School Graduation

David McCullough Jr. wants his students to stop expecting that everything will be handed to them. He wants the idea of 'everybody gets a trophy' to end. The Wellesley (Mass.) High School English teacher gave a controversial -- yet somewhat needed -- commencement speech entitled 'You Are Not Special.' He advised students to drop the false sense of achievement paradigm that has emerged in modern society and schools. So the relevance here lies in this: He told his students to not be like the Baltimore Orioles.

Editor: As summer approaches, many high school students are getting ready to graduate and head off to colleges across the nation. As a soon to graduate college student, who attended our own Fallston High School, I would like to suggest a major that is little known but highly rewarding: occupational therapy.  Occupational therapy was established as a profession in 1917 and has continued to grow to this day. Occupational therapists work with...

Baltimore's graduation rate for African-Americans has risen above the national average. That may not be much to brag about, since the average is shamefully low. But the fact that more minority students in Baltimore, including Latinos, are earning a high school diploma might indicate that city school officials are on the right track with many of the high school reforms that were started three years ago. Despite improvements, however, no one should rest...

It wasn't that many years back when some Harford County high schools were organizing graduation ceremonies at relatively large venues outside the county, notably in Towson. The argument for the practice was rather pragmatic: Each graduate was allocated a relatively small number of tickets to graduation ceremonies held in the home high schools, so not all the family members who might want to attend were able to. There were plenty of pragmatic arguments against the practice, as well.

Here's an excerpt of an entry posted Wednesday on The Baltimore Sun's InsideEd blog: America's Promise Alliance, the collaborative founded by Colin and Alma Powell to improve the well-being of youth, has a new report out today with on-time high school graduation rates in the nation's 50 largest cities. In Baltimore, the rate increased 7.7 points over a decade, from 33.8 percent in 1995 to 41.5 percent in 2005. The report, called "Cities in Crisis 2009," did its calculations slightly differently than the oft-cited Education Week rankings, but for Baltimore the results are about the same - and far lower than the city's official graduation rate as reported by the state: 62.6 percent in 2008 and 59 percent in 2005.

At least 83 percent of Maryland's 54,628 public high school seniors have met the requirements on the state exams that are now mandatory for them to graduate, according to data released yesterday. But some districts, especially those with large minority populations, lag far behind. While Baltimore has customarily had the state's lowest test scores, the percentage of seniors who have completed the requirements on the High School Assessments was slightly better in the city than in Prince George's County: 64.9 percent compared with 64.5 percent.

Carroll County Public Schools has announced graduation and certificate ceremonies for the 2005-2006 year. Wednesday at 6 p.m. and 7:45 p.m.: Carroll County Career and Technology Center certificate ceremony, Westminster High School. June 5 at 7 p.m.: Carroll Springs School graduation, Carroll Springs School. June 5 at 7 p.m.: South Carroll High School Career and Technology Center graduation, South Carroll High School. June 6 at 7 p.m.: Gateway School graduation ceremony, Carroll Community College, Scott Center.

"SO, IS SHE handling the graduation preparation well?" my sister asked my son, who is scheduled to graduate from Glen Burnie High June 2. "Do you think she can deal with the event in a mature, joyful manner?Peeved, I began to protest the assumption that I could not be trusted to act in an appropriate fashion, but my words were obliterated by the whimpering sound that escaped my throat instead."Tissue alert!" my son called out as I struggled to regain my composure."If you can't even handle hearing the word `graduation,' what do you plan on doing at the actual ceremony?

After several months of debate, the Baltimore County school board last night adopted high school graduation requirements that exceed state standards in social studies and physical education but are lower than current county requirements.The vote was 5-3.The majority was concerned that students would not get all the lessons they need to become good citizens if the social studies requirement was lowered. They also felt that students would not get enough exercise and would not get in the habit of healthy exercise with a lowered physical education requirement.

Curtis Frizzell has been waiting for this day for a long time.Today, Frizzell and 271 other South Carroll High School graduates will receive their diplomas during pomp and circumstance at Western Maryland College."

Harford Community College's new APGFCU Arena is quickly becoming the venue of choice for many longtime community events, including high school graduations. This June, five of the county's 10 public high schools plan to hold their commencement exercises at the new arena that opened last fall, according to the graduation schedule released Monday by Harford County Public Schools. The arena seats 2,500 for sporting events and up to 3,200 for other activities, according to the HCC website.

The latest statistics from the Maryland State Department of Education show Baltimore City making steady progress toward increasing the number of students who finish high school. Last year city schools awarded 149 more diplomas than in 2011, and the city's 3.3 percentage point decline in dropouts was the largest in the region. That's great news for all the teachers, principals and school staff who have worked so hard to get the city's schools back on track. Since his arrival in Baltimore six years ago, schools CEO Andrés Alonso has made boosting high school graduation rates a priority of his reform effort, and during that period the schools' dropout rate has declined by more than half.

Brenna Doherty's dream of becoming a world-class figure skater has had its share of bumpy landings. They began when Doherty was a freshman at Oakland Mills High in Columbia. After making the finals at junior nationals at ages 13 and 14, Doherty thought she wanted to try being a typical teenager. "When I first entered high school, I wanted to be a part of the Homecoming committee, and all kinds of stuff like that," Doherty, now 18, recalled recently. "I followed my friends and joined some of their clubs, but I definitely decided it wasn't for me. I wanted to go to the ice rink every day and train.

While most children see dream jobs, spouses and freedom in their futures, Brian Bailey saw only death. The autistic boy, who stopped speaking at 18 months, grew up with anxiety about getting older, and his rocky educational track record early on didn't allay his fears. "I was obsessing from the beginning about his future, asking 'What am I going to do?' " said his mother, Jennell Bailey, as she recalled his one week in a Baltimore public school general-education classroom, where she said he wasn't flourishing.

Northwestern High School, a comprehensive, coeducational public high school on Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore City, is a beautiful campus with a diverse student body, offering opportunities for cultural enrichment for all. It has a strong alumni group and a proud legacy. There has been much recent financial investment in enhancing the school. Its notable graduates include former Mayor Sheila Dixon; District Court Judge Jack I. Lesser; District Court Judge Barbara Waxman; City Comptroller Joan Pratt; state Sen. Verna Jones; and Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office.

Harold E. Hackman, a retired salesman and World War II veteran, died Nov. 15 of complications from Parkinson's disease at his daughter's Oakenshawe home. He was 90. Born in York, Pa., he was a graduate of William Penn High School. Family members said that first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was the speaker at his high school graduation. He attended what is now Loyola University Maryland. He joined the Army, served in the medical corps and was stationed in the Aleutian Islands at Dutch Harbor.

IN 1987, John J. Cannell, a West Virginia physician, discovered that all of the states were reporting above-average scores on standardized tests. Cannell called this the "Lake Wobegon effect," after Garrison Keillor's mythical town where "the men are good-looking, the women are strong, and all the children are above average." Cannell's discovery came to mind Monday, when the Education Trust, a Washington-based student advocacy group, said all but three states (Utah, Idaho and Oklahoma)

JERUSALEM - Ori Vainer is a muscular high school pole vaulter who morosely jokes that he doesn't have to worry about the future because he will end up in a military cemetery. Adam Schwartz yearns to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming an army medic, even though his dad warns him of the perils of war. Hamutal Gur, like her fellow high school seniors, no longer goes to movies or cafes. She avoids riding buses. She dutifully calls her parents each time the thud of a bomb and the wail of sirens echo in the city.

Even as relatives and friends held a funeral Monday to mourn a young mother killed by a stray bullet, Baltimore police pushed to solve a spate of killings that has left 10 dead in the past 10 days. Dozens of mourners passed the open casket of LaRelle Ashlyn Amos, the former high school honor student who was killed after a family party in the early morning hours of Sept. 2. Geron Mills, the man Amos had called "the love of my life," placed his hand on his own chest, then on hers. "I took my heart out and put it in there with her," Mills, the father of Amos' 1-year-old son, Geron II, said as he addressed more than 700 people at St. Stephens AME Church in Essex.

Any high school graduate who thinks that college is merely a next step should walk a mile in Gabe Acheson's shoes. When the Park School graduate arrived Thursday at Yale University, he'd walked nearly 400 miles, fulfilling a promise he'd made in his application to the Ivy League school, and to himself, to not just embark on a new adventure but create one. Acheson set out from his Rodgers Forge home on July 29, with a 35-pound backpack, an optimistic...