School Graduation

Memorial Day weekend is considered the traditional start of summer, but for more than 2,500 Harford County students, summer won't begin until high school is officially over - forever. And after weeks of studying and exams, that time has come. Graduation Week 2012 is upon us. Harford Community College led the way with its commencement exercises on May 17. The senior students at the John Archer School will graduate in ceremonies beginning at 1:15 p.m. Friday, June 1 at the school.

Maryland's bid to become the first state to require community service for high school graduation hit a snag yesterday as some state Board of Education members wondered whether local systems could administer the proposal."

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.

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.

Just about everyone agrees raising the standards of American schools is a good idea. But educators don't have a firm fix on what that means.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emphasis was on making sure no one got through high school without mastering fundamental reading and math skills. Maryland's Project Basic, for example, established "functional" tests in writing and citizenship as well as math and reading. About three-quarters of the states also adopted minimum competency tests. And there were signs of improvement, notably a closing of the gap in achievement between black and white students.

Some Baltimore area school officials reacted with an air of resignation yesterday to a pioneering new rule making community service a condition of obtaining a high school diploma."

Baltimore County schools will have to pay $115,000 to reimburse the state for rewriting the Maryland Functional Test in math after an east-side school lost four test booklets. State officials had to throw out the version of the statewide test that was given last spring after exam questions went missing from Stemmers Run Middle School in Essex. The breach of security means 77 new questions have to be written for the test, which is typically reused in a later year. The test is given in middle school, but passing is a requirement for high school graduation.

Maryland would become the first state in the nation to require community service as a high school graduation requirement under a plan that awaits approval by the state school board today.But the pioneering proposal faces heated debate by the board, as opponents question its wisdom and educational value.The plan is part of a sweeping revision of the state's high school graduation requirements, effective for incoming ninth-grade students in the 1993-1994 school year.Other changes would require students to take algebra and geometry, technology education and a detailed menu of social studies courses.

The Carroll Board of Education has ranked an initiative to ease requirements to become a teacher as a "low priority," saying there were too many uncertainties in a state proposal.The Maryland Board of Education plan, part of a package of 15 proposals to improve state schools, is one of two the Carroll board has decided to rank as a "low priority" when it meets with the county's General Assembly delegation next month to develop a legislative package.The other proposal, extending the school calendar from 180 to 200 days, was given a low ranking after a board discussion in November.

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote that ''all men are created equal.'' Ten years later he and many of the co-framers of theConstitution continued to participate in the enslavement of Africans in America. . . . Two nations.In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education in its report, ''A Nation at Risk,'' declared that ''Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities.