Burning Man

Former Baltimore cop and teacher Ed Burns isn't a masochist. The writer-producer for the HBO series The Wire is just feverishly trying to save public schools.

Something's not right here.

Stand at the intersection of Baltimore’s Guilford Avenue and East Lanvale Street and look up at the façade of the old brick school in front of you. Paint peels from every window frame, and even the boarded-up windows are broken. That in itself isn’t too surprising in an urban school system as troubled as this one. But check your watch. It’s a Tuesday morning in November, and there are no children in sight at an hour when students should be hustling up the littered sidewalks to beat the tardy bell. Instead, the street is jammed with shiny black semi-trailer trucks. The only humans in the vicinity of the building’s metal doors are a burly man and a young woman, each with a laminated ID and a walkie-talkie headset.

Walk inside, and things under the cracked fluorescent lights look exactly as you’d expect them to in a city public school, from the tiled walls to the painted-cinderblock classroom where, according to a seating chart, teacher Roland Pryzbylewski is right now supposed to be educating a roomful of Baltimore middle-schoolers. Except Pryzbylewski (pronounced “Prezbelewski”) isn’t a real teacher. And, at the moment, the chilly room is occupied only by video equipment and...