Several Baltimore County Public Schools are in a restructuring process after failing for five consecutive years to meet federal standards aligned with the No Child Left Behind Act.
Chief among compliance concerns has been a failure to meet Adequate Yearly Progress ? specifically, a lack of improvement raising reading and math scores.
In order to meet federal standards, officials at three of those schools ? Landsdowne Middle, Southwest Academy and Woodlawn High schools ? are focused on hiring a new slate of teachers.
“We approved this restructuring plan for the three schools and they have to maintain AYP,” said school board President JoAnn Murphy. “If they don?t it?s an automatic that they must go into restructuring.”
Among the components involved in restructuring are a plan to replace most or all of a school?s teaching staff or to redesignate a school as a charter.
The state has to approve a restructuring plan, and according to Murphy that approval is slated for early April.
Jack Jennings, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy, said in a report last year that school restructuring in Maryland isn?t working.
“We follow schools in five states across the country and what we?re seeing is that more of them are going into restructuring and not coming out,” Jennings told The Examiner. “In Maryland, about 16 percent of schools have reached improvement but there?s been a 40 percent increase in the number of schools being added to the list. Maryland is not getting half of its schools out of restructuring.”
Murphy said, however, that the restructuring plan is left up to the individual schools.
“You can have 30 talented people to assemble a task but if the chemistry doesn?t gel ,they won?t get it done” she said. “You need a team that can relate to the teachers in that school.”
Woodlawn Principal E. Donald Weglein, just back Friday from a teacher recruitment effort in Ohio, said he hopes restructuring will enable his school to move forward in positive way.
“The plan has yet to be approved but at this time we are needing about 25 highly qualified teachers,” he said.
“But [to bring in a fresh new crop of teachers] would be a great opportunity to take teaching to the next level at Woodlawn.”
