Two years ago, only 150 students attended Holabird Elementary, then a K-5 school in the southeastern corner of this city. Competition from charters and from regular public schools in nearby Baltimore County had drained families from Holabird, a chronic underperformer. So when Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore city…

When Jerry D. Weast became the superintendent of the Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools in 1999, he spent the summer poring over student-achievement results and demographic trends. Then he created a map to illustrate what he'd found. The map divided the suburban district, just outside the nation's capital, into two distinct areas, which…

Top state and local leaders in Maryland announced a plan last February to lend Baltimore $42 million to help the city's financially troubled school system. The money was used by Baltimore school leaders to address what they called a cash-flow emergency for that school year. Money helped pay employees' salaries for the rest of that year, and helped…