Failing Schools

More than 30 Baltimore schools that have failed to meet standards for several years in a row will be forced by federal law to undergo a major overhaul this fall, while virtually every struggling school in Baltimore County improved its performance on testing this year. City parents and students will begin seeing new teachers, principals and curriculum, particularly in the middle and high schools trying to meet new requirements, Baltimore officials said. State education officials, who are charged with implementing the federal No Child Left Behind Act, released the annual list of troubled schools yesterday.

WASHINGTON - Long past the point where the outcome of any game mattered, Washington Wizards coach Eddie Jordan decided to take a look at the kids last night against the New York Knicks in crunch time. Jordan sat starting guards Gilbert Arenas and Larry Hughes in the fourth quarter in favor of the former Maryland backcourt of Juan Dixon and Steve Blake, and though the Wizards dropped a 102-98 overtime decision, Jordan got a glimpse at what his kids can do. The Wizards' coach had opportunities to bring Hughes and Arenas in for a fourth-quarter push, but rolled the dice on Blake and Dixon.

The principal of Howard High School took a vacation last month, a week after she learned her facility had been added to a list of struggling schools, prompting officials to consider tightening the leave-approval process. Howard High School Principal Mary Day took five days off from work, Sept. 22 to Sept. 26 - one week after she had been told her Ellicott City school was being added to the county's School Improvement Unit, which provides extra resources and attention to underperforming facilities.

THE FEDERAL No Child Left Behind Act has created such an Isabel-like storm of controversy that education liberals and conservatives have declared a partial truce in their perpetual wars in order to oppose many of its basic features. Enacted less than two years ago and touted as a historic bipartisan breakthrough in national school reform, the law's sweeping and laudable goal is to hold states and school systems accountable for improving student achievement. It requires states to set standards for what children should know, to test and publicly report student progress and to impose sanctions on failing schools.

More than 200 city eighth-graders who thought they would be required to repeat the grade received good news this week. Although the pupils did not meet the standards of the system's strict promotion policy, school officials decided to move them along. They will be placed in the ninth grade or in a transitional program called 9T, which provides remedial help. The move appears to further loosen what was intended to be a tough promotion policy, which declared three years ago that students would meet performance standards in each grade or be held back, without exception.

Maryland education officials released the annual list of failing schools yesterday, saying that 13 elementary and middle schools had improved enough to be taken off the list, but 131 throughout the state remain. The designation has taken on new meaning this year because it will trigger a range of actions schools must take under the new federal No Child Left Behind law. If schools continue to fail over a period of years, a state must require a major overhaul, including new staff, or the state can have a private contractor take over a school.

As a young mother, Chequita Lanier wasn't savvy about the workings of the struggling Baltimore school system, but she was determined to get her two girls a good education. She talked administrators into bending the rules so her eldest daughter could go to an elementary school she thought was better than the one in her neighborhood. She arranged her work schedule to drive her daughters to schools across town for years and enrolled both daughters in an after-school tutoring program at the Johns Hopkins University.

Last summer, Tara L. Jackson was worried about her son going off to sixth grade at West Baltimore Middle School, a school considered failing by state standards. So when she was offered the opportunity - under the federal No Child Left Behind law - to transfer Tavon to a better school, she didn't hesitate. Today, she is glad he moved to Patapsco Middle School. "He had a pretty good experience. The teachers there were excellent. I think he got a lot out of it," Jackson said. Hers was one of 84 families that decided to move their children to better schools last year, a tiny percentage of the 30,000 families that were sent letters inviting them to take part in a new program to help children attending failing schools.

ASK VETERAN Baltimore principal Edna Greer about budget cuts that affect class and staff size: Some of her primary-grade classrooms at Leith Walk Elementary held 25, 26, 27 children this year. With about 970 students sardine-packed into a Northeast Baltimore building designed for 600, the staff made do; it hung a homemade curtain to divide a room into two class areas. Yet reading and math test scores leaped at every grade level. "We had to spin the straw into gold," she says, knowing she'll be expected to repeat that feat with fewer resources and potentially larger classes in the fall.

A sweeping new federal education law has Maryland educators scrambling to meet deadlines, notify parents and offer services many never dreamed would be among their responsibilities. Buried in 1,200 pages of the No Child Left Behind Act are startling new obligations: Parents in poverty-stricken schools must be informed if their children lack "highly qualified" teachers. Tutoring and other services must be available to children in failing schools. Parents in "persistently dangerous" schools must be told their kids can transfer to safer grounds.