Commentary

Arnita Owens-Phillips had always promised herself one thing: She would hold onto her simple brick rowhome in East Baltimore. Her son Corey used to tell her when he was young that one day he’d buy her a big house in the city. “Cause I’m your boy,” she recalled him saying. “I’m going to take care of you.” Corey died at 17 when he was struck by a car, and yet his mother always felt he had fulfilled his promise: She used money received from a settlement in his death to buy the home just south of Baltimore Cemetery.

Chester Finn, Jr., a preeminent policy expert and former member of the Kirwan Commission and the Maryland State Board of Education, once observed: “Perhaps no challenge in American schooling is as perplexing and under-examined as special education … change is desperately needed in this corner of the K-12 world.” Maryland’s more than 105,000 students in special education are shamefully under-served and under-performing. But Maryland is now positioned to change that. The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future sets the stage, and the Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board has superbly charted a course for reform of special education that can be a model for the nation.

Gun violence is so regular an occurrence in the United States that no incident, however tragic, comes as a surprise. But events in recent days deserve special attention all the same, as they underscore a core truth about responding to gun violence: changing just one or two rules would not be enough. Early this month, a 6-year-old boy shot and wounded an elementary school teacher in Newport News, Va. This, according to authorities, was no accident: The first grader pulled out a handgun and fired a bullet through his instructor’s outstretched hand and into her chest. His family says he has an “acute disability”; The Post reports that administrators brushed off concerns about the boy after he threw furniture in class, barricaded the doors to a room and threatened to light a teacher on fire and watch her die. The day of the shooting, his backpack was searched after a tip that he may have had a weapon.

Sometime in 2025, an Australian boat builder plans to float a 426-foot, all-electric ferry that can carry up to 2,100 passengers and 226 vehicles. The company, Incat, says the ferry will be the largest of its kind, with a power range of 100 nautical miles. A South American ferry operator, Buquebus, will use it to carry passengers between Argentina and Uruguay. The original design called for the ferry to be powered by liquefied natural gas, but, with advances in battery technology, both Incat and Buquebus decided to go electric. That is the case in many other ports of the world, where ferries are either being constructed or retrofitted with electric engines for service in waterfront communities.

Expectations in Maryland are high for Gov. Wes Moore to lift from the bottom. His campaign put ending poverty — a systemic, intractable issue that politicians usually shy away from — on the agenda, by raising the minimum wage, increasing affordable housing and making pre-K free, among other reforms. Over half a million Marylanders live in poverty, which is defined as making less than $25,926 annually for a family of four. Many others who earn slightly more are unable to pay for inflated rents, high food prices or child care.

Given all the billions of taxes collected from sales of tobacco products, not to mention the billions more provided through a 1998 settlement over the cost of tobacco-related illness, one would think that states like Maryland would fully fund programs that deter young people from using tobacco (or encourage them to quit). Yet a recently-released report from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Lung Association and other health advocacy groups, found most states fall woefully short in this mission. In Maryland, the good news is that the state ranks better than most. The bad news is that its 11th ranking is mostly because so many of the 50 states and the District of Columbia are abysmal.

A treatment that improves Alzheimer’s disease would be a great advance, but Leqembi (lecanemab), which recently received accelerated approval from the FDA, is not that drug. Yes, lecanemab slows decline to an extent detectable on a test, but not to an extent that a relative or caretaker would notice. This drug doesn’t actually make anything better. It just slows the rate that someone goes downhill over 18 months — by less than half a point on an 18 point scale. And we don’t know whether things get better or worse after that. Leqembi is similar to Aduhelm (aducanumab), approved last year by the FDA, despite its advisory committee soundly rejecting it.