The key to finding Betty Morgan's office in the labyrinth of white halls at North Avenue is to know the words she lives by.

No fancy nameplate announces the arrival of the new chief academic officer for Baltimore City schools. Instead, a sign at her office door with the words "Quick Fixes," circled and slashed out in red, sums up her vision for reforming schools.

No more, she says, will the system fall for a sales pitch by outsiders who want to impose the latest educational fix on the failing urban system.

Too often those experiments -- with privatization and whole-school reforms -- have ended with limited or momentary improvements because the reforms never involved developing better teachers who could carry them on. Once the leaders left, the reforms died.

"The revolution has begun, but it has been an external revolution," she said. "I am looking for a revolution from within. I am looking for people to revolt against the way they are doing things."

She believes experienced, well-trained teachers who are allowed time to plan and work together will be able to carry out reforms and should have some choice of what strategies are chosen.

As the second in command, Morgan, 55, will be the one to choose those strategies to improve a school system where students are years behind their peers in the state and the nation.

While schools Chief Executive Officer Robert Booker has not articulated a plan for reforming the system beyond saying that he will ensure the school board's master plan is carried out, Morgan has. After four months on the job, she has begun to set her strategies for the next three to five years, many of them based on her more than 20 years of experience in Frederick and Montgomery county schools.

The two school leaders are a study in contrast.

Booker is a listener, patient and reticent. Morgan, the daughter of immigrant parents from Hungary and Mexico, is warm and engaging, slightly pushy and ready to share her views. Both came from poor families where education was valued as the way out. "I think we complement each other," Morgan said.

A surprise for Morgan has been the degree of interest and support from the community. In the past four months, she said, she has received many offers of assistance. Some groups have sent money and others have offered expertise though they weren't going to get publicity for their gifts.

"I have never seen that before in a school system," she said.

On the other hand, the school system has been drained by businesses and nonprofit groups that want to use the system, and officials say she must stand vigilant to protect the system from being taken advantage of.

She has been surprised by how many talented people she found.

"There is a lot of potential and talent here, much more than expected," Morgan said. What she must do now, she says, is nurture the talent and encourage collaboration. Too often, she says, she sees people's efforts scattered and unfocused rather than channeled in the same direction, as she believes it is in high-performing districts.

She calls it rowing the boat in the same direction.

Too often, successful schools have not been studied and their efforts duplicated.

Morgan said she has visited more than 50 schools and has found examples of schools with a high percentage of poor students who are scoring well on tests.

Those schools, such as Mount Royal Elementary and Middle School and Dallas F. Nicholas Sr. Elementary and Patapsco Elementary schools, have steadily improved over the years.

"We have the models here," she said.

Morgan is not suggesting that school reform models such as Achievement First and Success for All shouldn't be used in the system. She supports the move last week to adopt those plans for 19 of the city's worst-performing elementary schools. But both put emphasis on improving the knowledge and ability of the staff.

The system should be circumspect about accepting reform plans that don't live on after they are introduced, she said. "There are no magic cures in this business," she said.

Morgan has three goals: to recruit and keep good teachers; to improve the system's ability to evaluate itself; and to create a better climate in the schools.

Her blueprint comes from her experience as a principal and administrator. Frederick County Superintendent Jack Dale said his county has an assessment program for kindergarten through 12th grades developed in the late 1980s, similar to one Morgan would like to adopt in Baltimore to keep track of whether individual students or groups of students are learning the skills prescribed in the curriculum.

In addition, Dale said, Frederick places a high priority on training staff. As the assistant superintendent of elementary education, Morgan worked on improving early childhood education.

Administrators and teachers she has worked with described her as innovative, deeply passionate about providing a good education for children, and sensitive to children of many cultures.

She is bringing something else with her from Frederick: Sherry Collette, an acting associate superintendent hired by the school board last week to be in charge of curriculum and instruction in Baltimore.

Morgan said her top priority is to hire and keep good teachers. As a large percentage of experienced teachers approach retirement and a national teaching shortage hits, the city will be in a fierce competition for qualified teachers. In the past year, the city has had to hire more than 1,000 teachers, 60 percent of whom are not certified.

By the end of the year, about 40 percent of the principals and teachers will have three years or less experience in Baltimore, Morgan said. "We are going to have to do a lot of people development," she said.

Morgan wants the system to offer contracts to teachers far earlier than they have in the past and has removed an impediment to the process by forcing the system to identify teaching vacancies much sooner.

She is also pushing the school board to offer new teachers an 11-month contract instead of a 10-month contract. That would allow new teachers to get a month of orientation and teacher training in the city's curriculum and textbooks before they begin.

"She has tackled very difficult projects which have to do with the recruitment and retention of staff," said Evelyn Beasley, a retired city principal who has remained active in school affairs. "I admire her for tackling them so early in her career. If she accomplishes nothing else, she will have done a great service."

Morgan has set up two task forces to study how to improve recruiting and how to keep those teachers from leaving for jobs in the suburbs. A private, nonprofit organization is working to find a building to renovate that would become a housing enclave for young city schoolteachers, and businesses have offered their help.

Pub Date: 3/22/99