City's layoffs to be painful

November 19, 2003

THE ONLY good thing about the forthcoming layoffs in the city school system is that they'll be over quickly. It won't be death by a thousand cuts.

Recent columns

• School officials confront a new kind of crisis

  October 13, 2002

  FIFTY YEARS ago, a kid's nightmare was a Russian nuclear attack. Today, it's getting shot by a mysterious sniper hiding in the bushes outside school.

• Learning ability for language strong in babies

  August 19, 2001

• MSPAP debate goes on

  August 15, 2001

  IT'S BEEN a year since we reported on the "Evers report," a frontal attack on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, and never has a document read by so few been debated by so many.

• Baltimore's kids need more than billboards

  August 12, 2001

  DESCRIBING HIMSELF as an "ordinary citizen with no particular clout," Baltimorean Mark Chalkley has written Laura Bush, the first lady, imploring her to use her influence to stop the closing of five Enoch Pratt library branches.

• Official wants to bring Disney style to campus

  August 8, 2001

• Exploring the science, sociology of learning

  August 5, 2001

• New college dictionary targets better 'righting'

  August 1, 2001

• A 'scary' problem: reading beyond 9

  July 29, 2001

  NEW YORK - Forget reading by 9. How about reading by 18?

• Help wanted: good teachers and leaders

  July 25, 2001

  MORE THAN 300 of Maryland's business, political and education leaders met in Baltimore for nearly three days last week to figure out how to ease a critical shortage of teachers.

• Dyslexia pioneer still making gains

  July 22, 2001

• Women lag in tech fields

  July 18, 2001

  THERE'S MIXED news about the status of girls and women in science and math.

• Large school, little readers

  July 15, 2001

  SITTING AT THE adult desks of Room 208, Baltimore Hebrew University, Ragine Smothers and her six classmates look like Lilliputians. They're 5 and 6 years old, and a university classroom seems a strange and outsized place for a reading of The Cat in the Hat on a warm July afternoon in Northwest Baltimore.

• Parents seek right to opt out of testing

  July 11, 2001

  IN THE HALLS of Congress, countervailing forces are at work.

• Pooh power holds strong over time

  July 8, 2001

• Report card on an urban initiative

  July 4, 2001

  EIGHT YEARS ago, the federal government (with an assist from Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski) began investing heavily in math and science education in the nation's large cities, including Baltimore.

• Tutoring makes the difference

  July 1, 2001

  WHEN MONTEARA Johnson heard she was going to a "tutoring place" for dyslexics, her heart sank.

• The PTA -- changing ways with the times

  June 27, 2001

  FOR THIS GROUP, fund raising is at once the problem and the solution. The Parent-Teacher Association is big business at most schools; annual budgets of $30,000 and more are common. Yet this is a voluntary organization that can't afford to gouge its members.

• Private schools close racial gap

  June 24, 2001

  U.S. SECRETARY of Education Rod Paige recently compared the latest reading scores of black pupils in Texas with those of their fourth-grade peers across the nation.

• To play, or not to play

  June 20, 2001

  SUMMER IS a time for children's play. Good thing, too. They're allowed less and less of it at school.

• Adventures await summer readers

  June 17, 2001

  GOOD NEWS THIS summer for kids of all ages in Harford County: There have been sightings of Harry Potter books ready for the borrowing at the nine county library branches.

• Towson U. is lacking in goals, review finds

  June 13, 2001

  TOWSON UNIVERSITY has yet to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

• Parents are working on children's literacy

  June 10, 2001

  IDIDN'T KNOW there was a Maryland Week of the Working Parent - has been for a dozen years - until I was asked to participate in one of the week's events, a "community conference" on early literacy Thursday.

• Shortage grows with standards

  June 6, 2001

  THE PEOPLE who educate teachers find themselves in a bind.

• Outspoken youths could be learning

  June 3, 2001

  WHEN A TREE falls in a deserted forest, does it make a sound?

• Waxing philosophical as the finances wane

  May 30, 2001

  "THE JOURNEY is the event."

• Teaching method makes the grade

  May 27, 2001

  IN THE RECENT flurry of news about school testing locally and nationally, one accomplishment might have been missed, and it's worth noting:

• Teaching method makes the grade

  May 27, 2001

  IN THE RECENT flurry of news about school testing locally and nationally, one accomplishment might have been missed, and it's worth noting:

• Report offers mixed news on urban schools

  May 23, 2001

  BALTIMORE FINDS itself in good urban company in state testing of elementary math and reading, but the city's middle schools haven't kept pace with similar schools nationally, according to a report released yesterday.

• Learning to teach in the real world

  May 13, 2001

  IT'S NOT TRUE that practice makes perfect, at least in the world of teacher education. But practice helps a heck of a lot, and where it helps most is in the training of reading teachers.

• Wanted: busloads of teachers

  May 9, 2001

  LOOK FOR Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick to propose streamlining teacher licensing regulations, the better to ease what is becoming a crisis in teacher supply in the Free State.

• Questioning what's behind the numbers

  April 15, 2001

  THE GOOD NEWS emerging last week from an analysis of national test scores in the 1990s is that the states are making real progress in mathematics - so much progress, in fact, that reading scores are starting to look anemic by comparison.

• Backing phonics as a reading tool

  April 8, 2001

  MARION JOSEPH wasn't surprised by Friday's news that the nation's reading scores were still in the tank in 2000, virtually unchanged, on average, since the early 1990s.

• Backing phonics as a reading tool

  April 8, 2001

  MARION JOSEPH wasn't surprised by Friday's news that the nation's reading scores were still in the tank in 2000, virtually unchanged, on average, since the early 1990s.

• Play officials never dreamed of new lesson

  April 4, 2001

  LIFE, DEATH, real worlds and dream worlds merged last week for a group of young women from Baltimore's Western High School.

• Web site permits test score tracking

  April 1, 2001

  AT LAST: a handy new Web site that allows easy school-by-school comparisons in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program.

• Foreign scene, familiar concern

  March 28, 2001

  GALWAY, IRELAND - When it's not raining, visitors to this tourist mecca in western Ireland can watch the sun set on Galway Bay. They can also watch a remarkable drama play out: High school teachers strike while their students take to the streets to condemn the action.

• Kids can digest knowledge at mealtime, too

  March 11, 2001

  STEPHON MOORE, Fadeelah Silver, nine other children and two teachers lunched Wednesday on Salisbury steak, potatoes, spinach and bread. Sliced peaches for dessert, milk the beverage of choice.

• Gap in achievement a lingering vexation

  March 7, 2001

  THE MOST vexing problem in Maryland education is one that few talk about - the persistent achievement gap between black and white students.

• Guide by first lady is a promising start

  March 4, 2001

  IF ONE OF the first documents to be released in first lady Laura Bush's education initiative is any indication, we're in for more substance than many thought possible.

• High standards pose quandary for educators

  February 28, 2001

  EVERYWHERE, the teachers have torn emotions.

• Argument against high-tech toddlers

  February 25, 2001

  ACHILD'S MIND is a terrible thing to waste on computers.