The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page 32

THE SUN Ann Section MARYLAND SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2000 Star MSPAP schools and how they've fared. Page 4i A TTDY NDEL Olesker. Monumental indecisiveness over fate of Memorial Stadium. Page2n School sees A. -1 Anne Arundel Some teachers will get a bonus gender gap larrowig Mir'-1 t-N '7? Arundel elementary works to keep boys from falling behind Reward going to 115 veterans serving in challenging schools Program not a hit with all 'Good for all children' i i i By Stephanie Desmon SUN STAFF JED KIRSCHBAUM SUN STAFF PHOTOS Recent test scores show progress among third-grade pupils was at least 10 points higher than for boys in every grade tested.

"The gender gap has been there throughout the history of MSPAP," says Richard J. Steinke, Maryland's deputy superintendent for school improvement. "It's something that is happening not only in Maryland, but across the country." A report released this year by the National Center for Education Statistics found similar trends in reading and writing over the past 30 years and noted that the gender gap widens as children get oldpr. Although boys and girls tend to enter elementary school with similar backgrounds in reading at home, by the See Reading, 23b By Howard Libit SUN STAFF Thanks a lot, Teach: Curtis Jones, a math and physics instructor at the Baltimore City Detention Center high school, gets a hug from one of his students after a class. Learning to free the mind inside the city jail school Shady Side Education: in classes at the Baltimore City Detention Center, student inmates discover ways to turn their lives around.

Experienced teachers 115 of them in four low-performing Anne Arundel County schools will soon find themselves $2,000 richer, perhaps in time for Christmas. In its first year, the state's $6.1 million Teacher Stipend Incentive Program was designed to reward with cash bonuses teachers who work In some of the more challenging schools in Maryland. "All too often, the low-performing schools tend to have the least-prepared teachers or the least-experienced teachers," said Lawrence E. Leak, assistant state superintendent for certification. "The conditions found in these schools require teachers that are more experienced, that have a broader range 1 of teaching strategies.

What we wanted to do is get seasoned teachers." The $230,000 is earmarked for teachers with four or more years of experience and advanced degrees who worked successfully last year at Van Bo Ikelen Elementary in Severn, Hilltop Elementary and Marley Middle School In Glen Burnie, and the former Lindale-Brooklyn Park Middle School in Linthi-cum. See Bonus, 5b By Erika Niedowski The students, who wear military-style fatigues with B.C.D.C. printed on the back, take English, math and science much as other high school kids do. They just do it in six portable trailers staffed with guards and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence at the Baltimore City Detention Center. Officials say school No.

370, which was honored with an excellence award from the Maryland Department of Education in October, is the only public school in the country inside a jail. "Being in here, it's a lot different," says George Kearney, 17, a 12th-grader who as- See Jail, 22b Family offering reward in fires SUN STAFF Boys are scoring significantly worse than girls on Maryland's annual mandatory exams sharply depressing the statewide reading and writing scores released last week. "This gap is a problem across the state," says state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick. "I think it has taken a back seat to other gaps like with children in poverty and minority children, but this gap is very important for us to look at, too." Take Bodkin Elementary School in Anne Arundel County, where Principal Rocco Ferretti noticed several years ago that if it, weren't for the test scores among boys, his school would be among the tops in Maryland.

"It bothered me a great deal," Ferretti says. "Even the boys in my top reading groups were scoring unsatisfactory. I knew these boys could read, but they weren't showing it on the tests." The gender gap is similar across the nation, but it's far different from the one that captured headlines during the 1980s and 1990s. That concern focused on why girls score worse than boys on math, science and computer exams, particularly in the upper grades. These days, educators in Maryland and across the nation are turning attention to the reading and writing gap between younger boys and girls.

On the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program exam results released last week, the percentage of girls scoring satisfactory on reading and writing When Dawn Downing says attendance is mandatory at her high school, she means it in a way no other principal can: All of her nearly 120 students are locked up at the Baltimore city jail on charges ranging from armed robbery to murder. Eyes on the future: Kimberly Craig, 17, a former dropout, enjoys her classes at the city jail school and looks forward to getting her GED. 3 arsons reduce waterfront cottage to shell, then ruin Churches work to reclaim Advent Our Svar on drugs' leaves many victims, no victories By Laura Barnhardt SUN STAFF Spiritual aids counter commercial excesses AST WEEK, actor Robert Downey Jr. was arrested in a Palm Springs, By John Rivera about," LeVeque said. "And when you can do that, and you have the tools and skills to do that, it works out to a much happier time in the holiday." There was a time when it was easier to get people to church for programs or services during Advent, which includes the four Sundays before See Advent, 24b so much noise in our lives," said Katharine W.

LeVeque, a clinical social worker who instructed a group In guided imagery meditation techniques at a workshop yesterday at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation in North Baltimore. "It's all about learning to get yourself interiorly ready for what Christmas is really hotel and charged with possession of cocaine and meth- SUN STAFF Gregory Kane Within three weeks, three fires destroyed a Shady Side cottage that the Rowan family had used for three decades. The first fire was minor. The second heavily damaged the home. In the third, the charred remains of the house were set ablaze.

Everything was destroyed all of the family's antiques, the guest book signed by friends and relatives who visited the waterfront cottage, even the watercolor painting Rod Rowan had painted in seventh grade of the yellow sailboat that he, his two younger brothers and father had taken out countless times on the West River and the Chesapeake Bay. The October arsons have prompted family members to post a $1,000 reward for answers as they and fire investigators continue to ask who and why. "It just doesn't make any sense," said Rod Rowan, who is coordinating the family's efforts to publicize the reward. Reward posters are being distrib See Fires, 3b 1 amphetamine. On Oct.

30, Maryland State Police Cpl. Edward M. Toatley, working undercover, was shot to death by a suspected drug dealer. Yes, the two incidents do have a connection. Both graphically illustrate the futility and travesty of our "war on drugs," a conflict in which both Downey and Toatley are only the latest casualties.

Downey was just a few months out of jail where he had been cooling his heels as a result of a previous drug charge and had appeared in a few episodes of the Fox television series "Ally McBeal," when he was minding his own business, harming no one but himself, in a hotel room. Cops received a tip about drugs in' the room. They swooped in and arrested Downey, who should be in drug treatment. Instead, he was released on bailfiree to cop some mdre For many, Christmas gets crowded out of the holiday season's flurry of parties, festive decorating and trips to the shopping mall that can make December one of the busiest and most stressful months of the year. That's why a growing number of churches are offering contemplative timeouts for their members in an attempt to inject a little more spirituality into the Christmas season.

As Christians begin the four-week celebration of Advent today, churches are offering evening prayer and retreat days for silent meditation. They are encouraging members to walk a labyrinth, a spiritual stroll through a contemplative maze. They are handing out booklets to help people to pray at home. It's all for the purpose of stopping the madness. "People are looking for ways to quiet oown.

There's Hide Johns Hopkins pediatric patients wave to Santa at BWI Airport. They had just finished a brief, plane ride to the North Pole. coke or meth if he's able to avoid police. Toatley, working undercover with a federal task force to break up a drug ring in Northeast Washington, D.C., made a deal with a suspected drug dealer the night before Halloween. Toatley handed the man $3,500.

The suspect went away for a few moments, then returned and shot Toatley in the head. Police soon released a picture of the suspect: Kofi Apea Orleans-Lindsay. Orleans-Lindsay was depicted as a heartless, See Kane, 24b K.LAlifsUh KENNETH.