Mike Bowler
Education Beat
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.
-
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.
