Van Bokkelen

As they looked ahead to critical state tests this week, pupils at Van Bokkelen Elementary School in Severn considered where they came from and where they're going at the school's recent African American Heritage Night. A majority of the children are African-American. They need "to realize they come from kings and queens," organizer and instructional computer technician Betty Ann Esposito told the parents and children who gathered in the auditorium last week. The celebration is the largest of several heritage and cultural events at the school each year.

Anne Arundel County school officials promised yesterday to flood Van Bokkelen Elementary School in Severn with resources, staff and other assistance to get it off the state's potential takeover list.Joseph Foster, the school board president, pledged a "SWAT team-like" approach to "make sure students have what they need."The school board will increase the number of teachers and reduce the number of students at the school, which is 20 percent over capacity, in an effort to raise test scores, he said.

This time three years ago, Van Bokkelen Elementary school was trying to shed its title of Anne Arundel's lowest-performing school. State education officials had labeled it as in need of "restructuring." Its Achilles' heel was fifth-grade math, where the school consistently fell below state benchmarks. This year, fifth-grade math is one of the areas the school is most proud of, with the number of students passing the state test jumping 18 percentage points from last year. The school of 430 students also made solid gains in third-, fourth- and fifth-grade reading.

About 200 Van Bokkelen Elementary School students stayed after school yesterday -- all in good fun.They had their first chance to shoot baskets, color and play board games, Foosball and pool on the opening day of the Van Bokkelen Boys & Girls Club in Severn."

All eyes are on Carol S. Parham.State and local officials are promising to help the Van Bokkelen Elementary School community. But first, the Anne Arundel County schools superintendent must come up with a plan to satisfy state officials who targeted the failing school for possible takeover."

"The future is at our fingertips. . . . This is the age of computers," fifth-grade students sang in celebration of their entrance into the "information age."More than 100 elementary school students, school officials and business representatives gathered Wednesday night to celebrate the first "Celebration of Family Literacy" of the public schools' Family Literacy Program.The program, a joint effort of school officials, area businesses and residents, recently secured a donation of 20 portable notebook computers from San Jose, Cal.-based Librex Computer Systems Inc. Students from Jessup, Van Bokkelen and Overlook elementaries, all in the Severn area, will be allowed to take the computers home to complete their homework, help their reading and math skills, and send messages to their teachers.

ONE OF THE arguments being used by local proponents of year-round schools is that they could help troubled institutions such as Severn's Van Bokkelen Elementary, where social problems breed poor pupil performance. Without a doubt, a year-round calendar or even longer school days which would extend the calendar beyond the state-mandated 180 days ought to be considered for Van Bokkelen.Schools in similarly impoverished, transient communities, such as Robert W. Coleman Elementary in West Baltimore, have found that year-round schooling promotes stability and cuts down on "summer learning loss," especially with remedial students, who account for a disproportionately large percentage of the population at such schools.

WHILE HOWARD County took little time dispatching with the year-round school issue, across the border in Anne Arundel the issue is still kicking. The Howard school board drove a stake through the idea of year-round schools so swiftly and surely that Sen. Christopher J. McCabe recently withdrew his bill calling for a voter referendum on the topic, which some people viewed as unnecessary piling on.But in Anne Arundel, a task force is recommending that individual...

AT A TIME when we have become accustomed to hearing about falling test scores, Anne Arundel County's results from the Maryland Schools Performance Assessment Program were pleasant news indeed.In the most recent round of testing of third-, fifth- and eighth-graders, scores improved significantly countywide. Anne Arundel was, in fact, the only large jurisdiction in the state to show significant improvement from last year to this year.In the annual battery of language usage, reading, writing, mathematics, science and social studies exams, about 47 percent of students met the standards in these subjects, and in other important criteria such as attendance and dropout rates.

Fifty-one Anne Arundel County elementary and middle schools have reaped more than $155,000 in cash prizes from the state for doing well on last year's standardized tests - a final bounty from a rewards program that is fizzling out because of a lack of funds. No matter how well pupils did on the Maryland School Assessments last month, most schools won't see a penny for those efforts next year. There will be no new federal funds to support the state's School Performance Recognition Program, which began in 1997.