An Education Blog for Baltimore?

It will be interesting to see how this works. We are going to use this blog for an Urban School Reform class. In particular, members of the class are going to reflect on how change is or is not playing out here in the fine city of Baltimore, Maryland.

There are many many things to consider. Baltimore is such a small pond. Do we want to keep the site closed to outsiders? I am hoping that the point is to share our ideas with a larger audience, but does this mean we have to censor ourselves so we don't make the wrong people mad? I want this site to be a place teachers can be real about what is happening in their schools - what reform looks like on the ground, not just in policy documents. It should be about what is truly about helping kids versus what is about adults keeping their jobs. I want it to be a place that we can be free to say that there are a lot of very well-intentioned people who are just not very good at knowing what it takes to help kids learn. And that after years of so many things not working, good intentions are not enough.

This should not turn into a place to bash the city schools, however, because there is enough of that and it does little good towards making true change, and because there are also many amazing people who are well-intentioned AND incredibly talented. Part of the task is convincing more of them to stay and embrace the sisyphean challenge of working in education here in Small-ti-more.

This could be a disaster - but it also could be the start of something good.