Dancing With Myself, Testing Failure, and Giving Your All

Teacher Magazine ’s take on education news from around the Web, April 6-12.

Maryland lawmakers gave the stiff arm—some might say the finger—to Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich’s NCLB-inspired attempt to take away control of four troubled Baltimore high schools and seven middle schools from the city’s district. It would have been the first state seizure of schools as provided for under the federal law. In the final hours of the legislative session, state senators voted to override a vetoed bill that will now prevent the state from intervening in the city’s school management for a year. That duration is far from arbitrary for Democrats, who control both house chambers, and who hope that by 2007, a fellow party member—perhaps gubernatorial candidate and Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley—will take over in Annapolis. "I've never seen people celebrate so much over complete dysfunction," Ehrlich...