Open Society Institute – Baltimore
Open Society Institute (OSI) – Baltimore : Audacious Thinking For Lasting Change
Jobs for youth have always been a challenge, and the recession has made this worse. According to the Department of Labor, 25% of all unemployed individuals are under the age of 25 and the number of employed teens has declined by 23% in recent years. Less than 14% of low income teens currently hold a legitimate job. Traditional strategies have failed to adequately address the problem.
Just before the holidays, the Governor quietly submitted a letter to chairmen of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and the House Committee on Appropriations. The letter includes a new recommendation that the State spend millions of dollars to build a 120-bed facility for youth under 18 charged as adults rather than a 180-bed facility, as originally planned.
Inner city middle school youth from the poorest neighborhoods in Maryland—kids who once couldn’t swim—are now rowing in high-tech racing shells on the Middle Branch Basin as an avenue to college scholarships
I hope you’ve heard the good news about our Baltimore City Schools. It’s really something to celebrate. According to the most recent release of high school performance data by the Maryland State Department of Education, Baltimore City public schools have again increased their graduation rates. But it is the dramatic gains of African American boys […]
Whether you live in Baltimore or across the country in Seattle, you probably believe that every child deserves a high-quality education. But what does that mean? What does that look like? How do we know whether that is happening? As it turns out, these simple questions are quite difficult to answer. A big part of […]
Most educators will tell you, teens have mobile phones, but they cannot make mobile apps. They access Web sites often, but few know how to use HTML code to design their own. In Baltimore, we can address this dearth of media literacy easily, to ensure the city will have its share of well-qualified workers for […]
When I first met Ruth, she told me, “I was 16 and did a wrong thing and my parents put me out.” I never learned the wrong thing she did, but Ruth was now 27 and had been living in her car with her two children for almost six months. And she expected to be […]
Editor’s note: Brenda McLaughlin will be at OSI-Baltimore for the first forum in our Learning about Learning series, Expanding Learning Beyond the School Year, on Tuesday, June 7th. Friday, June 17 is the last day of school for students in Baltimore City. Here in the suburbs of Philadelphia, my sons share the same last day. […]
Baltimore City Schools have struggled for years to raise student achievement. There have been multiple strategies, any number of new textbooks and instructional approaches, and lots and lots of money invested in attempts to move students toward proficiency, particularly in math and reading. Though recently students have been achieving at higher levels, city students are […]
Last April, the 7th grade writing workshop I teach at Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle School studied an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. Today, the group struts around the school, reciting lines from the poem: “We were very tired, we were very merry–, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.” Writers in Baltimore […]
OSI-Baltimore has permanently closed. It has been our honor and privilege to partner with and serve the Baltimore community for the past 25 years.
This website is available for historical purposes. It is no longer being updated.