The first day of school can be just as nerve-wracking for new teachers as it is for students. Not only is it their first time in the classroom on their own, but gaining the command and respect of children is no easy task.
In the Baltimore school district, hundreds of teachers are hired every year to fill vacant spots. And just as fast as they’re hired, it seems that they’re gone: 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within three years. This cycle continues year after year.
That’s why former Baltimore school administrator Jennifer Green and her colleague decided to do something about it. In 2009, they quit their jobs to form the Urban Teacher Center (UTC), a Baltimore-based organization working to end the fast burnout rate by preparing new teachers for that first year in the classroom.
How do they plan to do this? Well, in exchange for $20,000 from a school’s principal, UTC will send a recent college graduate to spend a year as a resident working alongside an experienced teacher. Over the course of the year, the resident will gain valuable first-hand experience, take graduate classes and have a chance to receive a full-time job offer.
[Other routes] “don’t have the one year of mirroring an effective teacher,” David Wise, a UTC participant tells Governing. “That helps you a lot.”
If hired, the residents can continue to work and earn their masters from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.
Currently, UTC has 123 teachers in 35 schools across Baltimore and 200 teachers in 41 schools in Washington. The group plans to expand to Chicago next year and four more cities in the next five years. And it’s not alone, as similar residencies are already established in Boston, Minneapolis and Miami.
It’s obvious that American students are lagging behind students in other countries, and educators are looking towards teachers as both the problem and the solution. Some critics call for stricter and more rigorous application and training processes for new teachers, while others propose evaluating teachers based partly on how their students perform on standardized tests.
UTC falls into the category of the first group. Its process is selective as only 25 percent of the applicants are accepted for the four-year program.
Already, the program is showing results. Although the attrition rate for the first class of UTC residents was the same as the national average, the second class is entering its third year with retention rates improved to 82 percent.
For the school districts, residencies are providing a great, cost-efficient opportunity to find and train new, effective teachers.
“We look for any way we can to get more qualified adults working with students for an extended period of time. The more positive adult interactions kids have, the better they do in school,” Principal Anthony Ruby of Holabird Academy tells Governing. “I can afford four full-time residents for what is still $10,000 less than a teacher.”
With both residents and principals calling it a bargain, this new system may just be the future of education. But the biggest winner? The students.
MORE: This City Gives Dropouts a Realistic Way to Earn Their Diplomas
Tag: Baltimore
How a Barn-Raising Mentality Can Work in the 21st Century
The idea of barn-raising probably brings to mind images of the countryside and endless miles of fields dotted with farm houses.
But Garreth Potts is reshaping the concept of a barn-raising as a way to grow community projects across cities.
Potts is a German Marshall Fund Urban and Regional Policy Fellow, and he just finished a fellowship during which he analyzed how cities fund and organize community projects. These assets — including parks, gardens, recreational centers, libraries, museums and civic centers — generally rely on city resources. But through his research, Potts discovered how volunteers and other funds can provide that extra touch.
From this work, Potts created a toolkit: “The New Barn-Raising,” (and started a nonprofit, The Barn-Raising) which ditches an individualistic role or responsibility in favor of a more communal one where everyone is invited: residents, local government, non-profits, businesses and unions. Potts believes that coordination between all the parties improves these community projects and supports increased innovation. To determine the level of involvement of the government and other groups, Potts’s plan is to have the voters decide.
Potts’s inspiration came mostly from his observations of the Duncan Street Community Gardens in East Baltimore, as well as gardens in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit.
DON’T MISS: One in Five Baltimore Residents Lives in a Food Desert. These Neighbors Are Growing Their Own Produce
So, what did he learn?
1. Volunteers are a vital, but they can’t do everything. For many projects, you need a city staff to oversee and organize and use volunteers for manpower. Ultimately, it’s a joint effort.
2. Don’t underestimate the nonprofit. These organizations are knowledgeable and can provide extra money for a project. For example, in Baltimore, a partnership with the city’s branch of ToolBank USA means access to necessary equipment for their community garden that would otherwise be hard to get.
3. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are not invincible. While NGOs do have power and resources, they are not infinite wells. If NGOs were expected to fund every underfunded project, it would require a large increase in donations.
To see the remainder of Potts’s suggestions, click here.
While we may not be holding literal barn raisings in our neighborhoods, Potts’s alternate version will provide the same benefits: community cooperation and beautification — just minus the hay and cows.
MORE: For The People: This New Service Lets You Hire A Lobbyist
One in Five Baltimore Residents Lives in a Food Desert. These Neighbors Are Growing Their Own Produce
Boone St. Farm operates on two vacant plots in the center of East Baltimore Midway, one of dozens of neighborhoods in Baltimore identified as “food deserts.” Cheryl Carmona adopted the land in 2010 with two goals — that it serves as an urban farm that grows and provides fresh produce for its neighbors, and as a community garden where residents can learn about growing their own food.
Dozens of neighbors have pitched in and, four years later, Boone St. Farm has grown thousands of pounds of affordable produce. Residents on food stamps pay only $5-10 a bag. The community plots are used for gardening workshops and offer classes in nutrition to students at the nearby public school. As Boone St. Farm enters its fourth season, Carmona plans to include local cleanup initiatives and other projects aimed at making the farm an essential part of the neighborhood.
Southwest Airlines Sets Its Sight on Cities, Not Skies
Southwest Airlines is taking its services on the ground, giving cities a boost with urban design.
The national airline has partnered with New York-based nonprofit Project for Public Spaces to launch a three-year initiative — the Heart of the Community grant program — working with cities to revitalize urban areas through construction of new or redesigned public spaces or funding new or ongoing programs.
Southwest has already completed three pilot projects in Detroit, San Antonio and Providence, Rhode Island. Up next? The company will turn its attention to Baltimore, where they’ll work with the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore to rehab the city’s Pratt and Light Plaza.
“We’re in the business of taking people from place to place,” said Marilee McInnis, Southwest’s senior manager of communications, “so we want to support and create and revitalize these places.”
The Pratt and Light area, which the Downtown Partnership’s vice president of communications Michael Evitts described as a “glorified, huge sidewalk,” was built in the 1960s to connect two interstate highways, according to Fast Company. The vast empty, concrete space is currently used to house a farmer’s market. But the city has long sought to revamp the area and the funding from Southwest will give the initiative new interest and fresh ideas from community members.
MORE: 5 European Urban Renewal Projects That Could Help America
The Downtown Partnership will host community workshops to welcome local ideas and hopes to finalize a plan by the fall.
“A lot of what downtown Baltimore is trying to do is undo the best thinking of the previous generation,” Evitts said. “Urban planning in the ’60s was very dictatorial. There was a lot of concrete; people were an afterthought.” Now, it’s more about “encouraging those human moments within urban design.”
The Heart of the Community program is currently accepting applications for 2015 and plans to announce grants for two or three additional communities by the year’s end. Each city will receive funding depending on the project, but the company has not disclosed how much it plans to donate over the next three years.
Have an idea to give your city a facelift? Submit your application by September 15. The only parameter? Your community must fall within one of the 95 urban regions served by Southwest.
This Program Shares Its Wisdom About Producing Minority Ph.D. Science Students
It goes without saying that the folks at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) know a thing or two about supporting and encouraging minority and low-income undergraduate students in continuing their studies and earning science Ph.D.s.
Impressively, over the past two decades, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC has produced 900 graduates who have gone on to rack up 423 advanced science degrees and 107 medical degrees.
Compare that to Penn State, which was recently named one of the top 40 schools for educating black students who eventually earned advanced science degrees. Despite the recognition, the public university earned that status by producing just four (!) degrees earned by black science students out of about 3,000 STEM students total.
“The data is shocking,” Penn State Chemistry professor Mary Beth Williams told Jeffrey Mervis of Science Insider. “Clearly we have to do a better job.”
So the people behind UMBC’s successful Meyerhoff Scholars Program will mentor faculty and staff at Penn State and the University of North Carolina in an attempt to increase the number of minority students enrolled in science Ph.D. programs. Over five years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will dedicate $7.75 million to the effort.
Clearly, UMBC has figured out a formula that keeps minority and low-income students on track to become scientists: Close monitoring of academic progress, a summer program for incoming freshmen, scholarships, research opportunities, and a close cohort of talented students who foster a sense of teamwork with each other. Its current four-year class of Meyerhoff Scholars includes 300 students, 60 percent of which are underrepresented minorities.
Williams said she plans to study these lessons carefully in the program’s implementation at Penn State. “My goal is to clone it as much as possible. It’s been successful for 25 years, so why mess with it? The more you change, the more you’re inviting failure.”
The president of UMBC, Freeman Hrabowski, is proud of how the scholars program has grown from its initial class of 19 African-American male science students in 1989. “What Meyerhoff has done is get us to think about our responsibility to students who say they want a STEM degree,” he told Mervis. “And what helps underrepresented minorities will also help the rest of our students.”
MORE: When People Said Minorities Weren’t Interested in Science, This Guy Proved Them Wrong
Correction: June 5, 2014
A previous version of this post misstated the funding for this program. It is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, not the UMBC.
Going ‘Round and ‘Round, This Water Wheel Is Ridding Baltimore’s Polluted Harbor of Its Trash
When it comes to cleaning up the polluted Baltimore Harbor, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel. Literally.
Sitting permanently at the mouth of the Jones Falls stream in Baltimore between Pier 6 and Harbor East, is the Water Wheel Trash Inceptor.
So what does this large, round object do? For starters, this water wheel cleans up the harbor — sucking up to 50,000 pounds of trash a day, or about 750,000 pounds of trash a year, estimates say. At this rate, the organizers at the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore hope that the Harbor might actually be safe for swimmers by 2020.
Impressively, the wheel (which is powered by solar panels and water currents) is also generating 2,500 watts of electricity a day, an amount that could power the average Maryland home, Inhabit reports.
MORE: How the Oyster is Cleaning Up the Chesapeake Bay
“I was tired of always hearing tourists say ‘ugh, this harbor’s disgusting’,” Water Wheel co-designer John Kellett told Inhabit. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way than collecting trash on our front doorstep.” In a mere seven months, Kellett and his partner Daniel Chase at Clearwater Mills successfully built their trash-collecting contraption. (To see how it works, watch the videos below.)
Besides those aforementioned benefits (which are downright great), the wheel is also improving the quality of water for the fish and underwater ecosystems. And that’s not all. As WBAL-TV points out, the wheel is helping educate kids and adults about keeping trash off the streets.
ALSO: How a Bag of Mushrooms Can Clean A Polluted River
“It’s a thrill to see this new technology being applied to an age-old problem like trash,” Laurie Schwartz, the president of Waterfront Partnership, told the local television station.
Sounds like the wheel — which was originally designed to move items somewhere, but is now being used to remove unwanted things — really has come full circle.
Will Baltimore Join a Growing Movement That Helps Former Prisoners?
One in four Americans have a criminal record, which is why many city and state legislatures are starting to think creatively about how to prevent job discrimination against former prisoners. And soon, Baltimore may become the sixth city in the U.S. to prohibit private employers from asking applicants about their criminal histories.
The legislation, which has recently been approved in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, among other places, is called “ban the box” because currently job applicants have to check a box on applications if they have a criminal history. This type of bill is part of a national movement to reduce prison recidivism and increase employment opportunities for people who used to be in prison.
The number of people incarcerated in the United States rose about 13 percent between 2000 and 2012, according to Governing. When former prisoners re-enter their communities, it’s often very difficult for them to find jobs.
Employers “are looking to weed out people because of the volume of the applications they’re getting,” Maurice Emsellem, program director at the National Employment Law Project, told Governing. In Baltimore — where the unemployment rate is noticeably higher than the national average — this problem is especially apparent.
“Ban-the-box” legislation works to prevent employers from immediately discriminating against people who were formerly incarcerated. The policies still allow employers to ask about applicants’ criminal histories eventually.
In a preliminary vote on March 10, the Baltimore City Council passed the “Ban the Box” bill unanimously. They were set to have a final vote on April 8, but they delayed their decision according to WYPR News. They did add an amendment that would not “ban the box” from jobs requiring a criminal background check by law. The bill already excludes jobs where employees work with children, the elderly, or the disabled.
This College Is Focused on Helping Its Most Vulnerable Students Graduate
The White House has set a lofty goal for the United States: To have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. That’s a difficult number to reach — especially because a third of all higher education students need some kind of remedial help, and the percentage of pupils in remedial classes who actually graduate is astonishingly low.
Colleges across the country are trying to change that, and the Baltimore City Community College is a leading example. The college serves a wide range of non-traditional students from Baltimore, including ones like Floria Zobear, 58, who haven’t been to school in decades.
Administrators and professors at the school want their students to succeed. In order for this to happen, they have eradicated some non-credit developmental classes, so students don’t have to spend too much time in the classroom. They’ve also increased support services like tutoring, according to NPR. Plus, they are re-envisioning how class is taught, with some students working online or one-on-one with professors to go over what they’ve missed.
Thomas Bailey, who works at The Community College Research Center at Columbia University (an independent authority on two-year colleges), told NPR that nationally, students can enter college up to four semesters behind in a subject. They need help catching up — and because of good grades in bad high schools, they often don’t even realize they were behind. Bailey’s research center tracks the effectiveness of innovative remedial programs around the country.
Only about a third of first-time, full-time students enter Baltimore City Community College ready for the coursework. Zobear is one of them, but says that she likes the individual attention she gets in the classroom, and she feels like she’s improving in her remedial math class with professor Edward Ennels. She told NPR:
“He’ll say, what do you need help with? And he’ll come back to you individually, so you can understand.”
How Maryland Decreased Its Infant Mortality Rate in Record Time
People knock local governments for bureaucracy and red tape, but Maryland deserves an equal amount of fanfare for its data-driven — scratch that, successful data-driven — push to lower the statewide infant mortality rate.
With his state’s numbers well above the national average, Governor Martin O’Malley managed to lower it two separate times, both ahead of schedule. In 2007, he set five-year deadline to reduce Maryland’s infant mortality rate by 10 percent. When that goal was achieved a mere two years later, with 8 fatalities per 1,000 live births down to 7.2, O’Malley honed in on the main area of concern: The continued-high numbers of African Americans dying in infancy. Again, he aimed for a 10 percent reduction, this time by 2017. Finding success again, he reached that milestone five years early.
The fruits of O’Malley’s efforts are easy to see. According to Governing, between 2011 and 2012, the state’s infant-mortality rate among African-Americans declined by 14 percent, to 10.3 per 1,000 live births. Also in 2012, Maryland’s infant mortality hit a record low of 6.3, down by 21 percent since 2008 and about the same as the national rate for 2012.
How did O’Malley manage do this so hyper-effectively? It all comes down to data. O’Malley tasked the state’s health serves to identify and funnel resources into areas with the highest infant-mortality rates. Two areas, Prince George’s County (which lies just east of Washington, D.C.) and Baltimore, demanded the most attention.
Baltimore, the state’s largest city, had some of the most grave infant-mortality issues. To address these problems, the state worked with local organizations like B’more for Healthy Babies, which is led by the city’s health department. For instance, B’more’s Sleep Safe initiative uses the media, community outreach and provider education to reduce sleep-related deaths. With the second leading cause of death among city infants being preventable sleep-related complications, this was proof of targeted problem-solving.
In-home education and social services for pregnant women and new mothers also were cornerstones of the Baltimore initiative. The city’s infant-mortality rate has dropped every year since B’more for Healthy Babies began in 2009, falling by 28 percent from 2009 to 2012, Governing reports. In 2012, Baltimore’s infant mortality for the first time fell below 10 per 1,000 live births. Notably, the disparity between African-American and white infant-mortality rates declined by 40 percent during that time.
Prince George’s County saw the creation of a similar “Healthy Women, Health Lives” program that took a comprehensive approach to the overall health of women of childbearing age.
Governing makes a point of noting how a lower infant-mortality rate is good for more than just immediate families.
Infant mortality is far more common among premature, low-birth-weight (LBW) and very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) babies. Including the costs of delivery-related hospital stays, transfers and readmissions, the expenses for a normal-birth-weight Maryland baby totaled $8,703 in 2009, compared to $45,543 for an LBW baby and $239,945 for a VLBW baby. As the number of LBW and VLBW babies declines, the health-care savings help pay for the resources used to reduce infant mortality overall.
The B’more for Healthy Babies and Healthy Women, Healthy Lives programs focus on both education and health resources. As the state’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene realized that many uninsured women were delivering babies without any prenatal care, they charged local health departments with implementing a program called “Quick Start.” This allows uninsured women to get timely prenatal care appointments while awaiting Medicaid eligibility determinations.
With better prenatal care comes better-informed mothers and healthier babies. Call it a win-win.
How Baltimore Successfully Moved Residents Out of the Inner City
It may surprise some to hear, but it takes a fair amount of convincing to get impoverished families to move to a middle-class suburb. Good schools, safer streets, and larger accommodations seem tempting, but many studies show that when given the chance, people tend to relocate to similarly disadvantaged, racially segregated areas.
But that’s not the case in Baltimore — anymore, that is. Two-thirds of the 2,000 families that moved to predominantly white, middle-class neighborhoods in 2005 are still living in their suburban neighborhoods up to eight years later. Those urban migrants kept their jobs in the city, sent their children to better schools, and somewhat miraculously, have experienced almost no racial friction in their new surroundings. So what did Baltimore do right? And what can other cities learn?
A new study in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management lays it all out. After tracking those 2,000 families for the past eight years, it discovered how a lawsuit eventually created an act that not only turned the tide of resistance in Baltimore, but ensured permanent, content residents outside the city’s notoriously gritty corridors.
It all started with a 1995 ACLU lawsuit, which charged that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Baltimore’s housing authority were running a program that didn’t encourage those on federal housing assistance to move. It wasn’t until 2005, though, that the court finally sided with the ACLU and created of a new voucher program.
The updated program required participants to move from hyper-segregated, hyper-poor neighborhoods to majority-white, suburban ones. Those neighborhoods had to be less than 10 percent poor and less than 30 percent black. But the inspired part of it all, and likely the portion that ensured its success, is that counseling was provided from move-out to move-in to picking a new school.
So while leaving behind family and friends and moving to unknown suburbia was intimidating, it seems that the counseling helped residents adjust and realize the benefit from leaving behind the neighborhood they knew. “These women had never experienced safe neighborhoods or good schools,” Stefanie DeLuca, associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins and fellow at the Century Foundation, says. She studied the families and did in-depth interviews with 110 of them to get a better idea of their experience. “They were so segregated from mainstream opportunities.”
Realizing their new potential, the new residents of suburbia could see the value in relocating. As Atlantic Cities reports, one originally hesitant women, Kimberley, says in retrospect that “it’s only in leaving that I started growing and wanting to do different things, learn different things and be something different.” In fact, DeLuca and her associates found that the families that did return to the city were the ones who were most hesitant to leave.
The case of Baltimore proves how a willing government and available funds aren’t enough to solve the problem of hyper-segregation; the problem is often cyclical. But with time, patience, and counseling resources, the cycle can be broken.