Education Reform

As the school year finally gets under way, public school students across the state will be writing more often and learning to think differently in math class, as the state begins major education reforms that will change everything from the curriculum to the way teachers are evaluated. While some of the changes — which districts agreed to make in exchange for more federal funding — have faced resistance from teachers, others have already been embraced in classrooms. Baltimore City has tried a number of the most radical reforms as it attempted to turn around its perpetually poor-performing schools.

I had a number of reasons for suspending my campaign for the District 1 seat on thePrince George's CountyBoard of Education. But high on that list is my regard for Zabrina Epps. After meeting her and talking with her at some length, I realized that we shared a similar vision for education, both the global, big-picture view of education, as well as what is needed at the local, classroom level. That includes a vision of a school system without barriers, infused with a culture of achievement and held to high standards of transparency and meaningful, two-way communication with families.

Baltimore lands in the middle of the pack among other large cities undergoing education reform, according to a study released Tuesday. A resistant teachers union and lack of a quality control are among the obstacles the district has to overcome to continue making progress, the study says. In a report published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, "America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform," Baltimore ranked 17th out of 26 of large cities that have the supports in place for education reform.

President Barack Obama is prepared to offer states that have embraced his administration's key education reform initiatives — including Maryland — a break from the most rigid requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, senior officials said Thursday. Officials said the president will announce the sweeping changes Friday, allowing states to seek a waiver from elements of the Bush administration's signature education law if they agree to three key reforms, all of which Maryland has adopted.

Also in yesterday's Maryland section, an article incorrectly named one of the technology partners with the Maryland State Department of Education. AT&T Corp. is participating in the effort to provide a Web site for each school system.The Sun regrets the errors.Maryland became the first state yesterday to answer President Clinton's "Call to Action" for education when U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, Gov. Parris N. Glendening and state school Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick signed the state's nine-point program for continuing education reform.

SOME very interesting things are happening in terms of education policy here and nationwide. In Maryland, the State Board of Education's recent move to toughen standards for new teachers is indicative of those changes.In conjunction with such reforms, many parents are less wed to the concept of local control of schools. Instead, they are intensely interested in how the quality of education in their children's schools compares with schools in other states and even other nations.They realize that, in our mobile society, their children are likely to move several times in their careers, putting them in competition with people from various states and countries.

WASHINGTON - My wife is sitting on a gold mine, I tell her. She's a part-time creative writing teacher in a District of Columbia public high school. She comes home with stories more shocking, poignant, bizarre, scandalous and hilarious than I have ever seen on Boston Public and other TV dramas about the traumas of high school. I was particularly touched by what she heard one day from a 16-year-old girl from "Southeast," which is how Washingtonians refer to the poorest section of town. "Ms. Page, you come to every class, don't you?"

A town meeting on education reform that is expected to draw national and local leaders will be held at 4 p.m. tomorrow at Gilman School."Urban Education in Crisis: Challenges and Choices" is sponsored by Gilman in partnership with Roland Park Elementary/Middle School.The meeting will be held in the Alumni Auditorium on the boys' school campus at 5407 Roland Ave. Tickets are $25.The forum is the third in a series sponsored by Gilman in celebration of its 100th anniversary.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke will join state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick and interim Baltimore schools chief Robert Schiller and other local educators at the symposium.

OF ALL THE disservices inflicted upon Baltimore schoolchildren, social promotion ranks among the cruelest. It's the reason you can walk into ninth-grade classrooms and listen to kids stumble and stammer over third-grade words. The reason basic math principles must be revisited in algebra courses. The reason a diploma from a city high school can't always be equated with knowledge or achievement. We cheered two years ago when the city school board declared an end to social promotion and demanded that kids who fail make up their work in summer school or repeat a grade the next year.

Maryland's Republican caucus unveiled a five-part plan for education reform yesterday that's part George W. Bush and part Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Assembled in one of Baltimore's five "quasi-charter" schools, the GOP senators and delegates offered a Maryland version of President Bush's plan to give vouchers to parents of children who attend failing schools. "It's about giving the parents a choice of where to send their children once their school has failed," said Sen. Andrew P. Harris of Baltimore County.

As the school year finally gets under way, public school students across the state will be writing more often and learning to think differently in math class, as the state begins major education reforms that will change everything from the curriculum to the way teachers are evaluated. While some of the changes — which districts agreed to make in exchange for more federal funding — have faced resistance from teachers, others have already been embraced in classrooms. Baltimore City has tried a number of the most radical reforms as it attempted to turn around its perpetually poor-performing schools.

GOP presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she was insulted Sunday morning when Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked her whether she is a “flake?”  “You have a history of questionable statements, some would say gaffes ... Are you a flake?” Wallace said.   “Well, I think that would be insulting, to say something like that, because I’m a serious person,” Bachmann responded.  I’m no Bachmann supporter, but she's right that Wallace’s question was phrased in a demeaning way and reinforces gender stereotypes.

The announcement that Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick will retire in June after 20 years on the job marks a watershed for public education in the state, whose history could fairly be divided into two eras — before and after Ms. Grasmick. Her extraordinary leadership raised the bar on what was possible for schools across the state and won Maryland national recognition as an education powerhouse. She's been called "the heart and soul" of Maryland schools. Whoever succeeds her will have big shoes to fill.

The front page story by Liz Bowie ("Race to the Top funding creates a race for the pot," Feb. 18.) shows how flippant language can trivialize and even distort information. Your writer refers to an assistant state superintendent of schools as a "behind-the-scenes bureaucrat" and hypothesizes that her work involving "statistical analysis and minutiae" would "put most of the world to sleep. " Recently, this "bureaucrat," we are told, has become a "magnet for contractors" because she has the responsibility of reviewing applications for grants funded by the federal government's Race to the Top program.

A new study of the nation's school boards paints a picture of these citizen-based volunteer groups as hard working but tradition bound, resistant to many of the reforms being advocated to improve the nation's failing schools. This conclusion leads one of the report's contributors, Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, to call for "putting this dysfunctional arrangement out of its existence and [moving] on to something that will work for children. " The study, published by National School Boards Association, the Fordham Institute and the Iowa School Boards Foundation, gathered responses from more than 1,000 board members representing 418 districts.

The prescription developer David Tufaro writes for those interested in serving as Baltimore's mayor is based, in part, on an outdated diagnosis of public education options available in city schools ( "A reform agenda for Baltimore's next mayor," Dec. 27). Mr. Tufaro's view that education reform in Baltimore is incremental suggests that he has missed dramatic, positive developments in city schools since leaving the Maryland State Board of Education in 2008. City schools CEO Andrés Alonso and the Baltimore Board of School Commissioners, with steady and strong support from City Hall and Annapolis, have fundamentally changed what it means to be a student, parent, teacher or principal in city schools.

Maryland officials have met at least twice with representatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in their effort to persuade the nation's largest private philanthropy to help support the state's education reform effort.State officials disclosed yesterday that Gov. Parris N. Glendening met with the Gates foundation last month when he visited Seattle after a trade mission to South America. Last week, state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick and Glendening's chief of staff, Major F. Riddick Jr., met with foundation officials in Baltimore.

PITTSBURGH -- Facing a crisis in the schooling of black children, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume called yesterday for a broad discussion of education reform at the civil rights group's 88th annual convention.Citing factors such as law schools in California and Texas where the numbers of black students have dropped sharply because of bans on racial preferences and inner-city classrooms where children can't read, Mfume expressed a growing frustration among blacks about education opportunity.He said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which will discuss busing for desegregation, vouchers, state takeovers of urban districts and other education issues at its convention here this week, must help find solutions to the crisis.

Although the Baltimore mayoral election is almost a year away, a number of potential candidates are already gearing up for the race. As a former Republican mayoral candidate, a 40-year resident of Baltimore and a businessman in the city, I am proposing an agenda for our next mayor that all law-abiding, taxpaying residents of Baltimore can embrace. We need to stop kidding ourselves. Insidious crime, poor public schools, uncompetitive taxes and a high poverty rate are not the marks of a city that attracts people to live, work or visit here.

Childs' Walker's excellent article ( "University programs await K-12 reforms," Nov. 1) only alludes to a critical aspect of K-12 education reform: how to encourage our most talented and best students to enter the education profession. The recent McKinsey and Company report, "Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top Third Graduates to a Career in Teaching" addressed this issue. It is important because of the increased expectations of teachers but also because of the need to replace the roughly half of our 3.5 million teachers will be eligible to retire during the next decade.