In line with the educational views of John Dewey, who obtained his doctorate from the university, John Hopkins University’s Center for the Social Organization of Schools believes that the American schoolhouse exists to serve the student and not vice versa.
“Every individual has their own talents, and everyone’s talents should be developed within the educational system,” said Mary Maushard, communications director for CSOS, a nonprofit that seeks to improve American primary and secondary school education.
“We’re an educational research and development center,” Maushard said. “We work in K-12 education, usually with low-performing, high-poverty schools, conducting research into issues that challenge these schools.”
Established in 1965, 80-employee CSOS fields a handful of nationwide programs — including a Head Start-linked, early childhood education effort, a research group that studies Baltimore City school truancy and drop-out problems, and a national initiative to encourage community-school involvement — supportive of its mission.
Its largest and most prominent efforts, however, are its Talent Development high school and middle school projects, initiatives to transfer CSOS’s progressive educational views to the schoolroom.
Baltimore Talent Development High School in Harlem Park, a Baltimore City public high school that was organized and is run by CSOS, is the effort’s centerpiece.
“I think they’re wonderful,” said Pam Charshee, executive director of the Carroll Park Foundation and a teacher at the innovation high school. “We’ve been partnering with the school for several years now to replant Heritage Orchard in Carroll Park. It helps the students save their community’s history.”
The school — along with, in varying degrees, Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School, 100 other high schools across the country and 16 middle schools nationwide — is run according to CSOS’s emphasis on active student involvement in their own education, adaptable learning environments and the belief that schools must find ways to develop every student’s talents.
As indication of this approach’s success, Maushard said, the Harlem Park magnet high school enjoyed an 87 percent graduation rate for its first graduating class — 25 percentage points above Baltimore City’s average.
“Our organizational name refers to the fact that we believe how something is organized will often determine what the results are,” she said. “And we’ve had a lot of success keeping kids in school and promoting them.”
Center for the Social Organization of Schools
3003 N. Charles St. Suite 200
Baltimore, MD 21218
410-516-8810;
www.csos.jhu.edu
www.every1graduates.org
