The Gender Gap at School; Pupils' futures show disparity in city

A nice article in the Baltimore Sun about what KIPP Ujima is doing differently to achieve off-the-charts results with the same students, spending LESS money!  I wish I had even the tiniest bit of confidence that the Baltimore public school system might adopt even one of the keys to KIPP's success.  Sigh...

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From the Baltimore Sun

Pupils' futures show disparity in city

Level of education varies across charter, public middle schools

By Liz Bowie
Sun reporter

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.middle11jun11,0,1581003.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

June 11, 2006

Malcolm Lawson, a 14-year-old Baltimore boy with a head full of rap songs and a knack for solving math equations, will go to a rigorous college preparatory school this fall.

Tynesha McGougan, whose reserved exterior belies the playful 13-year-old she is at home, heads to a city vocational high school where most years only a third of graduates plan to attend a four-year college.

Both will graduate from city middle schools on Tuesday, but the education they received was fundamentally different. Malcolm has spent fifth through eighth grades at KIPP Ujima Village Academy, a charter school that strives to put every one of its mostly poor and minority pupils on a college track by teaching self-discipline and hard work. Tynesha has gone to Calverton, a public middle school that sends a few pupils to elite high schools but has a long history of low achievement and behavior problems.

This year, while Malcolm's class was reading Shakespeare, John Steinbeck and Harper Lee, Tynesha and her classmates were studying books for younger readers.

Malcolm and Tynesha's contrasting experiences offer lessons for city school officials as they examine ways to make middle schools more than a way station on the road to high school. Among them: Discipline, structure and high expectations produce better pupils.

There's enormous pressure to improve the schools, especially after the state declared this year that seven of the 53 middle schools - including Calverton - were performing so poorly they should be placed under the control of outside operators.

KIPP is one of a handful of successful models city educators may draw upon...