Progress

Citizens fight back against city's crime The article "Losing the streets" (July 1) may leave the impression that Baltimore residents are not outraged by violent crime - or indeed by all crime. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least in Northeast Baltimore. The HARBEL Community Organization is a coalition of residents and businesses united in trying to keep Northeast Baltimore's many neighborhoods safe and stable. Residents have banded together with HARBEL since 2000 to form the successful Northeast Citizens Patrol.

FireSykesville: Firefighters from Sykesville, Gamber, Winfield, and Liberty Road and Randallstown in Baltimore County responded at 1: 41 p.m. Wednesday to a gas line struck in the 1300 block of Progress Way. Units were out 1 1/2 hours.

THE GOOD News About Black America," was the cover story of a recent issue of Newsweek magazine. The piece was a compendium of encouraging statistics -- black unemployment and unwed motherhood down, education and earnings up. And yet, the report said, this news has gone largely unacknowledged and uncelebrated by black folks.Reminds me of the answer I generally give when someone asks me to sum up racial progress. I tell them we've not come anywhere near as far as many white people would like to believe.

In a sign of continued political pressure on the city courts, state lawmakers have decided to hand over only half of the $17.8 million promised to Baltimore's beleaguered justice system if reforms were made.The leaders of the Senate and House budget committees are sending a letter to Maryland's Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals Robert M. Bell explaining that $8.9 million will be freed up for the justice agencies. The rest will be withheld until a status report on the reform plans is presented to legislators in January.

FiresGamber: Firefighters responded at 9: 15 p.m. Sunday to a woods fire at Mineral Hill and Bollinger Mill roads. Units were out one hour.Sykesville: Firefighters responded at 8: 13 p.m. Sunday to a fire ,, alarm in the 6000 block of Progress Way. Units were out 17 minutes.Sykesville: Firefighters responded at 10: 12 a.m. Saturday to a fire alarm in the 1300 block of Progress Way. Units were out 17 minutes.Pub Date: 11/24/98

His parents see the change every time he plops down on the floor with a book. His teacher notices it when he eagerly raises his hand to sound out an unfamiliar word. Even Wade realizes that something has happened to him in Room 8 this school year."I'm reading," he says, flashing a crooked grin as he looks up from a book about dinosaurs. "I know the words."It's a brand new world for 6-year-old Wade Humphrey.Suddenly, almost as if by magic, the letters all around are starting to make sense.

FireSykesville: Firefighters responded at 9: 12 p.m. Thursday to a fire alarm in the 1300 block of Progress Way. Units were out 17 minutes.Pub Date: 9/28/98

WASHINGTON -- Thirty years ago, after the historic Kerner Commission predicted a deepening racial divide in the United States, an offshoot group is lamenting how true that prediction turned out to be.That's a mistake, in my humble view. I think they should be celebrating how wrong the prediction turned out to be.The Kerner Riot Commission was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson and headed by former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner during a period when the nation was having about 100 civil disturbances a year.

WASHINGTON -- Immunization levels increased significantly in the past three years, to 75 percent of young children from 55 percent, the Clinton administration said yesterday.Donna E. Shalala, secretary of health and human services, said the data showed "real progress -- progress we should all be proud of."But she added that the nation had not achieved the goal set by the Public Health Service: to have 90 percent of 2-year-olds immunized with the full series of recommended vaccines by the year 2000.

A MERE 15 months before graduation, 10,000 high-school juniors in Maryland have made no progress toward getting their high-school diplomas in at least one key area: the state education department's requirement that students fulfill 75 hours community service.After receiving reports last month on how students in each of the state's 24 school systems were faring, state Superintendent Nancy Grasmick's office quickly responded to help school systems that are falling behind. How Maryland, the only state with a community service component in its curriculum, handles these laggards will shape how seriously the requirement is taken.

Entering his second full season as the Orioles' president of baseball operations, Andy MacPhail has presided over a massive rebuilding project that has turned the 40-man roster over by more than 50 percent in one year alone. MacPhail, who is under contract with the Orioles through the 2011 season, recently discussed with The Baltimore Sun his relationship with team owner Peter Angelos, second baseman Brian Roberts' long-term status, the progress of top prospect Matt Wieters and other issues.

The number of failing schools in Maryland is rising, and more than 60 percent of them are in Baltimore, where nearly a third of the schools are in dire need of improvement. A report by the Washington-based Center on Education Policy found that 63 schools in Baltimore were undergoing some form of restructuring because they failed to show adequate progress for two years in a row under the federal No Child Left Behind law. That's a wake-up call for citizens that despite the progress Baltimore has made, including this year's dramatic rise in test scores, much remains to be done.

Two years ago, Woodlawn Middle was the first Baltimore County school to undertake sweeping reforms to stem years of dismal state test results. This year, dozens more students scored above grade level, and nearly twice as many passed the math exam as in 2006. All the teachers at Woodlawn Middle were required in 2006 to reapply for their jobs - a process known as "zero-basing" the staff. Principal Brian W. Scriven said he rehired about three-fourths of the school's teachers, who had to commit to staying at the school for three years and received bonus pay for doing so. "That meant everything to me, that people had the option to either be here or not be here," Scriven said.

Twelve months ago in this space, we humbly welcomed the Orioles' newly hired team president to town with an itemized to-do list. One year into the job, it's time to check on his progress.

Protecting roads, rest stops Legislative wrangling over next year's state budget has produced yet another incredibly bad idea - borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from the state transportation trust fund. This borrowing from Peter to pay Paul was a bad idea when the last governor did it, and it's a bad idea today. Proponents would use the money to plug the revenue loss if the tax on computer services is repealed. In other words, they'd replace one anti-business budget policy with another.

With the administration's long-awaited progress report on Iraq set to be delivered to Congress today, it seems clear that most of the contending arguments regarding the future of U.S. operations in Iraq share the assumption that Iraqi political leaders could settle the conflict if they were determined to do so. Those who support an indefinite commitment believe that forcefully suppressing violence is a precondition for political accommodation among the...

It is not just in Iraq that the political left has an investment in failure. Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise. The old advertising slogan, "Progress is our most important product," has never applied to the left. Whether it is successful black schools in the United States or Third World countries where millions of people have been rising out of poverty in recent years, the left has shown little interest. Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves "progressives."

CLARIFICATION A graphic in Friday's Anne Arundel section may have left a misleading impression about when Brooklyn Park Middle School failed to meet the state's annual benchmarks for student progress. Special education students didn't meet reading benchmarks in the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years. Though those students reached those goals in 2004-2005, black students fell short that year. The school made adequate progress in all areas last year, before falling behind again in two categories this year.

WASHINGTON -- The No Child Left Behind law is leaving too many children behind. Why? Maybe we're setting our standards too high. That startling possibility comes from two University of Chicago economists as Congress begins debate on the reauthorization of the 5-year-old law. At the center of the complicated debate is a simple goal: Every child in the nation should be "proficient" in math and reading by 2014. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal, depending on how high you set the bar for proficient.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration and U.S. military officials predicted yesterday that a key September report would show progress in Iraq but that it would be November before they could judge the success of the troop buildup. The comments - coming a day after congressional Democrats failed to force a change in the U.S. war strategy - were a new indication that the White House planned to seek still more time for its troop buildup to stabilize the situation in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said by teleconference from Baghdad that the military would produce the report on time as required by Congress.