Baltimore redefines grammar

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BALTIMORE (AP) -- Remember when a noun was defined as a person, place or thing?

In a teen magazine that is becoming part of the Baltimore middle-school reading curriculum, the noun is being redefined as "stuff."

That makes a verb "what stuff does."

It's part of a new approach in the Baltimore school system to teaching reading and writing in middle schools. Some say the new method doesn't have much of a track record.

The change is being made after a dismal performance on state standardized tests this spring.

The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday that officials have spent at least $2 million on Studio Course. The curriculum uses teen magazines, places grammar on the back burner and lets students write about whatever they want.

The magazines the schools are using to engage children include Cosmo Girl, which has a feature this month called "Five Hot New Kisses," with explicit tips on making out, and Teen People, whose November issue includes the articles "Hot Boy Next Door" and "Flirt Better."

If better test results are what school officials are after, they have no evidence the new curriculum will do that. Only one other city, Denver, has used the program.

"I can't imagine Baltimore would be so ignorant to think it's research-based," said Kay Landon, a sixth-grade teacher in Denver. "They can look at our test scores. Our test scores have not gone up. The kids are getting shortchanged."

In Baltimore, the implementation of Studio Course has been marked by some teachers starting the school year with no training, schools struggling to buy the necessary materials and lesson plans being scrapped and rewritten, a review by the Sun has found.

School system officials, who say Studio Course is based on the latest reading theory, dismiss criticism that they implemented the curriculum too quickly.

"When the boat is sinking, you don't follow the manual," said Frank DeStefano, the system's deputy chief academic officer. "You fix it."

Studio Course is being used in all 21 of Baltimore's traditional middle schools -- where more than 60 percent of students last school year failed the state reading test -- and in two alternative schools and one kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick is calling for an audit of the Studio Course curriculum in Baltimore to see whether it is teaching children what they need to know for the state's standardized tests.

She said Maryland's other 23 school systems are all teaching the requisite skills.

Until an audit proves that Studio Course is teaching the state standards, she said, "I don't feel any level of comfort that [the city school system] is going to accelerate the performance of students."

Mrs. Grasmick also questioned the timing of the school system's decision to use the curriculum: The school board signed off on a middle-school reform plan, which included Studio Course, in July, six weeks before school began.

It is standard practice in education, Mrs. Grasmick said, to approve a new curriculum "a minimum of six months and usually a year" in advance, and to pilot it in a few schools to make sure it works before implementing it in an entire school system.