Mayor and City Council of Baltimore City
The original Mayor’s Fellowship Program provided a summer internship that enabled the City of Baltimore to establish a pipeline to full time employment to high caliber young professionals, many of whom remain high profile leaders in City and County government today. With the support of Baltimore Corps, up to 10 graduate school students will be recruited for a ten-week Summer internship working on executive-level projects in high-functionning Baltimore City agencies and offices. Fellows meet weekly to learn about City government, and present their projects and findings to City Hall leaders at the end of internship. The goal of the Mayor’s Office is to hire successful Fellows in the two years following the internship experience.
Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
With a goal to close the persistent “excellence gap” between sub-groups of advanced learners, the Baltimore Emerging Scholars Program targets students in grades 2-4 who show potential for becoming academically advanced as well as the teachers who work with them. Run by the renowned Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, this program serves 600 students in 18 schools (identified without using a test) with weekly 90-minute enrichment lessons around an interdisciplinary theme. The Abell grant will enable Emerging Scholars to develop a 5th grade curriculum entitled “Recover, Repair, Rebuild,” and to train 5th grade teachers to use the curriculum reaching an additional 400 5th grade students. The project will follow the trajectories of participating students into middle school.
The Community School
Certified in 2014 as a small non-public diploma-awarding high school, The Community School in Remington has successfully served students who have failed in Baltimore City Public Schools for over 30 years. This storefront school provides up to 24 14-19 year olds with an accelerated academic and mentoring high school program that reinforces basic skills, while individualized instruction builds knowledge and skills for college, competitive employment, and community contribution. Over 40 volunteers work individually with students, and The Community School boasts a daily attendance above 95% and a college enrollment rate of 65%.
Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools
This Abell grant will support two-year operational funding to The Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools (Alliance) to serve the 50 charter schools in Maryland, 34 of which are in Baltimore City. As a voice for charter school communities, the Alliance advocates for equitable and transparent conditions for public charter schools; offers support to new and existing public charter schools; and drives the discussion around innovative educational practices that lead to positive outcomes for students. A major focus on this work is in Baltimore City, where 1 in 5 City public school students attends a charter school; 65% of Baltimore’s charter schools outperform the mean achievement performance of traditional schools.
Carnegie Institution for Science
BioEYES is a week-long, hands-on biology unit delivered by Carnegie science outreach educators (with co-teaching from City classroom teachers), using live fish as subjects. The program meets the Common Core science standards, and it demonstrates—and prepares teachers for—a student-centered approach to science instruction. BioEYES allows Baltimore City students and teachers access to the world of high caliber, Nobel Prize-level science. In a recent study (Shuda, Butler, Farber, and Vary, 2015), the authors found significant gains in students’ knowledge and attitudes towards science as a result of BioEYES.
It is expected that 3,400 8th grade students (approximately 60% of 8th grade students) will experience BioEYES in the 2019/20 school year, with the remaining teachers trained next summer.