BALTIMORE, March 29 — Invoking the federal No Child Left Behind Law, the Maryland State school board voted today to take control of four Baltimore high schools with chronically low achievement and strip the city of Baltimore from direct operation of seven more middle schools.
In approving the request of state Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick, a longtime supporter of the school standard movement, the board took the most drastic remedy provided for under No Child Left Behind, one reserved for schools that have failed to show sufficient progress for at least six years.
It was the first time that a state had moved to take over schools under the federal law, according to local officials.
The state and city have long wrangled over Baltimore's troubled school system, which has been plagued by poor test scores and deteriorating buildings. The high schools slated for takeover here, one of which had only 10 percent of its students pass the state standardized exam in math, had failed to show improvement for over nine years, said Ron Peiffer, an adviser to Dr. Grasmick. That is longer than President Bush's signature education law has even been in existence.
In addition to the high schools, another seven middle schools will also be taken away from the direct operation of the Baltimore city school distric, and will be reopened as charter schools or taken over by nonprofit or private companies. However, they will remain under city supervision.
City officials and community leaders reacted furiously to the move, accusing the school chief of bad faith and of playing politics with the schoolchildren. "This is unprecedented," said Mayor Martin O'Malley. "No other state superintendent in the history of the country has ever tried to do what Dr. Grasmick is trying to do in this election year."
The issue is particularly highly charged in this political year, pitting Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, against Mr. O'Malley, who is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
Maryland is doing something that other states have so far taken pains to avoid, and its experience will be watched closely by other states, many of which will likely face the same tough decisions in responding to failing schools as the law's testing regime expands in the coming years.
While Maryland schools are generally not considered worse than other states, and Baltimore is roughly on a par with many other struggling urban systems, the use of standardized tests here have been going on since well before No Child Left Behind became law in 2002.
"Not too many states came into No Child Left Behind with as many schools involved in intervention as Maryland did," said Mr. Peiffer. As states build longer records of testing with each year of the law, he predicted, "they are going to have similar discussions about alternative governance."