With the help of a new 1.9 million dollar grant, a Hopkins-sponsored program designed to increase graduation rates at low-income high schools may double the number of schools they serve nationwide, including under-performing public schools in Baltimore.
The new four-year grant, invested by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was awarded to boost the efforts of the Talent Development High Schools program, which provides a curriculum and teaching model targeted at struggling urban schools.
The University's Center for the Social Organization of Schools, which developed the model in 1994, currently runs the program at approximately 90 high schools across the country. The Center expects this number to increase to 200 schools by 2010, according to CSOS communications director Mary Maushard.
"We're going to be scaling up. We have to add employees, refine our [academic] materials and maybe even add to the curriculum materials. We will also do more evaluations of the program, to find out how it's going," she said.
Maushard added that the grant will also allow the CSOS to share its findings on how to transform under-performing schools. "We will disseminate what we've learned, not just with our schools, but with whomever," she said.
Most of the Gates Foundation grant will be allocated toward improving the program's internal functions, such as management and curriculum development -- all part of a multi-year strategic plan to expand the program's nationwide service.
Talent Development high schools are currently funded through a combination of outside grants, including support from the U.S. Department of Education and fees from schools that use the program's model classes or curriculum materials. The new funding, Maushard said, will help the program become self-supporting in the future.
The CSOS's program coincides with larger University efforts to improve standards at Baltimore City public schools, spearheaded by the Baltimore Scholars Program, which provides free tuition to students admitted to Hopkins from one of the city's public schools.
But the Baltimore Scholars Program has been criticized in the past for drawing most of its students from the city's selective magnet schools, like the prestigious City College and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.
Robert Balfanz, a research scientist at the CSOS, said that one of the goals of the Talent Development program was to open up higher-education opportunities to a broader pool of students in the city.
"We want [students] to achieve high standards, and not become disengaged," he said.
One of the biggest difficulties schools face, Balfanz added, is keeping students in classes. "In a typical, unreformed, high-poverty urban school, every year over half the kids will miss a month or more of school," he said.
Low attendance statistics are one of many problems that have seen substantial improvement at the Baltimore Talent Development High School, one of the CSOS program's most successful projects. The public school is the first -- and currently only -- one of its kind, an experimental program based on the Talent Development model that accepts Baltimore city students on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Experts at CSOS said that the premise of the model included maintaining smaller classes and offering career-development courses for upperclassmen in high school.
The school's non-selective admissions policy, Balfanz said, has made it a viable alternative for students who do not get accepted to magnet programs but also wish to avoid under-performing neighborhood schools.
Two years after it opened its doors in fall of 2004, the BTD High School, where nearly 90 percent of the students are low-income blacks, has seen attendance rates of nearly 93 percent. Only a dozen students have dropped out completely, principal Jeffrey Robinson told USA Today this year -- a statistic that indicates success in a city where there is a dropout rate of over 60 percent.
Saeed Hill, the assistant principal for the BTD High School, praised the school's progress in the last two years.
"Our teaching staff is wonderful -- they're diverse and dedicated, and they go above and beyond the call of duty," he said.
But Hill also added that other challenges to the school's success remain.
"Our biggest issue is getting parental support, and getting kids to come to school on time," he said.
He added, "We need more resources that would support students in family situations and crises. We need to get kids help with problems in the community, and start addressing their emotional needs."
Balfanz said that the CSOS may explore adding another experimental school in Baltimore in the future.
