ABCDE METRO monday, december 27, 2010 WEATHER 24, 9 a.m. 29, noon 30, 5 p.m. 27, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Bud Greenspan, 84, the Emmy Award-winning and best-known Olympic documentarian, had Parkinson’s disease. B4


The holidays are over When will your in-laws be able to leave? Check out Dr. Gridlock for the latest on travel, from airports to rail to roads. PostLocal.com


A no-go on the snow The Washington area was spared the brunt of a massive snowstorm that made its way up the East Coast, canceling hundreds of flights from Boston to South Carolina on one of the year’s busiest travel weekends. A1


The writing’s on the menu in cooking class at Alexandria’s T.C. Williams, where teachers and administrators have cooked up a host of new initiatives


JOHNKELLY’SWASHINGTON


Answer Man’s Answers Did you take the fiendishly difficult D.C. area trivia test? If you did, here is the history behind the answers. B2


Budget process becomes ‘more painful’ in Md.


$1.2 BILLION GAP LOOMS


O’Malley likely will cut education ‘significantly’


BY JOHNWAGNER To close Maryland’s next bud- PHOTOS BY EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Sean Spivey, left, Jeremy Skrinski and Bria Leak make a gingerbread house at T.C. WilliamsHigh School in Alexandria. T.C. Williams is the only high school in theD.C. suburbs to have received a federal school improvement grant.


Slapped with the label ‘lowest-achieving,’ a high school turns a crisis into a challenge


BY DONNA ST. GEORGE


School was nearly empty. No lin- gering. No fights like last year’s. No one talking on cellphones or dragging in late to class. Thisnewsense of order reflects


W


wide-ranging changes in one of the Washington region’s largest, most iconic high schools. Known as the setting for “Remember the Titans,” a movie about the quest for racial integrationfourdecades ago, T.C.Williams now is fighting another battle against education- al disparities. This time it’s a 21st-century


struggle that began in March, when Alexandria’s only public high school was labeled “persis- tently lowest-achieving” in Vir- ginia because of lagging test scores among some of its 2,900 students. Nine months later, the school


has an energetic new principal, more order and discipline and a stronger emphasis on writing. Teachers set goals and get cri- tiques. Counselors are assigned fewer students so that they can help devise detailed achievement plans for each one. There is a new math and writing center where students drop in for tutoring. “I think the school has a lot of


promisingpractices that, if imple- mented and successful, can be used by a lot of other urban dis- tricts in our state,” said Kathleen


hen the bell sound- ed one autumn morning, the first- floorhallwayatT.C. Williams High


Achievement Gap Initiative at HarvardUniversity,who is collab- orating on the reformat T.C.Wil- liams. “They seemlike they are up to it, and I don’t get that impres- sion everywhere I go.”


‘The transformation’ T.C.Williams is hardly the pic-


Dora Tweneboah checks the white board for instruction during an English lesson at T.C. WilliamsHigh School. The school now has more order and discipline and a stronger emphasis on writing.


Smith,directorof school improve- ment at the Virginia Department of Education. The reactiontothedismal label


“was like mourning, going through stages of anger and deni- al,” recalled Alexandria Superin- tendent Morton Sherman. But when the shock wore off, he and others decided: A crisis is a terri- ble thing to waste. It was clear that some students were falling through the cracks, he said, and the “lowest-achieving” designa- tion came with $6 million in aid fromtheObama administration. T.C. Williams is one of more


than 350 high schools nationwide — and the only one so far in the D.C. suburbs — to receive the federal school improvement grants. But there is no precise prescription for transforming a high school, and no one can say


for sure whether changes will translate into higher math and reading scores and an improved graduation rate, the benchmarks of success. Educators say T.C. Williams


still performs well in many ways, and that a number of other schools in the region face equal or greater challenges. But T.C. Wil- liams has never met all its goals under the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, falling short with someminority and special educa- tion students. It sends 85 percent of graduates to college.But school systemdata show that nearly one in three Hispanic students and one in five African Americans fail to graduate on time. “I’m guessing that T.C. Wil-


liams has a lot more capacity to pull thisoff thandomost schools,” saidRonFerguson, director of the


ture of a downtrodden public school. Themain campus is set in a gleaming windowed building where 26 Advanced Placement courses are taught and a cadre of high achievers go to top colleges. But the school is highly diverse. Its students come frommore than 100 countries and speak more than50languages.More thanhalf come fromlow-income families. After it made Virginia’s list of


lowest-achieving schools, Alexan- dria officials had four options: close it down; bring in new man- agement, such as a charter opera- tor; replace the principal and at least half the teachers; or replace theprincipalandmakeanarrayof improvements. Alexandria chose the last of


those options, the least severe. At the forefront of what everyone now calls “the transformation” stood Suzanne Maxey, 58, the thirdprincipal inthree years, cho- sen partly for having led improve- ment efforts inMaryland schools. The firstdayof school, students


stepped off yellow buses to a sort of small-town celebration. The marching band played. There were balloons and welcome post- ers. Teachers, parents and elected officials cheered as students


t.c. williams continued on B6


Wanted: Young readers to build book buzz Publishers seek critiques from library groups, such as one in Bethesda, to give feedback on teen literature


BY DONNA ST. GEORGE L


ily Cantor is quick with her opinions about the latest books. Ask her about “Fire


Will Fall,” a post-9/11 novel about a terrorist plot in a suburb, and she dismisses it: Too slow. But what about “Wither,” a dystopian tale featuring a virus and a kid- napped girl? “That one was so, so, so, so


good,” she said. “I read it three times.” It’s heady when you’re 12 and


your opinionsmatter in the larger world of books. The seventh-grader and more


than 70 other young readers at the Montgomery County library in downtown Bethesda are a lit- tle-known sounding board for publishers of teen fiction, poring over advance copies of books and dutifully typing up their ratings and impressions. “Hard to read and even harder


to finish,” Erica Roberts, 15, of Potomac wrote in perhaps her most stinging critique. She rated “Invincible Summer” as a 1 out of a possible 5, which means in perfectly blunt terms: How did it get published? Such opinions don’t influence


whether a book goes to print, but they give publishersanimportant


glimpse inside the minds of teen readers. Sometimes they also help build buzz about a newbook. “We love to hear what kids


think of our books, and this is a great way to see what they’re reacting to,” said Suzanne Mur- phy, vice president and publisher at Disney Book Group, one of two dozen publishing houses that send advance copies to the young Bethesda readers. TheBethesda group isoneof 16


across the nation that belong to a galley review program started by the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. The teen critiques come at a


boom time in the young-adult market, said Murphy, whose Dis- ney group owns the Hyperion imprint and publishes authors including Rick Riordan, Ally Carter andMelissa de la Cruz. At times, she said, she reads the reviews and thinks, “Oh, you’re right.” The feedback is important, she said, because “they are really at eye level.” Kavya Rallabhandi, 14, of Elli-


cott City read an advance copy of “TheHungerGames”andfoundit amazing. “I told all of my friends about it,” she said. When the book became a huge


review continued on B6 KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST


Lily Cantor, 12, reads the back cover of the novel “Annexed” at the Bethesda library as part of a national programthat nominates best reads for youth and gives publishers teen feedback.


get gap, Gov. Martin O’Malley is considering across-the-board cuts in local education funding, a reduction in payments to mental health providers who serve the poor and a shift of hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher pen- sion costs to the counties, which already face theirownfiscal prob- lems. Those and other cost-saving measures — all recommended by the governor’s budget advisers — underscore the unpopular choic- es O’Malley (D) faces as he pre- pares tosubmitabalanced spend- ing plan for fiscal 2012 next month. O’Malley, who won reelection


Nov. 2, spent much of his first term making largely recession- driven budget cuts. But even as


the economy shows signs of re- covering, Maryland and other states are facing arguably their most difficult budget season yet. The difficulty is partly because


of the evaporation of billions in federal stimulus funds that have propped up state budgets nation- wide for the past two years. And repeated rounds of budget-cut- ting have left few easy alterna- tives, even in Maryland, which is in better shape than many other states. “This budget is going to feel a


lot more painful than the last few,” O’Malley told reporters last week as he prepared lawmakers and interest groups, including manywhohelpedhimget reelect- ed, for the disappointment ahead. “Once the legislature gets this


budget, the immediate reaction will be, ‘Surely there is another way,’ ” he said, declining to dis- cuss many specifics. Shepherding the budget


through the General Assembly is likely to pose a major political challenge for O’Malley. Aides say the governor is trying to convince the many disappointed constitu- encies that they are being treated no worse than others. O’Malley has pledged not to


budget continued on B3


George Allen faces ‘a fight on his hands’


As he mulls over Senate run, conservatives take issue with his record


BY ANITA KUMAR For months, it appeared that


former U.S. senator George Allen would have a clear path to the Republican nomination if he chose to try to reclaim his old job. But in the summer, grumbling


abouthispast began, culminating in a Web site outlining the rea- sons some fellow Republicans op- pose him:He’s too moderate.He’s part of the establishment. He’s partly to blame for the record spending and ballooning deficit inWashington. By this month, no fewer than


four Republicans billing them- selves as more conservative than Allen were considering challeng- ing him for the right to run against Sen. James Webb, if the Virginia Democrat seeks reelec- tion. “There are some concerns


based on his record and his rheto- ric,” saidMarkKevin Lloyd, chair- man of the Lynchburg Tea Party and vice chairman of the Virginia


Tea Party Patriots Federation, a statewide umbrella group. “Peo- ple are looking at things in a new light,” he said. Someconservative and tea par-


ty activists say Allen abandoned right-of-center values, backing big-government programs and too much spending. But others say he merely failed to change along with Virginia and the Re- publican Party, both of which have become more conservative in part because of the emergence of the tea party movement. “George is going to have to


prove himself to our new friends in the party, and that’s the way it should be,” Gary C. Byler, the Republican chairman of the 2nd Congressional District and a vet- eran of Allen’s first successful campaign for the state House of Delegates, in 1981. Byler said he plans to support Allen if he runs, adding: “He knows he has a fight on his hands.” InaninterviewwithTheWash-


ington Post, Allen said his conser- vatism has not changed since Ronald Reagan first inspired him to get into politics in 1976. Three decades ago, the man who would eventually hold Thomas Jeffer-


allen continued on B4 B EZ SU


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50