The SUPER (School-University Partnership for Excellence in Research-based)
STEM Project is a partnership between the Baltimore County Public Schools
(BCPS) and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. SUPER STEM activities
are built on a foundation of past work between the district and the university.
The project focuses on increasing student achievement, especially that
of low-performing students, and targets low-performing schools. Located
in the suburban region around Baltimore, BCPS enrolled 107,322 students
during the 2001-02 academic year. The County population is rapidly shifting
in ethno-racial characteristics such that the most recent census indicates
that White residents in the county have decreased from 84.9% in 1990 to
74.4% in 2000. Within BCPS, 33.7% of the students are African American,
59.7% are White, 4.0% are Asian American, and 2.0% are Hispanic.
To
achieve its MSP-aligned goals, SUPER STEM will:
1. Establish Visiting
STEM Scholarships to attract talented scientists and educators to accelerate
the development and teaching of new curricula;
2. Provide weekend and
summer accelerated academic coursework for the lowest-performing students
and schools;
3. Create STEM Academies in the lowest-performing schools;
4.
Expand the UMBC Urban Education Principal, Teacher and Intern Scholarships
to recruit and retain the most talented STEM educators to lowest-performing
schools;
5. Provide over 100 hours of STEM training to roughly 1800
teachers; and
6. Conduct ongoing, hierarchical, multi-method longitudinal
student and teacher achievement analyses, performance assessments, and
work sampling.
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