Ed Week, November 3, 2010

The article that grabbed my attention in this issue of Ed Week is right on the front page.  It is titled "City's Black Males Stay in School", by Dakarai Aarons reporting from Baltimore.  This article was mentioned several times in discussions in our Equity class and I also spent a month in Baltimore visiting my husband who was working for one semester at Johns Hopkins.  The poverty, tenement/slum living conditions, the decaying grandeur of the city of Baltimore, the many poor African Americans in the area surrounding the university made a lasting impression on me.  The article describes an amazing principal at DuBois High School who, together, with other school leaders has started a campaign to keep students in school and on track towards graduation.  The best part of all:  It is working!  Black male students in Baltimore are showing an increase in graduation rates and a decrease in dropout rates.  This, despite the fact that black males are one of the hardest groups to reach.   According to the article the Baltimore Public School System has 82,000 students, 87.8% of whom are African American.  They have been able to increase the district's on-time graduation rate from 51% in 2006-2007 to 57.3% in the 2009-10 school year.  This is a 12.4% increase.  The overall graduation rate in the same time period increased by 10%.  So, how are the Baltimore City Schools doing it?  Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools, says that the district has worked hard to build support systems for black males and that they are more concentrated and targeted than in other communities.  Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore schools identifies the following factors in their success.  The district is working hard to reduce chronic absenteeism and out-of-school suspensions.  They are giving students a bigger variety of public school options and working with people in the community.  They seem to be approaching the problems in a systematic way, but are also working individually with each student.  Perhaps the most impressive thing I read in the article was what Jonathan Brice, the executive director for student-support services said: "Someone in the building has to know that student's story".  The district is even sending volunteers door-to-door to coax kids who have dropped out back to school.  They are also employing Facebook and other social media to find students.  With all of these initiatives, the entire culture of the Baltimore City Schools has changed.  It seems to me that the schools are just refusing to give up on these students and that the changing expectations of the adults are resulting in the students changing what they see as possible for themselves.  This Baltimore Approach will hopefully be studied and implemented around the country.