Most parents of public school children throughout America know that public school oversight and management does not exist. For one reason or another, the public has no say over the spending of public money on education, and schools are failing our children.

Is this a case of too little management, too late, part of the "let's just close the schools that fail so that no one can hold anyone accountable" philosophy, or will consolidation or closing of the failing schools benefit the children? We think more effort should be made to keep schools open, with proper auditing of school district books and oversight. Isn't a 'school culture' important?
Betsy Combier

Closure Plan Draws Heated Objections
Fear of Losing Students to Charters Cited
By V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 2, 2006; C07

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They crammed into a musty fifth-floor room without air conditioning for 3 1/2 hours yesterday to give the D.C. Board of Education a piece of their minds about a proposal to close or merge an estimated 30 schools.

The crowd of about 100 parents, teachers and activists filled all the seats in the school board chambers, and nearly 40 of them took a turn launching a three-minute attack.

Some criticized specific elements of the proposal, such as one that would generate money for the cash-strapped system by leasing space to fast-growing charter schools. And others offered impassioned arguments about why their schools should be spared from the chopping block.

"I'm upset that Sharpe [Health School] is even being considered," said Cynthia Bland, who has a daughter at the special education facility in Northwest Washington.

"These are God's ambassadors from Heaven," she said. "We need to take care of children with special needs. They matter, too."

The hearing was intended to solicit feedback from the public on Superintendent Clifford B. Janey's draft criteria for closing schools. After the session, dozens of people stayed for another 2 1/2 hours, dividing into focus groups in two ninth-floor conference rooms, where they used hand-held devices to register their opinions on the nuts and bolts of the draft. Janey plans to use the data to devise the final version of the criteria.

But the earlier session generated the most sparks.

The speakers expressed dismay over a school board decision to eliminate 1 million square feet of excess space by Aug. 28 and 2 million more two years later. The overall reduction would be achieved by consolidating and closing buildings.

Enrollment in the District's school system has shrunk by about 10,000 students in the past five years, and officials have said the cuts are necessary to adjust space accordingly. Janey is planning to list the first group of schools this month and the second group next month.

Although the school system has not identified any schools, Janey recently set enrollment standards that could leave about 70 schools -- nearly half those in the system -- vulnerable to consolidation or closure. To be considered "viable," an elementary school must enroll 320 students, a middle school 360 and a high school 600.

School officials said money saved from the reduction of space -- an amount that hasn't been determined -- would be invested in the classroom.

Janey tried to allay fears yesterday, emphasizing that no decision has been made on which schools to cut. "You can influence how the work gets done to a standard of quality that you can support," he said.

Some speakers said that not enough care and time was being devoted to the plan and that they feared it would accelerate the departure of students from the traditional public schools into public charter schools, which now enroll 17,500 students in 51 facilities.

Gina Arlotto, co-founder and president of Save Our Schools, an advocacy group that opposes charter schools, said, "The result will be to destabilize the system, driving more students out further."

Absalom Jordan, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 8 and a member of the restructuring team at Simon Elementary School in Southeast, blamed the school board's out-of-boundary policy for the high number of schools with low enrollment in his community that are susceptible to closure.

"If programs, dollars and (high-quality) facilities were provided, we wouldn't have to go out of the ward," Jordan said.

Numerous speakers discussed the part of Janey's proposal that encourages a dozen underenrolled schools to voluntarily consolidate.

Sherrie Britt, a teacher at Adams Elementary School in Northwest, said she opposed discussion about her school consolidating with nearby Oyster Elementary. "We don't consider the merger as a viable solution to low enrollment," she said.

But Sarah Johnson, who serves on the restructuring team at Adams and also opposes the idea, nevertheless said a collaboration could save the school and help children from Southeast who attend it.

"Do you put them back into neighborhood schools that are not adequate?" Johnson asked.

Principals Maneuver Over D.C. Closings
Officials Attempting To Combine Schools
By V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 1, 2006; B01

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Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School in Northeast Washington is in survival mode.

Recognizing that the school's large, empty spaces make it a prime candidate for closure, Ludlow-Taylor Principal Donald Presswood pitched the idea of a merger with five counterparts in a similar predicament. After they rejected his offer, he said, he approached a principal of a special education school who endorsed his idea of relocating 100 emotionally disturbed students to his building.

Presswood is trying to control Ludlow-Taylor's destiny and stave off a decision by the school system to close it. "We're fighting for our lives," he said.

Ludlow-Taylor is among about a dozen underenrolled schools that might take advantage of an offer by Superintendent Clifford B. Janey to consolidate to avoid being closed. Janey, grappling with an enrollment that has declined by 10,000 students over the past 10 years, is scheduled by the end of the month to identify how he will eliminate about 1 million square feet of excess space -- the equivalent of 10 schools. The space must be eliminated by August. Next month, he is scheduled to outline how he will pare another 2 million square feet -- an estimated 20 schools -- by summer 2008.

The Board of Education will hold a hearing today to solicit public comment on Janey's draft criteria for closing schools. He has not produced a specific plan for closing schools or estimated the amount of money consolidation would save. Whatever amount is saved, school officials say, would be invested into classrooms at remaining schools.

The schools in preliminary consolidation discussions offer an early glance at the potential benefits -- as well as the angst, chaos and pitfalls -- that are likely to be encountered when the lists roll out.

School activists and parents are wondering: Will money be saved from the consolidations and closing be worth the upheaval? Will the best pairings be made? Will the system have time to reassign displaced students, teachers and principals and prepare buildings for the consolidations by opening day, Aug. 28?

"The school board cut its own throat by saying it will cut 1 million square feet of space in a few months," said Iris Toyer, co-chair of Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools. "Like everything else in D.C., it seems to be ill-conceived."

Nancy Huvendick, director of D.C. programs for 21st Century School Fund, an organization that studies school facilities issues, said consolidations and closings "take a lot of time. It's hard to do it quickly. You need time to create a partnership [with the parents and teachers] and to think things through."

One issue erupting in the schools engaged in voluntary consolidation talks is a feeling among parents and teachers that they are left behind as principals drive the process.

Janey and his staff convened a meeting of principals, largely from underenrolled schools, in late February and encouraged them to consider consolidation. The principals were told that the consolidation could not only avert a closure but could benefit underenrolled schools by generating more revenue and more specialized staff such as librarians and music, art and physical education teachers in the one that remained open.

"We were told as a group of principals that we need to think proactively," said Donna M.N. Edwards, principal of Webb Elementary in Northeast, which is considering taking in students from nearby Wheatley Elementary. "When it was presented to me, I agreed to it. I thought it would be a good idea."

But Christine Clawson, a member of the local school restructuring team at Wheatley, whose principal died recently, said staff and parents were not involved in any discussions with Webb on the proposal.

Even though Wheatley is underenrolled, Clawson said, she is opposed to consolidating with Webb. Wheatley students, she said, have been bused to another school for about three years waiting for their building to be renovated.

The renovation work at Wheatley "should be done," Clawson said. "A lot of children want to go to their school and not Webb."

George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, said Janey needs to outline as soon as possible a plan for transferring displaced students and teachers.

He also said he is concerned that a plan to hire teachers to replace several hundred uncertified ones who might be laid off in June could adversely affect teachers displaced from closed schools. "They have to understand that teachers already employed have to be placed before they hire new teachers," he said.

Janey and four of his deputies said existing plans governing the transfer of students and teachers will be used for the school reassignments.

They said they are also studying a range of issues -- including how much money would be saved by closing schools; how the consolidated schools would be set up; and how staff would be deployed -- and will develop a plan soon.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions that we probably have not yet anticipated. That's why it's important for us to have a conversation both ways," said Board of Education Vice President Carolyn N. Graham.

"The school board is confident Dr. Janey will be able to fulfill the requirement" of eliminating the space, she said. "It's important for this community to invest faith and confidence in Dr. Janey and his administration."

Lawmakers Vote to Block Takeover of Schools in Baltimore
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NY TIMES

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Democratic leaders in the Maryland Legislature pushed through a bill yesterday to block the state schools superintendent from removing from the city's operation 11 Baltimore middle and high schools with long records of low achievement.

The move, showing the sensitivity of education as an election year issue, was made two days after the superintendent, Nancy S. Grasmick, had won the approval of the school board to seize control of four Baltimore high schools with chronically dismal test scores and to order the city to find charter groups, universities or for-profit companies to run seven middle schools with similarly poor records.

Although Dr. Grasmick had state and federal law behind her, city officials and community leaders accused her of using the law to support Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, at a time Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore, a Democrat, is seeking his party's nomination to run for governor.

Public opinion polls suggest that Mr. O'Malley would beat the governor in a two-way race.

Dr. Grasmick also came under heavy criticism for failing to advise city officials of the takeover beforehand.

It was the first time that any state had used the federal No Child Left Behind Act to wrest control of failing schools from a district.

The battle with city officials also illustrates the potential political fallout that states' schools chiefs risk as they use the more muscular options of the law for schools that fail to improve over many years.

The moratorium on taking control, an amendment to a schools construction bill, would bar the state from initiating any actions toward a takeover until June 2007. The votes in the heavily Democratic legislature were largely along party lines, with Democrats winning large enough margins in the two houses to override an expected veto from Mr. Ehrlich.

In a statement, he accused lawmakers of "fighting for the status quo at the expense of Baltimore city schoolchildren."

Mayor O'Malley portrayed the Baltimore schools as improving.

"The fact of the matter is that after 30 years of decline we're making faster progress than any other jurisdiction in the state," he said. "This is not the time to pull the rug out from reform efforts that are starting to work."

He called the takeover "a blatant political move."

Dr. Grasmick, who spent Friday defending her actions to lawmakers, said she was not completely surprised by the response. Friday was the last day that the Legislature could act to block the takeover and still have time to override a veto.

The bill reached the governor's desk just minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline.

"I think it's unconscionable," said Dr. Grasmick, who has been superintendent since 1992, under three governors. She denied any political motivation.

"There comes a time when you have to think about what is the right thing to do," she said.

If lawmakers indeed override an expected veto, she predicted "business as usual for another year."

She said that other state superintendents who considered using the No Child Left Behind law to wrest control of chronically failing schools should anticipate the same firestorm that she faced.

Officials of the federal Education Department appeared to lend Dr. Grasmick moral support, but could offer little else. Although the federal law gives states the authority to take over schools, it does not address extraordinary measures like legislative intervention carried out on Friday.

"Leadership requires talking about the right things and doing the right things, and sometimes you take your knocks when you do that," said Henry Johnson, the federal assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education.

March 30, 2006
Maryland Acts to Take Over Failing Baltimore Schools
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NYTIMES

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BALTIMORE, March 29  Invoking the federal No Child Left Behind law, the Maryland school board voted today to take control of four Baltimore high schools with chronically low achievement and strip the City of Baltimore from direct operation of seven more middle schools.

In approving the request of Maryland's superintendent of schools, Nancy S. Grasmick, a longtime advocate of the school standards movement, the state board took the most drastic remedy provided under No Child Left Behind, one reserved for schools that have failed to show sufficient progress for at least five years.

It is the first time that a state has moved to take over schools under the federal law, according to the federal Education Department, which praised the vote. One of the board's 12 members opposed the state takeover of the high schools, and one member was absent.

By taking a step that other states have so far taken pains to avoid, Maryland guaranteed that its experience would be watched closely by other states, many of which are likely to face the same tough decisions in responding to failing schools as the law's testing regime expands in coming years. The takeover goes into effect in July 2007.

"Clearly, Maryland is leading the way in terms of state actions in dealing with schools with low test scores," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, which has closely tracked state responses to No Child Left Behind. He said the state would now have the onus of showing that it could bring improvement. "The buck stops with the state now," Mr. Jennings said.

The state and city have long struggled over Baltimore's troubled school system, which has been plagued by poor test scores and deteriorating buildings.

The high schools designated for takeover here  one with only 1.4 percent of the students passing the state biology exam and another with only 10 percent passing the algebra exam have failed to show improvement for nine years, said Ronald Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy. That is longer than No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law, has even been in existence.

In addition to the high schools, seven middle schools are to be taken away from the direct operation of the Baltimore city school district, and will be reopened as charter schools or taken over by other entities  universities, nonprofit groups or for-profit private companies  but will remain under city supervision.

City officials and community leaders were enraged by the move, accusing the schools chief of bad faith, of failing to deliver needed resources and of playing politics.

"This is unprecedented," said Mayor Martin O'Malley. "No other state superintendent in the history of the country has ever tried to do what Dr. Grasmick is trying to do in this election year." Mr. O'Malley vowed that the city would do all it could to fight the takeover, "whatever it takes."

The issue is particularly charged in Maryland, where the governor's race is likely to pit Mayor O'Malley, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, against Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican. In his last race, Mr. Ehrlich asked Dr. Grasmick to be his running mate, an offer she turned down.

Mr. Peiffer, the deputy superintendent, said politics were not a factor. "Some of these schools have been failing for 12 years under three different governors," he said. "Regardless of when you do this, there's going to be somebody, there'll be a governor, there'll be a mayor and there'll be a cry of politics. What you have to do is to do the right thing."

The No Child Left Behind law seeks to have all students reach proficiency in reading and mathematics by 2014 and threatens public schools with sanctions if they do not adequately improve performance. Last year, 27 percent of schools in the nation failed to make adequate progress, according to preliminary Education Department figures.

While Baltimore is roughly on a par with many other struggling urban systems, standardized tests have been in used there since well before No Child Left Behind became law in 2002. That has created a longer record of school performance.

"Not too many states came into No Child Left Behind with as many schools involved in intervention as Maryland did," Mr. Peiffer said. As states build longer records of testing, he said, "they are going to have similar discussions about alternative governance."

Maryland's action is not the first time that a state has stepped in to take control of troubled schools. Ohio officials for a time took over the Cleveland school district, and New Jersey has taken control of schools in Newark in the past.

But this is the first time that a state has taken over schools using No Child Left Behind, which sets targets for improvement and lays out stiff penalties for falling short of those goals. Ray Simon, deputy federal education secretary, said Maryland "should be commended for taking historic and decisive action on the side of Baltimore students."

In Arkansas, where officials invoked state law to take over three districts for fiscal mismanagement, the schools commissioner, Ken James, said he might make the same decisions as Dr. Grasmick in a few years. Several schools have shown inadequate improvement for four years now, he noted.

"If they consistently show no improvement and are not able to turn the tide, that will be one of the potential situations that we face here in a couple of years, " Mr. James said.

METROPOLITAN DESK
From Baltimore's Streets to Kenya and Back
By EMMA DALY, NY TIMES
Published: August 31, 2005

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BALTIMORE - In a city plagued by poverty where African-American boys are left behind more often than other children, a film documenting the unusual education of four has inspired the mayor to seek solutions to Baltimore's educational problems.
'The Boys of Baraka,' an 84-minute documentary, tells the story of four middle-school boys at risk of dropping out, who leave home and head to Baraka, a boarding school set up in rural Kenya by the Abell Foundation of Baltimore to nurture boys failing in the city's traditional middle schools.

Mayor Martin O'Malley, who watched the film at the request of his wife, a judge, was moved to schedule a special screening for his cabinet, and to pursue a similar intensive program back home.

In the movie, a Baraka recruiter tells potential students that they face three options: an orange jumpsuit and 'nice bracelets'; a black suit and a brown box; or a black gown, a cap and a high school diploma. If they want the last, she says, they should sign up for Kenya.

The film follows four 12- and 13-year-old boys as they travel 10,000 miles to a life without GameBoys, girls or gunfire. Under adult supervision 24 hours a day but free to play outside like the children they still are, they learn how to navigate the world beyond the street corner.

Halfway through their two-year stretch at Baraka, however, the experiment is suspended in 2003 after the foundation becomes concerned about security, and the boys are told they must return to school in Baltimore.

In the scene that most touched the mayor, the boys discuss the news and one of them, Romesh Vance, 13, says, 'I think all our lives are going to be bad now.' He asks, 'Why can't we do it in Baltimore?'

And so, Mayor O'Malley said, 'We've been trying to get one of those going.'

The city is seeking partners to try to replicate the Baraka environment closer to home, a goal shared by the Abell Foundation. Both have consulted the Seed Foundation, which runs a public boarding school for urban children in Washington.

But Baltimore, which has opened several new small high schools, improved test results in elementary schools and lowered the dropout rate over the last few years, is not yet ready to open a public boarding school.

'There are a lot of misperceptions: some people think we're trying to create a lockdown facility for young people,' the mayor said. 'Some people think that suburban kids don't get free boarding schools, so why are we creating free boarding schools for inner city kids?'

The answer, he said, is simple: 'Because of the cost to all of us in society of burying the number of children that we bury every year, and brutalizing the number of children that we brutalize every year.'

It is hard to exaggerate the difficulties facing the boys -- according to the movie, 76 percent of African-American boys in Baltimore drop out, some before they enter high school, though the state says 45 percent graduated last year.

Almost the only father seen onscreen is in prison; one mother is a drug addict in and out of jail, her place taken by a loving but ailing grandmother. Another mother describes witnessing a murder outside her house while her son is indoors.

According to the Abell Foundation, which spends $12 million a year to address the problems of poverty in Baltimore, the city has higher rates of poverty than the average American city, as well as higher rates of drug addiction. The foundation president, Robert Embry, said that 82 percent of African-American children in the city are born out of wedlock and that there were 32,000 drug arrests last year.

Over the three and a half years that the film's directors, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, were making the Baraka movie, several of the boys appeared in the HBO show 'The Wire,' which depicts life on Baltimore's streets. 'Our characters started selling crack on 'The Wire,' Ms. Ewing said. 'They were working so hard not to become drug dealers, so instead they played them on TV.'

Mr. Embry set up the Baraka school in 1996 after middle-school principals told him that the greatest help they could get would be to remove the 5 or 10 percent of students who disrupted class for the majority and who were routinely but fruitlessly suspended. Over all, about 100 Baltimore teenagers passed through Baraka.

Montrey Moore, one of the four boys shown in the film, is now a rangy 16-year-old basketball player and math talent. 'If you combine all of us,' he said, '95 percent of us were not going to finish school, and after Baraka, 95 percent of us will finish school.' He and Richard Keyser Jr. and Devon Brown came to New York in June to attend a screening at Lincoln Center, where 'The Boys of Baraka,' which has won several awards, closed the 2005 Human Rights Watch Festival.

'The teachers forced us to learn, and they were there for you 24/7 -- that was mainly it,' Devon said. And the atmosphere in Kenya, he said, 'was not violence or cursing or hatred, it was calm and quiet and nice.' The location also ensured that costs were lower than in Baltimore, and that boys could not easily run away.

The four boys, and several other Baraka students who were sent home in 2003, ended up at William H. Lemmel Middle School in Baltimore. The principal there, Vera Holley, had put together a special program for troubled students, who include, she said, around 100 of the 920 children she refers to as 'my babies.'

She is seeking funds to renew the program, offering intensive educational and social care to children, 90 percent of them boys, who are not succeeding in a traditional school environment.

The Baraka boys were doing well by the time high school beckoned a year later: Montrey and Romesh won scholarships to a boarding school in Mississippi, the Piney Woods School, near Jackson. Devon, already a part-time preacher who hands out cards marked 'a young man, all about business,' was president of his ninth-grade class at a new high school in Baltimore. He has also stayed in touch with the mayor's wife.

Richard, 16, who worked behind the scenes at 'The Wire' this summer, said he planned to return to school and graduate: 'I promised myself. I ain't doing it for nobody else but for myself.'

The movie, which will be commercially released in New York in November, ends with a statement by Montrey: 'I think that people think a kid from Baltimore's supposed to grow up to be nothing. That we ain't got no future, simply because we from the ghetto. I'm going to try and make a difference. Help Baltimore be on the map.'

As Devon put it in New York, 'Baraka opened our minds more to society and said, 'This is what you have to do to be successful.'

NATIONAL DESK
In a Grim Corner of Baltimore, A High School Offers a Haven
By GARY GATELY, New York Times, May 22, 2005

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BALTIMORE, May 21 - Behind the four-story brick school, the gray gothic watchtower of the state penitentiary looms large. On the streets outside the classrooms, drug dealers work the corners against the depressingly familiar backdrop of boarded-up houses and vacant lots. Inside the school chapel, an old bullet hole mars a back window.
But order prevails inside St. Frances Academy, a Catholic co-ed high school founded 177 years ago by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an order of black nuns.


The nuns -- and, nowadays, priests and lay teachers -- pride themselves on helping children from some of Baltimore's toughest neighborhoods replace despair with hope, failure with success, doubt with faith.

The school is just north of block after block of prison and jail cells holding as many as 7,000 inmates at a time. Most of the students know people in prison and many of them have mourned family members or friends who were murdered or died of AIDS.

Some have moved away from drug-addicted parents to live with grandparents or other relatives. Others arrived at St. Frances Academy after either failing or being thrown out of public schools or after getting into trouble with the law.

St. Frances defies the odds.

When students enter the academy, often from overcrowded and unruly public schools, on average they read at a sixth-grade level. But within three years, most progress to a 12th-grade reading level.

They study college-level texts for some courses in the rigorous curriculum, and required courses include algebra, geometry, a foreign language, African-American studies and either chemistry or forensics (where students learn science through, for example, ballistics testing.) Almost every student graduates, and 90 percent go on to college -- for three out of four students, the first in their families to do so.

'We have to believe that God is at work within them,' said Sister John Francis Schilling, the principal. 'So many of them come here down on themselves. I think that the hope that we give them is, first of all, hope in themselves. I see this as my ministry.'

The ministry is done not only in classrooms but also in group and individual therapy sessions -- the school has nine social workers and counselors -- and required 'Rites of Passage' classes that focus on an often grim reality.

At one class for girls, called Sisters, a student mentioned having been molested. The teacher asked if other students had been molested, and a handful of them said they had. In another class, a teacher asked how many students knew somebody who had been shot, and 12 of 19 teenagers raised their hands.

Nobody skirts the touchy subjects here: homicide, absentee parents, addiction, sex, teenage pregnancy, racism, poverty. A 'Grief and Loss' group meets regularly.

Chanaye Jackson, a 15-year-old sophomore, said she had found compassion and comfort in the group. Chanaye's father was fatally shot in 1992, and her mother died the next year. She saw her godfather shot to death outside her home, she said.

Chanaye, who now lives with her grandmother, said she had also lost one of her closest friends, a 15-year-old boy, when he was stabbed to death in 2003 in a fight.

'He was doing a project in school,' she said, 'and he said if he had one wish, it would be that all the violence, the shootings and the killing would stop.'

Chanaye, a soft-spoken girl who is an honors English student, clings to her faith and relies on the support of those around her at the school.

'I know that everything God does is for a reason and that he would never give me more than I could handle,' she said. 'And every person was put in my life for a reason, and if it was their time to go, then it was their time to go.'

Karrell Jones, a freshman who plays for the academy's junior-varsity basketball team, had all but given up on school before coming to St. Frances. Before arriving here, he had been suspended from three public middle schools, and by age 12, he had a clear vision of his future.

'I just wanted to be selling drugs,' Karrell said. 'I thought that's where it was at. I didn't have anybody to tell me, to be on my case about doing the right things. I mean, if you aren't in school, you're just out there, and all the younger kids see is the money.'

He said his best friend was in jail, and a lot of people he knew had been killed, including a cousin. 'It scared me,' he said, 'because that could easily have been me killed.'

For a surrogate father figure, Karrell need to look no further than David Owens, a teacher. Moving non-stop, Mr. Owens works his religion classroom like a singer on a stage, and seamlessly weaves into a lecture King David, John the Baptist, the beatitudes and modern-day parables of AIDS and people with mental illness.

'We know the number of black males in jail outnumber any other group,' he tells students in his booming voice. 'But I refuse to let you fail. I refuse to let you become a statistic. You have no idea of the power that you hold.'

The Oblate Sisters have taken on challenges from the very beginning, when Mother Mary Lange founded the school in 1828 to teach children of slaves to read the Bible, a practice that was then illegal in Maryland.

Today, the school, named after St. Frances of Rome, a 15th-century mystic, sits in one of the poorest neighborhoods of a city where half of those who start public high schools never finish, where the homicide rate last year was five times greater than that of New York City, and where officials estimate that as many as one in 10 people are drug addicts.

More than 72 percent of the students live below the poverty line. Like its students, St. Frances struggles financially. The annual tuition is $4,700 -- though it actually costs $6,300 to educate each child -- but 60 percent of the students pay only partial tuition, or none. The school relies on contributions to cover the gap.

Last month, St. Frances got a big boost -- a $2 million gift, its largest ever. It came from a former student of an Oblate school in Washington, Camille Cosby, the film producer and wife of the entertainer Bill Cosby. (An anonymous donor has since contributed $1 million more.)

'I know what these nuns do,' Mrs. Cosby said in an interview. 'I know how much time they put into educating their students. They're not buying into the repetitive messages about hopelessness. They're not buying into the message that you can't do it. There's so much failure in the education system now, we have to embrace solutions that work.'

From the Baltimore Sun
Grasmick's heavy hand deserves applause
Gregory Kane, April 1, 2006

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So once again I feel as though I've been beamed into an alternate universe.

Are Baltimore's political leaders living in the same city where other Baltimoreans live? Are they living in the state where other Marylanders live? You know, the one called Maryland?

This past Wednesday, the State Board of Education voted to take control of four failing Baltimore high schools. Failing as in large numbers of students unable to pass high school assessment tests in English, biology, government and algebra. If students don't pass these tests by 2009, they can kiss a high school diploma goodbye.

That's only three years from now. There should be some sense of urgency about getting the freshman classes at Douglass, Northwestern, Patterson and Southwestern No. 412 - the four high schools targeted for a state takeover - up to snuff so students can graduate. But what do our city leaders do?

Scream "politics." It's a blatant political ploy, they claim, the work of that evil Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and his ally, state school Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick. There's only one cogent response to this charge:

Look who's talking.

Isn't the effort by state Democrats to grant voting rights to felons immediately after they leave prison a blatant political ploy designed to boost the rolls of registered voters with even more Democrats who might vote for either Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley or Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan for governor? Are the Democrats whining about Republicans playing politics, or whining that Republicans are playing it better than they do?

Politics? It's not like anyone has claimed that Democrats - and Democrats alone - have ruled the roost in Baltimore while city schools have gone straight down the tubes. It's not like anyone has said Democrats are rudderless and leaderless. It's not as if anyone has pointed out the party will never see the likes of Harry S. Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and Robert F. Kennedy again. Certainly not in this state, anyway.

That would be politics. It would also be true.

But truth, like in military wars, is apparently the first casualty in political wars as well. In addition to the charges of politics, Dems are on a rampage about Grasmick's "heavy-handed" treatment of Baltimore. Heavy-handed? Why is that a bad thing?

Just how low do test scores at the four schools have to get before "heavy-handed" treatment is justified? Let's just take a look at some of those scores, shall we?

For the school year 2005, 15 percent of Douglass students passed the English 2 high school assessment test. A little over 1 percent passed the biology test, 11 percent passed the government test and 5 percent passed the algebra test. (These figures are from www.mdreportcard.org and rounded to the nearest whole number.)

The figures for Northwestern are about 18 percent for English, 11 percent for biology, 20 percent for government and 9 percent for algebra. Patterson had 16 percent for English, 16 percent for biology, 31 percent for government and 10 percent for algebra.

Southwestern has been divided into four schools in one of those brilliant moves the great minds at North Avenue assured us would result in higher test scores. The scores for Southwestern No. 412 were 8 percent passing English, 4 percent passing biology, 13 percent passing government and 4 percent passing algebra.

At the school known as Southwestern I (Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy) 20 percent passed English and 8 percent passed algebra.

At Southwestern II, (Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts) 20 percent passed English and 5 percent passed algebra. Neither school had data for government or biology.

There were no test results on the Web site for the fourth school, the Renaissance Academy.

So should Grasmick have waited until the passing percentages at Douglass and Southwestern for biology and algebra reached zero? What about these figures suggests a "heavy-handed" approach isn't warranted? If Grasmick should be criticized for anything, it should be for not putting enough Baltimore high schools on the list. Figures for Samuel L. Banks, Lake Clifton-Eastern, Forest Park, Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B. DuBois, Walbrook and the Walbrook Maritime Institute were just as bleak.

If this trend continues, that increase in the percentage of Baltimore high school students graduating will drop through the floor. Our leaders love talking about that increase, and the progress first- through fourth-graders have made in Baltimore.

That doesn't help students now in the four high schools and seven middle schools targeted for a state takeover who face not graduating in 2009 and after. If the state doesn't take over those schools, those students who don't graduate might look back and ask who was really playing politics in 2006.

But there's a solution for that. If 2009 rolls around and the percentage of students passing each test at each of these schools isn't at least 85 percent, all those screaming "politics" now should be forced to resign from public office, never to run for election again.

greg.kane@baltsun.com