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♪ ♪ Connecting Marylanders to their government...

This is "State Circle."

>> Jeff: Welcome to a special edition of "State Circle" with highlights of recent programs.

Coming up, a moving ceremony sheds light on a dark time in Maryland's past.

And we go inside the famed Thomas Point Light.

But first, fighting summer learning loss.

The average student in Maryland is already behind, having lost a full grade in math and six tenths of a grade in reading due to the pandemic.

That according to a new study.

We spoke with Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard.

>> What we wanted to do was put the losses, translate them into district by district loss because not every district in Maryland or the country were equally affected.

And so the only thing available district by district were the state test scores of the state proficiency rates.

So for states around the country, we put all of those local district test scores into comparable units and then reported them around the country.

So that everybody could see what happened to their local schools >> Jeff: This isn't just an academic inquiry.

This affects the lives of young people.

This affects their future earnings, the pathway that their life might take.

I mean the pandemic was not purely a public health disaster.

>> That's right.

And, you know, I realize many parents out there might have, like an ambivalent relationship with test scores, but, in this case, test scores are just a proxy for longer term outcomes.

We looked at what happened in states that saw big increases in the same scores, the NAEP scores during the 90s and 2000s and we looked at the people born in those places and we looked at incomes and educational attainment and teen motherhood rates and arrest rates.

So we know that these matter because we saw incomes riding when test scores were rising.

So remains to be seen exactly what happens going forward.

But if incomes were rising when these test scores were rising, it, you know, stands to reason that the decline in especially in states like Maryland, saw big declines, will have effects on people's longer term outcomes.

>> Jeff: One of the surprises in the report to me was that it wasn't just the more challenged School Districts in the state that had a large degree of learning loss.

In the top 5 was Montgomery County, Maryland, which is a very large school district, tends to be historically high performing district.

Does have a lot of kids for whom English is a second language.

But they appear to be challenged.

I mean did that fit with what you saw nationally?

>> So we did see a number of surprises around the country, not just in Maryland.

And that's actually part of the reason why we did this, is that we had some reason to believe that we would see big differences district by district within a state.

So you are right, Montgomery County saw losses actually closer to the state average in math.

But some other similarly high income districts saw much smaller losses or substantially smaller losses like Howard County, Frederick County, St. Mary's, Queen Anne's, Carroll, all saw smaller losses than Montgomery.

>> Jeff: Is there evidence that kids can catch up?

I worry about the kids who are graduating now.

I mean they were ninth graders when the pandemic hit.

Their whole high school experience was disrupted by this and there is no more time for them to catch up.

So talk about that a little, if you would.

But also, you know, the kid who is in sixth grade now, they should be able to make up some ground, yes?

>> So for the kid that is in sixth grade now, students certainly have enough time to catch up, but parents should recognize that that will depend on how their school district uses the federal recovery dollars that they have received and it's vital that school districts increase instructional time for those students that actually, the way to think about it is that, you know, so school districts have a curriculum.

Teachers have lesson plans.

Students learn sequentially, addition, subtraction, you know, multiplication, division leads up to exponents and algebra.

And students need to learn those ideas in sequence and it takes a certain amount of time to learn those things.

And it's very hard, or impossible, to sort of hurry up the learning process and who wants to have an abbreviated understanding of fractions anyway?

And so that just takes time.

And, yes, kids are back in school now, which is great, but there is a lot of ground to be made up.

One of the more discouraging things that we saw was we actually looked back in the decade before the pandemic, and we asked, what happened when a particular school district saw a big jump up or a big decline in achievement?

What happened three or four years later?

And we saw that those gaps tended to persist, which doesn't mean that the losses are, you know, unfixable.

It just means that if school districts just go back to life as normal, there is nothing about the learning process or the way that we teach kids that will guarantee the kids will catch up with the same amount of time, if anything, I think we have reason to believe that if kids go back to learning within the usual school calendar, they'll return learning but they won't be catching up.

They will be proceeding at the pace they were proceeding in before the pandemic.

>> Jeff: What does the parent do then, who is happy with the report card that their child brings home?

It's a great report card.

And they are doing well in relation to their peers.

But if the peers-- if everybody is behind the curve, can the parents be certain that their kid is on track?

In other words, they may be behind, they're just a little bit ahead of everybody else.

>> The important thing to remember is not everybody is behind.

So, you know, Baltimore city, Dorchester lost much more than Howard or Carroll or Frederick county.

And kids in many other states saw much smaller declines.

So, you know, a parent might be tempted to think, gosh, my kid is behind but everybody else is behind, are they really going to be hurt in the long run?

Not everybody lost the same amount of ground and kids will be competing for jobs and for college with people who suffered much smaller declines.

But you are right.

One of the problems parents have is they see grades.

They see whether or not a child is happy going to school in the morning.

I have a son who is a junior in high school now who was a freshman the year-- the worst year of the pandemic.

And so the way I judge how well things are going is how hard he is to wake up in the morning and what his grades are.

But that's a very limited view parents should be asking their child's teacher, okay.

It's May 15.

Where are you in your-- in terms of the state standards and in the curriculum now and how is that different from where you were in the spring of 2019 before the pandemic?

And my guess is they're going to hear, oh the kidding is doing fine in terms of the assignments they've been given, but the class as a whole is far behind where that grade and subject would have been in the spring of 2019.

>> Jeff: Let me ask about racial and socioeconomic differences in the data.

What did you learn in the course of this study?

>> One of the things that we discovered was that when a district lost ground, all groups in the district, black, white, poor, non-poor, lost about the same amount of ground on average.

We are not used to seeing that, by the way.

Usually, you know, inequities, when they're-- when inequity is growing in the districts it's also growing within the districts and in this case we saw that all subgroups in the district tended to lose the same amount of ground.

And we think that tells us something important about what the mechanism was.

It was likely to be something about what the school district was doing, or about other community level factors.

What was going on in the social and economic life of families in that community.

So, I mean, within districts, gaps did not widen.

But between districts gaps did widen.

Higher poverty, higher African-American school districts nationally lost more grounds than school districts that were white or higher income on average.

But it was within districts that the groups tended to lose about the same amount of ground.

>> Jeff: A few decades ago, Maryland had a governor who was interested in year round schools.

And that went over about as well as you would think it went over.

But the idea was that, you know, there is so much backsliding over a summer.

What I want to know from, you know, a parent's perspective, if you are worried about that, if what you want to do is make sure that your child gets ahead by not falling behind, what can you do over the next few months?

>> Summer is probably the most inequitable time of year educationally.

So, you know, higher income families get to send their kid to summer camp and get to send their kid to, you know, piano or math camp.

And so one positive thing about this pandemic is that it's leading districts to expand their summer learning opportunities.

And I would encourage parents to look up and find out about what the summer learning options are in their area.

And sign up and, in fact, I would be encouraging my school district to provide learning opportunities during school vacation time.

>> Jeff: Our thanks to Tom Kane.

A recent gathering in Frederick called attention to Maryland's lengthy history of lynchings.

The Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and the Frederick Remembrance Memorial organized this event.

It was held near the spot where a man named John Biggus was dragged from the county jail, hanged and shot by members of a mass mob in 1887.

>> I want to acknowledge the men we are remembering today.

James Carroll, John Biggus, James Bowens.

I'm honored to be here and speak their names, to participate in an event born from people working across difference, working to establish accountability, to, in the words of equal justice initiative memorialize documented victims of racial violence and foster meaningful dialogue about race and justice.

>> And what we do, basically, is we research and document the racial lynchings that occurred in Maryland.

We-- and there are different numbers that people use.

We are able to document 38.

That's what we use.

We also advocate for public acknowledgment of these murders, as we are doing today.

And we hope that, in doing so, we honor and dignify the lives of the victims.

>> Jeff: Soil collected near the site was sent to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore and a museum in Montgomery Alabama.

Now our newsmaker this week is David Fakunle, chair of the Maryland lynching truth and reconciliation commission.

Dr. Fakunle thank you for joining us.

Jeff, thank you for having me back.

I appreciate you.

>> Jeff: it is good to see you again.

Now the work of the commission has been extended by the legislature, the bill signed by the governor.

What do you plan to do with the additional time?

>> We plan to continue to do the work that was necessitated by the original bill in 2019 and what we have learned in the four years since, which is incredible to say, I will be very honest with you, Jeff, is that it's very thorough work.

We are exploring a lot of materials, we are traveling to a lot of places and we have to navigate circumstances in order to uncover as much of the truth as possible.

And a lot of times when we have explored existing known racial terror lynchings, we have found out about other incidents and because of the way the bill is worded, we can go ahead and explore those unconfirmed cases.

So it's as much preservation as it is further exploration.

And then what we have seen in the four years since the commission was formed is so much in our country has shown how important this type of work is.

It's not easy.

It's not the fun conversation, but it's the necessary conversation that, quite honestly, explains a lot of was we are seeing right now.

>> Jeff: What have you learned over the four years?

People may think lynchings in Maryland were limited in number, they were limited in time, or they were limited geographically.

None of those things were the case.

>> Lynchings, racial terror lynchings in particular were the ramifications or the consequences of systemic terrorism.

One of the things the commission has learned and honestly we knew that already but being able to do this work through the commission has further confirmed what we have known that many sectors of our society were involved in the allowance of racial terror lynchings.

So you certainly think about the criminal justice system, you can think about the judicial system.

You can think about the legislative system.

There was complicity, especially in a lot of the towns and a lot of the jurisdictions where the racial terror lynchings took place.

The simplest way to put it is that they were all in cahoots.

If nothing else, they would turn their backs to what was going on when the actual commission of a racial terror lynching took place.

And in the aftermath, nobody knew anything, saw nothing, heard nothing and smelled nothing and I say rat quite literally there.

Was almost a mutual understanding that, for the preservation of white power and white supremacy, this act needed to take place and we needed to allow it to take place.

So there would be little to no ramifications or consequences for the perpetrators of these agents.

So, again, fast forwarding to 2023, and so much of what has happened in the open, so to speak, in our country, it really behooves us as a commission to connect the dots, to let people know that what they're seeing today is just an evolution of things that have always happened.

And it's undeniable that in the context of the United States, so much of it revolves around race.

Trust me, as a person of color, I don't want to have to have this conversation all the time.

But history has dictated that we have to continue to have this conversation and talk about the necessary actions.

>> Jeff: Well, you know, there are two parts to the title of the commission: Truth, which you are working on and the details, the research.

But reconciliation, which sounds like it's even more challenging.

How do you approach that?

>> So I will say, Jeff, that we didn't come up with the name of the commission, and we understand that truth in reconciliation is a term that has been used for restorative justice, restorative practices so we have even more names that revolve around how do we make amends for the hurt that has been caused.

If it were up to me, I wouldn't have chosen the term reconciliation because to me, reconciling means to go back to the way it was.

And again, as a person of color, I don't want it to ever go back to the way it because.

So for me it's about how do we create a new relationship, how do we create a new environment where there is just not just tolerance and not just acceptance, but embracing of all the ways that humanity can show up.

So with this work and certainly exploring the acts of terror lynching, we wanted to be the forms of telling the truth and making amends can happen in the name of peace and in the name of justice and quite honestly in the name of love, which we don't hear enough.

>> Jeff: How can Marylanders learn more about the work of the commission?

Any public events coming up?

What happens going forward?

>> So going forward, we are in the process of scheduling our public hearing sessions for the year.

We are always kind of making changes to our staff to adjust to, again, the work load that has been put upon us as a commission.

So as we continue to get those infrastructural pieces in place, we want to make sure that's settled before we go ahead and schedule our hearing sessions for the year.

But rest assured we will have some in the second half of 2023.

We are looking at regions across the state, those with coalitions we have had good relationships with and have shown the capacity not just on their own but in conjunction with us, to put forth an event that really allows for the truth telling and also allows for the healing, most importantly for the descendants of victims, for the descendants of neighborhoods that were terrorized through these acts and more.

>> Jeff: When you do talk with descendants of the victims, I mean it's got to be really powerful.

What is their attitude towards your work?

>> Well, we have to deal with the fact, in many cases they don't even know.

That that is often a circumstance that we have faced.

We have also faced and dealt with descendants who know the stories because the stories have been passed down from their ancestors about that family member who all of a sudden was no longer there.

More than anything else with the previous hearing sessions that we have had where descendants could tell their story, it really was about declaring the humanity of their ancestor.

They wanted us to know, which we do, and we always appreciate the reminder, as well as the public to know that this victim of racial terror lynching was more than just a victim of racial terror lynching.

In many cases, they were a brother, they were definitely a son.

They were often times a father.

They were human.

They contributed to the world simply by being.

And because of who they were, their life was taken away.

So really, having that platform to declare and reestablish the humanity of the victims, to us, that's the most important truth we can tell.

They matter.

Simply because they matter.

>> Jeff: Dr. David Fakunle, we appreciate the time.

Thank you very much.

The entire Chesapeake Bay may be getting closer to being designated a national recreation area which could bring additional resources and tourism.

Our sue Kopen has the story.

>> Reporter: This is Thomas Point Shoal lighthouse.

Itw was built in 1875.

The original lighthouse.

This is the last surviving screw-pile lighthouse in the world used for navigational purposes in its original location.

This is a special place.

>> Reporter: The Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse just south of Annapolis is a bit of living history in the bay.

John Potvin is the manager.

The importance of this lighthouse is for shipping to go to Baltimore.

This has nothing to do with Annapolis It's all about the port of Baltimore.

There were 65 lighthouses on the bay at the turn of the century.

We are down to 30 now.

And the Coast Guard has been auctioning these off or reclaiming them for a number of years.

>> Reporter: But the lighthouse may be playing a whole new role soon as part of an ongoing effort to create the Chesapeake national recreation area under the auspices of the National Park Service.

Right now the plan calls for four sites to be part of the initial Chesapeake National Recreational Area, one in Virginia, three in Maryland and it includes the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse.

>> The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure.

It's iconic.

And it deserves to be part of our national consciousness and we also believe that in doing so, it will bring great benefits to the bay, both in terms of conservation, but also in terms of opportunities for people who make their livelihood out of the Chesapeake Bay.

>> Reporter: Creating the Chesapeake National recreation area has been in the works for decades.

But Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and third district congressman and John Sarbanes expect to submit legislation this summer to win congressional approval.

A public comment period wraps up the first of may.

>> We have received over a thousand comments overwhelmingly positive.

There are people who have reasonable questions for example, about traffic impact and things like that.

But overall, we have had an overwhelmingly positive response to the idea.

We wanted to make sure that the public could have input before we introduce the legislation.

>> Reporter: And then he said there will be protections written into the legislation as well.

>> This is not a federal takeover of any waters or lands.

In fact, it doesn't impact the waters of the Chesapeake Bay in any way, so it doesn't impact people's current fishing rights or any other rights of navigation.

Period.

And that will be written right into the legislation.

>> Reporter: In addition to the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse, which is a national historic landmark, the other Maryland sites include the Burdis house which is the last surviving waterman's house at the Annapolis city dock.

And Whitehall, also a national historic landmark not far from the bay bridge built in 1764.

>> We landed on those because they were historic, they provided access to the bay, and they were available on a voluntary basis.

You know, one of the things that we are very clear about is that, you know, National Park Service is not going to be taking anyone's land.

These are purely sort of voluntary transactions.

So that's-- and we hope going forward that we can add to that list.

>> Reporter: John Potvin says he looks forward to what the creation of the Chesapeake National Recreation Area will mean for the future of the lighthouse.

>> we have persons trained, showing them about the history of the lighthouse, what it was like to live here and now we have an option of expanding that role and having more of the public come out.

>> The idea is to make the bay and its history and story more publicly accessible.

We think that will create a greater appreciation of even more Marylanders for the bay and also for our federal partners and guarantee a long time federal commitment to protecting the Chesapeake Bay.

>> I'm Sue Kopen for "State Circle."

>> Jeff: That's "State Circle" for this week.

Join us every week at this time for the latest on Maryland's political stage.

Remember, you can see videos of our recent programs online at video.MPT.tv, and you can follow us on Twitter at@MPT news.

We will be back Monday with "Direct Connection" and your chance to Ask The Experts.

That's Monday night at 7 p.m. For all of us at MPT, thanks for watching, and we'll see you back