Satisfactory

It's become a cliche whenever a monstrous crime is revealed. Someone will always say: "He's the last person you would think would do something like that."This time, the speaker is attorney Bill Porter and the subject is his client, a 43-year-old Baltimore man who pleaded guilty Monday to repeatedly raping his three daughters during much of their adolescent years, resulting in at least five pregnancies that ended in abortions. His 43-year-old wife also pleaded guilty to rape for her complicity in the abuse.

Maryland students continue to improve their marks on the state's annual tests, but only four of 10 pupils are performing satisfactorily, according to the state Education Department's 1995 report card. Educational, political and business leaders -- including U.S. Education Secretary Richard W. Riley -- gathered yesterday at a news conference to praise the improved test scores as evidence that Maryland school reform is heading in the right direction. But they acknowledged that the state's schools have a long way to go. The Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests -- given the past five years to all third- , fifth- and eighth-grade pupils -- are intended to assess students' thinking skills.

I really like Outtakes, a new upscale carryout and catering operation in Cockeysville. The food was terrific, the service couldn't have been friendlier and the chef, Donald Spence, lovingly walked me through his menu. I do have a question, though. What the heck is this place doing in a strip mall anchored by a tire outlet? Just another one of those odd juxtapositions of suburban living, I suppose. Despite its somewhat incongruous location, Outtakes Celebrity Caterers could have a bright future.

Rebounding from a one-year slip, Maryland's public school pupils resumed their pattern of small but steady gains on the state's mandatory annual exams. But every school system in the state still fell significantly short of the statewide achievement goal long set for this year. Scores on the spring's battery of MSPAP tests rose in 19 of 24 school systems, though they slipped in two of the Baltimore area's six districts - Carroll and Harford counties. The 3-year-old reform effort in Baltimore City continued to show notable results, with pupils posting the sixth-largest increase in Maryland this year - marking an almost 50 percent gain since 1997 when a landmark city-state partnership began to pump tens of millions of extra dollars into the district.

T. Rowe Price Group Inc., which has been cutting expenses in the face of a sour stock market, said yesterday that its second-quarter profit fell 26 percent as assets under management declined and the company took a $7 million charge related to an acquisition. Price, a Baltimore-based mutual fund company, made $51.2 million in the quarter that ended June 30, or 40 cents per diluted share, compared with $69.3 million, or 54 cents, in the second quarter of 2000. The write off of goodwill associated with the acquisition of T. Rowe Price International in August 2000 shaved 5 cents per diluted share from earnings.

Thousands of Baltimore's public school children would be at risk of being held back if the school board votes tonight, as expected, to set tougher standards for elementary and middle schoolers to be promoted from one grade to the next.School administrators will recommend to the board that it require pupils in grades one through eight to score at least 70 percent on a reading and math test created by the district and to have satisfactory grades before being promoted.Eighth-graders would also have to pass functional tests in reading, math and writing before they could go on to high school.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush broke his public silence yesterday about Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting of a hunting companion, declaring that Cheney had delivered "a very strong and powerful explanation" of the incident. The sheriff's office looking into the shooting said it had ended its investigation and no charges would be filed. Bush said he had no complaints with the manner in which Cheney handled the disclosure of the shooting, which came a day after the incident occurred. But asked whether he was "satisfied with the timing," the president said: "I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave."

Howard County students again outperformed their peers in Maryland on the state's annual achievement exams for schools, but eighth-grade scores dropped in a majority of subject areas for the second year in a row, county school officials announced yesterday.The overall score for Howard students on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) was slightly better than last year's: 57.9 percent of students achieved a satisfactory or higher on the 1997 tests -- given in the spring -- compared with 56.9 the year before.

LOUISVILLE, Neb. - The election Nov. 7 was one of the closest ever. Voters were evenly split. The outcome was still in question after Election Night. And history will praise two candidates for moving with grace and civility to reach a fair solution. The voters in Louisville (eastern Nebraskans call it LEWIS-ville) expected to know shortly after the polls closed who would represent them on the City Council. But Gregory Manley, who works for a sewer and paving contractor in Omaha, and Cletus Petrzilka, who was retired from the electric company, were in a race that was too close to call.

The company that owns the tanker that exploded on Interstate 95 this week received a "deficient" accident rating from a federal safety agency because its trucks have been involved in a high number of crashes in the past few years. Texas-based Petro-Chemical Transport's 300 trucks were involved in 30 accidents in the past year, though none as serious as the explosion Tuesday that killed four people and shut down part of the East Coast's major thoroughfare for four hours. The number of accidents led to a rating of 97 on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's 100-point scale, on which 100 is the worst score and zero the best.