baltimore-based tweets . You can explore this map's geo-located tweets from Baltimore people, collected on Aug. 27. Chris even overlayed vacant housing on the map, so you can see...