Baltimore Schools Labeled "Persistently Dangerous"

Maryland state school officials named five Baltimor schools as persistently dangerous under the No Child Left Behind Act. Some community leaders don't like the desingation:

A few state school board members expressed concern before the vote that the designation puts a harsh label not only on a school but its community. The federal government allows states to define a dangerous school - and Maryland has one of the broadest descriptions in the nation.

"I think this part of [the No Child Left Behind law] is a real problem because of the difficulty it creates for a local community," said Blair G. Ewing, a new member of the board from Montgomery County. He said the federal education law applies a pejorative term to describe a school without offering any assistance in resolving the problem.

"This labeling of schools doesn't fix anything," said Dunbar Brooks, the new board president.

According to the Maryland definition, which NCLB allows the state to define dangerous,

For a school to get on the list, 2 1/2 percent of its student body must have been suspended for arson, possessing a weapon or drugs, assaulting a teacher or other student, or sexual assault.

The number of incidents at the five schools varied from as many as 21 to as few as six. Walbrook had 10 incidents last year that were counted under the persistently dangerous category. They were six drug offenses, an assault on an adult and three attacks on students, city officials said.

At Thurgood Marshall Middle School, there were six incidents; five involved weapons other than a gun. The sixth was listed only as an attack on a student.

Let's say your local Maryland school has a student body of 1000 kids. To get to the level of 2.5 percent, that means 25 kids have to be suspended for felonious behavior--and everything on the list is a felony. These felonies have to be committed on school grounds. In a 36 week, school year, 25 felonies in one school means a crime is commited on average every 7.2 school days.

Yes that is persistently dangerous and no student and no teacher should have to work in such conditions.

As for the negative connotation associated with the label, big deal. Baltimore has a crime problem, an acknowledged crime problem. The whole city suffers under the notion that it is "persistenly dangerous." Solve the crime problem and you solve the problem of crime at schools. We are not talking about the self-esteem of kids, we are talking about their physical safety and no matter what the condition of the neighborhood may be, schools should be the one safe place in these kids lives. If it takes a negative label to effect change, then so be it.