The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has created a free after-school music program that reaches 1,300 students in six schools, reports the New York Times. Classes were over, but school was not out: Young string players rehearsed Beethoven in one classroom, while flutists practiced in another and brass players worked on fanfares in a third. Also on offer were homework tutors, an after-school snack and dinner. “Four measures for nothing,” Wade Davis, a cello teacher, called out to

School is a safe haven from the streets, students at Baltimore’s Excel Academy tell Kevin Rector, a Baltimore Sun reporter. Seven students at the alternative school have been shot to death in the neighborhood in the last two years. Many students have lost family members to street violence. Deaundra Fisher said her older brother was killed about five years ago. She later witnessed the shooting of her young nephew. . . . Dajona Bass, an 18-year-old senior, said her father was k

Three-quarters of Chicago Public School students come from low-income families. As third graders, they test below the second-grade level in reading and math, on average. But they nearly catch up to the national average by eighth grade, gaining six grade levels in five years, according to a nationwide study by Stanford researchers. That makes the much-maligned district one of the most effective in the country, reports the New York Times, which has some great interactive graphi

Step, a new documentary on the “Lethal Ladies” of Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, is getting rave reviews. As the girls compete in a dance form developed at black colleges, they “triumph against the odds” to get to college, writes Kenneth Turan, an LA Times critic, in the Baltimore Sun. Gari “Coach G” McIntyre leads the charter school’s step team. “It’s about sacrifice, not making excuses, a positive attitude,” says Coach G. “If you can make it though step practi