City Speaks: Community Voices on Baltimore Schools
A report, I co-authored, culminating my Education Pioneers fellowship experience as Chief Analyst and Manager of Data and Information Systems for The Fund for Educational Excellence was released today, on October 15, 2014.
http://cityspeaks.ffee.org/ffee-study-results.pdf
In this report, 4 recommendations to the Baltiomore City Schools CEO were drawn from a year long community study conducted in all Community Statistical Areas (CSA’s) in Baltimore City.
From the conversations with Baltimore residents, the recommendations are as follows:
1. Create more welcoming school environments. Making a district-wide cultural shift to more open, responsive interactions with families and community members is a prerequisite for addressing many of the other concerns participants identified.
2. Leverage the tools at your disposal to reward, retain, and develop teachers.
3. Develop a comprehensive set of college and career readiness benchmarks and report out to individual students and families where students are performing
against these benchmarks.
4. Offer a wider variety of courses during school and more after-school activities for students.
The Fund will brief a number of groups on the findings from this study, including Dr. Thornton’s cabinet, the City
Schools Board of Commissioners, and Baltimore City’s delegation to the State legislature.
For a full list of top 10 themes and Baltimore citizen suggestions refer to 9 and 10 of report.
Find the neighborhood level reports and interactive maps at:
It truly was an amazing experience working on the Community Study with my colleagues at The Fund for Educational Excellence. I hope these recommendations and community suggestions will be utilized to effect change and improve the academic and life outcomes of the students in Baltimore City Schools.
Ijeoma Anyanwu 