ONE AFTERNOON LAST week, several hundred teachers were summoned to the Palladium catering hall on Liberty Heights Avenue to hear pitches for two reform "models" that are to transform their schools from the worst in the city to the best -- if all goes well.

The building was crowded, the acoustics awful, the atmosphere somewhat bizarre -- befitting a mass meeting in a castle.

But at least the briefing took place and, two days later, back at their schools, the teachers had a chance to choose between the two models. It was an exercise in democracy rarely seen in a system that has experienced so many waves of reform that some teachers refer to themselves as mollusks: They cling to the rocks, waiting for the next wave.

The two models under consideration, Success for All and Achievement First, are examples of "whole-school" reform. That is, they seek to alter the entire operation of a school and to involve everyone from parents to janitors in the effort.

Schoolwide reform is the reform model du jour, just as "mastery learning" was 20 years ago. (Mastery learning didn't last, partly because it required too much of teachers.)

Across the nation, hundreds of schools are making the shift, in part because Congress in 1994 allowed schools with poverty rates as low as 50 percent to organize themselves this way with federal anti-poverty funds. Then in 1997, Congress authorized an additional $145 million per year to help low-performing schools adopt "research-based, school-wide" approaches.

At least 20 highly regarded models could have been chosen for Baltimore. But a team assembled by Jeffery N. Grotsky, former Harford County superintendent now in charge of a Baltimore subdistrict consisting of the lowest-performing schools, chose these two.

Why? "Both are successful, both are research-based," Grotsky says. "Frankly, we literally and shamelessly took the best of what's out there."

Of the 19 schools voting, most chose Achievement First. (Some election results haven't been announced.) This wasn't surprising. Success for All, launched in Baltimore and now in 1,130 schools nationwide, is much more tightly prescriptive, especially in the earliest grades.

By contrast, the 2-year-old Achievement First uses schools' existing curricula. Primary teachers whose schools will take on that program won't have to give up the school system's new Open Court readers many have found to their liking.

And familiarity breeds comfort. The Fund for Educational Excellence, formerly known for its advocacy of city children and minigrants to teachers, has jumped into the whole-school reform business, launching 10 Achievement First schools in the city this year. Word gets around, and the word on Achievement First is good.

Then there's Success for All's baggage. Though it was born in Baltimore 12 years ago, it was dead in Baltimore within a decade. It died of neglect. Reform requires constant attention from all. It also needs time. In one case, a principal was hired at a Baltimore Success for All school who didn't like the program and scrapped it. Another school was mistakenly declared ineligible for federal anti-poverty funds, and Success for All was out before the mistake was discovered.

Ironically, the site of the first Success for All experiment, Abbottston Elementary near Memorial Stadium, is one of the 19 schools on Grotsky's list of low performers. Its faculty chose Achievement First.

"I'm not at all opposed to our returning to Baltimore," says Robert Slavin, a Johns Hopkins researcher who founded Success for All after he was approached by several civic leaders and asked to organize a failure-proof school. "But I know in some ways it will be difficult. We'll always have to be explaining what happened."

Is this reform different from the many that have come and gone? Grotsky says it is.

He gives a reason for the hurried briefing and vote that didn't give teachers much time for consideration. "We don't have time to waste," he says. "These schools desperately need help now. As for the future, this is the future. If this works, this is the future of Baltimore City public schools."

Area's college presidents display staying power

The June 30 retirement of Carolyn Manuszak, the 33-year president of Villa Julie College, will make University of Baltimore President Mebane Turner the state's college president with the longest tenure.

Baltimore has remarkable stability among its college and university chiefs. Turner, in his 30th year, has been in office only a few months longer than Calvin W. Burnett at Coppin State College.

The Maryland Institute, College of Art is holding a series of events to mark the 20th year of Fred Lazarus IV's presidency, and Towson University President Hoke Smith is also in his 20th year. On Hillen Road, Earl Richardson is in his 15th year at Morgan State University.

Pub Date: 3/17/99