Baltimore Curriculum Project, Inc.
In 2017, Baltimore Curriculum Project was named the Lead Education Partner in the $30 million Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grant to redevelop the Perkins Homes neighborhood in East Baltimore. The overall goal of the five-year City Springs College and Career Readiness (CCR) Program is to prepare City Springs students to graduate from high school successfully prepared to pursue careers of choice via successful completion of college or other post-secondary training. Targeting 230 middle school students, City Springs will focus in Year I on bolstering academic readiness and career exploration by providing: Individual Academic Counseling/high school planning; Accelerated Middle School Math & Science performance/Deepening English Instruction for High Performers; College and Career Resource Class/College & Career Exploration; Parent education and engagement in College and Career Readiness; Participation in Mentoring Programs.
Improving Education, fiscally sponsored by Strong City Baltimore
Founded in 2015 by Jarrod Bolte, a former Baltimore City Schools teacher and administrator, Improving Education set out to change the way schools work to improve outcomes for children. Improving Education will focus on up to 20 elementary schools using a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to assist teachers, administrators, and community providers in redesigning instructional and support mechanisms to improve early literacy outcomes for students from K through second grade. Working with 125 reading teachers and 3,500 students, Improving Education’s literacy protocols have become a cornerstone for school innovation and early literacy instructional design in City Schools. Improving Education expects to increase the number of students in grades K-2 meeting grade level reading proficiency by 20 percentage points from the beginning to end of year.
Teach for America – Baltimore
Teach for America: Baltimore has been recruiting and developing teachers and leaders to expand educational opportunities for Baltimore’s children growing up in poverty since 1992. Today, there are 1,200 Teach for America alumni and teachers in Baltimore–80% continue to engage in work impacting low-income communities.This grant will continue TFA’s work in 1. recruiting top talent ( 90 new and diverse teachers–over 57% people of color); 2. building leaders in the classroom, schools and City (a total of 20 TFA principals and 3rd year teacher retention rate of 66%) and 3. Connecting TFA network to accelerate educational outcomes in Baltimore (launching a new network strategy).
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.