Middle School Students

It starts with a prompt from the ballroom dancing instructor, and the kids, arm in arm and elbows up, miraculously transform into elegant fox-trotters. The middle school students at Crossroads School are part of a program based on Mad Hot Ballroom, a documentary about dancing teams at New York City schools. The school in Fells Point takes kids from impoverished neighborhoods in East Baltimore and helps turn their academic performances around.

Jeannine DiPasquale watched as several middle school students struggled to lift fingerprints off glasses, mugs and a compact disc case. To demonstrate the proper technique, she pressed her finger on a glass and lightly brushed the print with cocoa powder. She pressed tape onto it and then peeled it off and stuck it on a piece of white paper. The result was more of a brown smudge than the swirled loops and lines she had hoped to show them. "TV always makes it look much easier than it is," said DiPasquale, chairwoman of Educational Talent Search's oversight committee.

Crofton Middle School students were sent home early yesterday after school officials suspected there was another gas leak in the building.Students were dismissed about 10: 15 a.m., shortly before workers from the school maintenance division, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and the state fire marshal's office determined there was no leak. It was the fourth time in two weeks that students had been evacuated because of fumes.School officials said maintenance workers had replaced the motor on a faulty heating unit that led to evacuations last week.

THERE'S NO ROOM for doing things wrong in this profession. Sometimes people do die. But that doesn't keep you from doing your best effort," said Dr. Ben S. Carson Sr., director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.He was speaking to about 400 elementary and middle school students, including 40 sixth-graders from North Carroll Middle School, in Baltimore Monday.Carson gives a half-dozen motivational lectures each year to students at Turner Auditorium on the campus of the hospital.

LONG REACH High School Principal David Bruzga congratulated 36 students who are now members of the National Honor Society at a Feb. 12 ceremony with all the pomp and circumstance due the honor.The school's Madrigals sang, and music was provided by the Strings Orchestra, directed by Debbie Varga, and the Jazz Ensemble, directed by Matthew Dubbs, during the "pinning" ceremony.Senior class Vice President Gregg Matusewitch introduced the candidates.Theda Mayer, National Honor Society adviser, added her congratulations.

Students, teachers and parents say the school board cut out the "heart and soul" of gifted-and-talented education and ensured that middle schools will be a little more boring and mediocre when it ended a beloved independent study program last week.School board members, trying to slash $9 million from a school budget county officials rejected as bloated, voted reluctantly but unanimously 7-0 to drop the Renzoulli Enrichment Model program. By doing so, they will save $950,000.Program supporters can only think of what they will lose.

Poet Alan Britt asks 20 third-graders at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School to feel the Spanish guitar music of Ottmar Liebert spilling from a small stereo, so they can describe it using their five senses and figures of speech.As the first song, "Barcelona Nights," begins, the childrenexpress their feelings by dancing, clapping and moving to the beat. Britt smiles as a conga line forms, the students parading between groups of desks while their teacher, Marion Quickley Johnson, claps in time.

The Kings Contrivance Community Association invites middle school students who live in the village to enter a contest by submitting photographs that capture the beauty and history of the neighborhood.A single photo or a collage, in either black and white or color, may be submitted.The photo must be shot in Kings Contrivance and be the original work of the student.Entries must be submitted to Amherst House, 7251 Eden Brook Drive, Columbia, no later than 5 p.m. March 16.The winner will receive a $50 cash prize, and have his or her work displayed at Amherst House.

SCHOOL construction is perhaps the most expensive and frustrating public works program run by county government.No matter how carefully the school system plans, a mismatch always seems to exist between students and classrooms.South River High has about half the number of students it's designed to hold. Annapolis Middle, with about 500 students, operates at about 25 percent of capacity.By contrast, too many students attend Fort Smallwood Elementary, operating at 150 percent of capacity, and Odenton Elementary, at 142 percent.

Two alert Montgomery County middle school students thwarted what authorities say was a planned bombing attack against their principal yesterday after they saw classmates showing off a crude explosive device on a crowded school bus.After being tipped off by the students, Principal Alan Stein opened a locker in a second floor hallway, peered inside a book bag and saw wires. He immediately pulled a fire alarm and evacuated 750 students and teachers from Rocky Hill Middle School in Damascus.Montgomery County firefighters determined that the bomb was real and powerful enough, had it gone off, to injure people standing 200 feet away.

The first comprehensive study of the nation's charter schools was published recently by the Center for Research and Educational Outcomes at Stanford University. The findings make it clear that students in traditional public schools do as well academically or surpass their charter school counterparts. According to the study of charter school students, 37 percent scored significantly lower in reading and math than similar students in traditional public schools; 46 percent were comparable to the local public schools; and 17 percent showed better results than students in the traditional schools.

About 110 sixth- and seventh-graders at Chesapeake Bay Middle School have the option of continuing at their current school until high school under a plan approved by the Anne Arundel County school board. The board voted to approve the superintendent's redistricting plan, which would return middle-schoolers from the Riviera Beach Elementary School area to George Fox Middle School but give sixth- and seventh-graders at Chesapeake Bay the option of remaining at the school. The board voted for the school department to provide transportation, despite protests from some board members over spending more money when the school department has an estimated $54 million shortfall.

Five years after Maryland increased spending by $2 billion to provide greater academic equity, students have made remarkable gains in reading and math, according to a report given to the Maryland General Assembly yesterday by an outside consultant. For every additional $1,000 spent per student, there was a significant increase in pass rates in both subjects. The improvement was twice as great for middle school students as for those in elementary grades. The report by MGT of America also confirms what most educators have intuitively believed for decades: Money invested in teachers appears to pay off. About 80 percent of additional local and state funding has been spent on the teaching staff - raising salaries, hiring more to reduce class sizes and requiring a highly qualified teacher in every classroom.

The state Board of Education's decision to let some students graduate in 2009 without passing the mandatory high school assessments tests is a bow to practical realities, but it shouldn't become the norm or weaken Maryland's commitment to higher standards. This is the first academic year in which the tests are mandatory for graduation, and a relative handful of the state's 55,000 seniors are in danger of not getting their diplomas in June because they either haven't taken the tests or have failed in one or more subjects.

Schools chief Andres Alonso secured approval from the city Board of Education last night to create nine combined middle/high schools next fall, adding to the half-dozen combined schools that recently opened. Over four years, Alonso wants to establish a total of two dozen such schools that would operate independently under outside partnerships with leading educational groups. Although middle school students are sometimes placed with elementary students, it is less common to combine the older grades.

Sixth-grade math was a lesson in time management for Jonathan Swann. His second-period advanced math class at Chesapeake Bay Middle School started about 9:40 or so. The teacher got everyone settled and engaged in the lesson, and about 40 minutes later, it was time for lunch. After eating, it was another 40 minutes of math. "It's just boring to sit there for 86 minutes and just write stuff and listen," Jonathan said. "Everybody was just getting ready for lunch. [The teacher] was trying to write on the overhead and tell us something.

The drastic, across-the-board improvements in the performance of Maryland students on state standardized achievement tests are encouraging on many levels. They continue a steady, five-year rise in test scores statewide. The gap between white and black students' scores has halved since 2003, when the state began administering the tests to gauge schools' progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. And the biggest gains were in Baltimore City and Prince George's County, both jurisdictions with large poor and minority student populations.

Middle school students at the Crossroads School near Fells Point were evaluated by teachers every single day last school year, with the results driving the next day's instruction. At East Baltimore's Fort Worthington Elementary, about a quarter of the school's parents turned out for MSA Family Fun Night and sampled questions from the Maryland School Assessments. Alexander Hamilton Elementary, situated in a West Baltimore neighborhood that the principal calls "gang-infested," started a gifted education program last year to challenge students to learn beyond their grade levels.

Middle schoolers need longer school days, specially trained teachers and more challenging academics if schools officials hope to reverse a decades-long trend of sagging achievement rates, according to a report presented yesterday to the State Board of Education. The report included 16 recommendations from a panel of teachers, administrators and psychologists. State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick convened the committee two years ago to look for ways to improve education in grades six through eight.

Sam Macer was the kind of kid who, to put it kindly, didn't care to conform. "I don't know how many middle schools he's been kicked out of," said Belinda Chance, the art teacher and chess coach at West Baltimore's Dickey Hill Elementary/Middle School, to which Sam, surly and argumentative, was admitted last year. "He was very angry. He yelled at teachers. He's yelled at me before." When Sam, now 13, asked to join Chance's chess club, she almost didn't let him in. But she reconsidered.