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“Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card” will premiere tonight at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Academy Award–winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent a year inside Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School to document the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on poor urban schools.

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Baltimore City school officials are hoping that a change in students’ diets will lead to even bigger changes.

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Baltimore City schools will soon be implementing a new program to get parents more involved in their child’s education.

The school system will spend $1 million next academic year (about half of which is expected to be grant money) on the program. A “community-based organization” will be contracted to get parents active and form PTAs in the schools that lack them. (Only about 50 of the 192 schools in the system currently have PTAs.) PTA representatives would then evaluate their principal and give feedback on the school’s budget to the city school’s chief.

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Are administrators in the Baltimore City school system finally moving in the right direction?

A new code of conduct will be implemented next year — one which focuses more on preventing violence. Currently when students skip school, they are sent home for suspension. (Counterintuitive, no?)  Under the new code, the students will receive an in-school suspension as well as mentoring and parental notifications — an attempt to prevent dropouts and crime.

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At least one cost is not on the rise this year: tuition at Maryland state schools.

Governor O’Malley announced this morning that the University System of Maryland Board of Regents will not increase in-state undergraduate tuition at the state’s eleven universities for the next academic year. This will be the third consecutive year that tuition has been frozen.

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Yesterday’s post about the revoked scholarships sparked a lot of outrage, here and elsewhere. It was enough of a negative reaction to prompt Howard Castleman to re-give the $2,100 scholarships to four Patterson High School seniors.

The school’s principal refused the money.

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Experts and administrators attended the “Summit on School Safety Solutions” yesterday at UMBC. Their conclusions: focus more on preventing school violence and less on punishing it.

According to the keynote speaker, students are looking for “structure, high academic expectations, and teachers who understand and can communicate with them.” Just by providing these things, a school can become safer, he said. Others called for early behavioral intervention (at the elementary school level) and the involvement of outsiders like parents, church, and police to serve as mentors.

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Four seniors at Patterson Park High were ready to receive $8,400 in scholarship money from Castle Toyota/Scion, so that they could attend Baltimore City Community College in the fall. They never got the money.

Castle Toyota/Scion invited news media to the graduation ceremony, in an attempt to get a little PR for their generosity. However, Patterson’s JROTC instructor passed away just days before graduation, so a decision was made by school officials to not allow any media at graduation — an attempt to maintain a more somber mood because many at the school were grieving. That’s when Castle took the scholarships away.

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For all of you Scrabble players and avid dictionary readers, the Scripps National Spelling Bee is taking place this week in Washington, D.C. On Thursday and Friday, 288 young spellers will compete to see who knows how to spell a bunch of words that are never actually used in conversation. Yet, the National Spelling Bee is oddly fun to watch, even if it’s to see if another kid will pass out before successfully spelling a word (like above).

One more National Spelling Bee item: if you got a few minutes, check out this ESPN.com feature on the “Dan Marino of spelling,” Samir Patel. It’s an interesting read about the popular National Spelling Bee contestant who came up short five straight years.

Edgar Allan Poe T-shirt in Charlottesville, Va.

Think the Poe Toaster is wearing one of these under his cape?

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