A little more than a year ago, Andres Alonso, PhD, took over the helm of the Baltimore City Public School System, which like many other big city school systems has been plagued by chronic underachievement, abysmal high school drop-out rates and classroom overcrowding among other ills.

“The reality of our schools is that if you look at how kids are doing in the first and second grade, their doing fine regardless of poverty in their neighborhood,” said Alonso a former deputy chancellor of public schools in New York City who immigrated with his family from Cuba when he was 12.

“Then as they get older the outcomes go through the floor,” Alonso told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “And then we get kids who even at the end of the seventh or eighth grade are doing fine and then at the end of the ninth grade or tenth grade somebody is telling them, `No, you’re not worth it.’”

But, this summer Alonso and the beleaguered system that he leads received some very welcome news: major improvements across the board in Maryland School Assessment Scores, which are the main metric used to meet federal No Child Left Behind requirements. Overall gains in reading and math in Baltimore City Public School’s (BCPS) on this year’s MSA have reached their highest levels since the test began being administered in 2003. And specifically, black elementary and secondary students in Baltimore improved their reading test scores at rates higher than white students.

“We have the highest outcomes historically and in many grades the largest gains across every single grade, across both subjects,” Alonso said. The news of major improvements in MSA scores most certainly has bolstered his position in a city where Alonso’s five predecessors lasted an average of two years on the job.

“What I look for is improvement over time,” he explained. “I want the improvement to be large enough that we don’t have to be waiting for the next 10 years for the district to be an exemplary district,” he added. “If I have double-digit gains in literacy, I know that if we, when we, replicate that growth over seven or eight years, we will no longer be having the conversations we have been having.”

But, vastly improved test scores as well as Alonso’s impact on BCPS in other areas—he slashed 310 central office jobs, added six new middle-high schools and alternative schools, paid students for increased test scores and gave more power to principals—have added to his burgeoning national reputation as an education reformer.

“There are two education camps within the Democratic Party: a status quo camp and a reform camp,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks on June 13. “The reformist camp…issued a statement through the Education Equality Project, signed by school chiefs like Joel Klein of New York, Michelle Rhee of Washington, Andres Alonso of Baltimore. Today’s school systems aren’t broken, the reformers argue. They were designed to meet the needs of teachers and adults first, and that’s exactly what they are doing. It’s time, though, to put the interests of students first.”

Like his reformist colleagues, Alonso says, “Kids first,” is the foundation from which he operates as an educator.

“The fundamental rationale for me is always going to be is it good for kids and is it going to lead to better schools. Anything else at some level is irrelevant; it becomes a political problem that is my job to solve,” he said. “I do think that I am part of a group of people who increasingly assert that at the core of the ills of public education in this country you must look internally—issues of accountability in the schools and not simply externally—concerns that we have little power to address, such as the poverty of the students and the parents,” Alonso added.

“So, what I think links many of us is a single-minded focus on outcomes for students and a willingness to look at the structures within school systems and try to change them rather than accept them as necessities.”

Reaction to Alonso’s reformist ways has been decidedly mixed.

“It has been an eventful year and not in a good way,” read one June 13 entry of a Baltimore Sun education blog by someone identifying himself as a high school teacher. “This could easily be regarded as the worst year in BCPSS history and I put most of the blame on Dr. Alonso.”

Yet, another blogger’s post read, “BCPSS is in a bad place and change NEEDS to happen. While I don’t agree with all of Alonso’s decisions, I applaud him for trying new things because what is going on now? It’s not working.”

For his part, Alonso said he has received overwhelming support from many in and out of the system.

“Nobody could have predicted that in my first year on the job as many fundamental reforms could have been launched,” Alonso said. “I think there is tremendous acceptance of my methods, of my ideas,” he added. “You walk with me into any community in this city and what you hear is, `Keep it up—keep it up—don’t blink.’”