I have previously written about the near total meltdown of our public education system in some major cities. Prominent in these discussions has been Baltimore, which continues to fail inner city children in teaching the most basic subjects. This week, that failure is on full display with a report that forty percent of Baltimore’s schools lack a single student who has achieved grade-level proficiency in math. In various cities, the response of administrators has often been to lower the standards to continue to move kids out of the system without the skills needed to thrive in this economy.
In a prior column, I was particularly moved by the frustration of a mother in Baltimore who complained that her son was in the top half of his class despite failing all but three of his classes. Graduating students without proficiency in English or Math is the worst possible path for these students, schools and society.
The crisis continues with the new report that looked at 32 high schools administering the standardized test and found that 13 produced no students who proved proficient in math. Three-fourths of the Baltimore students taking the test were given the lowest possible score of one out of four.
At the five “elite” high schools, only 11.4 percent of students were math proficient.
We previously discussed the Baltimore public educational system as an example of where billions of dollars have been spent on a system with continuing failing scores and standards. Recent data adds another chilling statistic: 41 percent of students in the Baltimore system have a 1.0 (D) GPA or less.
Public schools and boards are making the case for school choice advocates with failing scores and rising controversies.
Baltimore City Public Schools responded to this shocking report with an effective shrug: “We acknowledge that some of our high school students continue to experience challenges in math following the pandemic, especially if they were struggling beforehand.” However, the system was failing these students long before the pandemic.
BCPS has a $1.7 billion dollar budget and was given an addition $799 million of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds this school year. Despite the massive infusion of money, the administrators have demonstrably failed these students who are left with few options in the workplace beyond low-level jobs.
Baltimore is not alone. The entire state of Minnesota reported a zero percent math proficiency rate in 75 of its schools during the 2022-23 school year.
What is baffling is that voters do not blame their political leadership for this disaster. Whole generations are being lost due to the inability of these districts to reach mere proficiency on basic subjects. Yet, there seems few political consequences for political leaders. Many seem to just accept that this is the fate of inner city children as politicians focus on other issues.
Again, the response of the Baltimore school district is maddening: “The work is underway to improve outcomes for students. But treating student achievement as an ‘if-then’ proposition does a great disservice to our community.”
I am not sure what the “if-then proposition” may be, but the greatest disservice to the community is the failure to offer these inner city kids a basic education to be able to succeed in the workplace. The “work has been underway” for decades with lost generations of kids lured into criminal activities by the lack of any real opportunity to advance in our society. As a father of four, I cannot imagine how desperate many of these parents must be in cities like Baltimore where schools offer little hope for the future.
We have been discussing these low scores for years with little progress. Baltimore and other cities simply demand more money while deflecting any responsibility for their poor records. The true cost is not borne by the teachers, the unions, or the administrators. It is borne by these families who see the same failures replicated in every generation, processing their children out of school without needed skills.
IQ potential is genetic. But the leftists have lied to us and told us all people are created equal and you can achieve anything if you just try hard enough, and promised if we just educate these people then they will be exactly like white. This is scientifically proven to be false and these statistics only affirm what researchers have known for years. Leftists hate to be wrong, so they just bury this data and hide it and that is why you dont hear about this on the news. They continue to blame it on racism, which it clearly isn’t. They continue this narrative that racism is the reason they are failing but its not true. Some believe the democrats at the top secretly know this and it keeps this endless problem that never gets solved, keeping the dems in power and making a living off of this population group, which is an awful thing to do and is also destroying this nation in the process. Are the leftists the most morally corrupt group in the world? Well, yes and no, the ones at the top that know the scam are, most democrats are good people and are being used by morally corrupt people running their organization.
“What is baffling is that voters do not blame their political leadership for this disaster.”
What’s so baffling about it? They were “educated” by the same system.
20 years ago, people worried about our future based on the schools, crime, war, terrorists etc. The same crap we have but more of today.
Today is the future, its here, its in your face, Black violently attack and kill Blacks at genocidal levels, crime is encouraged, education discouraged. The military and the Biden are more concerned with CRT and Transgender than 13 dead soldiers. The uni-party loves open borders to fill jobs American will not perform. See Mike Rowe for missing 8 million workers.
Today is what everyone worried about 20 years ago, congrats we got there and getting worse. Can’t wait to see the next 20 year milestone. Can anyone say nuke war?
These things take care of themselves so it would be a good idea to let it descend into total chaos and move away from sketchy areas.
It is not your burden or responsibility to endanger yourself or your family for a social experiment that has gone horribly wrong.
At some point the natural order will return and their future is predicated on Darwin’s reality.
It’s all people that they attack. 90% of inner racial crime is black on white.
The sick aspect of this story is that the results are precisely what Democrats want in order to keep inner city kids dumb, incapable, dependent and firmly entrapped on their election plantation.
“Tis true, Grasshoppers, illiterate populations are totally dependent on the government for survival…
There is nothing special about this reality and time will ultimately determine the outcome.
People who are upwardly mobile will leave and the rest will settle in and fight to the minimum until they are all doing better or their communities are destroyed.
If they are destroyed then the politicians will use them as a base to remain in power and it will be a race to the bottom or the politicians will infuse money into the system and restart the cycle.
It is a self fulfilling prophecy and an easy way to gain political power since nobody really cares about self loathing Americans who don’t share our values.
I guarantee you there is no math reinforcement at home.
they only use math when figuring the amount of drugs they buy and sell.
Catholic missionaries are the only solution to this problem.
What do you expect? Blacks have an average IQ of 67.
Now, where did you pull that 67 iq number from? It has to be higher than that it just averages out higher than that.
Heltau
I think the IQ average in the 60s and 70s is for parts of Africa. In the US the average black IQ is 85, leaving half the black population at 85 or less. They can’t learn much of anything. Decades ago I read an article in a Chicago paper that fretted because the children of middle class blacks were not doing as well academically as the children of poor whites. “What could be wrong?” the article asked.
You’re thinking of something I also heard, but it was about Somalia.
There is more genetic variation in Africa than in all the rest of the world and they are aware of it. Think of Hutu and Tutsi. Also the Somali people seem fairly gifted and they tend to look down on other Africans according to some sources. Sobering to think that many of the improvements and infrastructure built by the British have decayed and returned to a more primitive level. Heart transplants were pioneered in South Africa but it is hard to think of anything like that being developed there now.
There was a reason the founding fathers classed blacks as only 3/5 human.
They did not classify blacks as 3/5 of a person.
That applied to anyone not free for purposes of Congressional representation. Why should slave owners get more seats in Congress for the number of slaves they had?
That’s a complete, utter, total lie–or if you were never taught the history, a “misconception” or misunderstanding. The “three-fifths” clause was a compromise between northern and southern representatives, pushed by the northern states to keep southern states from getting more congressional representatives. The southern states wanted blacks to count just like other citizens, but the northern reps insisted that that was simply UNFAIR, because…reasons. So to keep the newly-independent United States from splitting, the sides were forced to compromise. No one–on either side–ever actually claimed what you asserted, that blacks were “only 3/5ths human.”s
I tend to take these stories (“X schools in city Y have zero proficient students!”) with a grain of salt. Often, what’s going on is they’re picking out the small, specialized schools for kids with intellectual disabilities or severe behavioral problems. If the students still wear diapers, it shouldn’t knock our socks off that they’re not proficient in math.
So I checked the list, and found that 4 of the schools are specialized “alternative” schools. That still leaves 7 that are not. Some of the remainder have a focus like the arts, or medical professions, or criminal justice, but that is no excuse for failing to provide a foundation in a core subject like math. The rest appear to be conventional high schools. How do you have 800-1,200 kids and none of them are proficient in math?
“How do you have 800-1,200 kids and none of them are proficient in math?”
+++
Stupidity might account for it.
Actually three Hahvahd PhDs (in education) published a paper six months ago saying they’d proven the cause of Baltimore’s zero-percent math proficiency in 40% of its schools was…Global Warming. And Trump. (/s)
Probably due to racism, I’m guessing. Or maybe some form of gender -fobia.
Actually three Hahvahd PhDs published a peer-reviewed paper six months ago proving the zero proficiency was due to…Global Warming. And Trump.
We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”
Thornton Wilder, Our Town.
We just keep breaking things that could be, should be true and good and beautiful and just right.
“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”
Thornton Wilder, Our Town.
We just keep breaking things that could be, should be true and good and beautiful and just right.
Well, dang. That’s odd. The above reply is from Prairie Rose. Not sure what went wrong.
Faultymore
What would happen to you if you were in the private business sector and you only had a forty percent success rate? I think that the success rate in the Baltimore schools proves just how very much the Baltimore Democratic leadership loves the children. They say, love the kids or love the teachers union. That’s an easy call because they get a big bunch of political funding from the teachers union. Every time Pelosi says do it for the children I get a little throw up in my throat. You know the taste. The words, teachers union have the same effect. Hey all you black folks in Baltimore, who do you attribute the ignorance of your children to?
Until there is school choice, this is what we will have. Parents should be able to take the school taxes and use them for the school of their choice.
Government schools provide the same quality of an education that they provide any other endeavor of theirs including their exercise of warmaking, thankfully for the later. It is just that in the later they exercise so much of it.
I do worry about America’s future. I see it slowly imploding, as our young people continue to be more and more self-undisciplined, with basic, daily responsibilities. Strong work ethic, fundamental and strong moral principles, and especially a loving, family structure, are all slowly disappearing from America. I only suspect this, in part, comes from taking existence for granted, coupled with a sentiment of being owed something by society. I wish I knew what the answers were to change this. Thank you for the article.
Our future isn’t imploding slowly, it is imploding rapidly and going faster and faster day by day.
I realize that this website isn’t a democracy, but if it were, my vote is that the website discontinue the practice of substituting “Anonymous” for the identity of any poster that doesn’t want to use his or her real identity while simultaneously being too LAZY and STUPID to rub together the 2 brain cells it takes to concoct a fake screen name so that readers can at least differentiate one “Anonymous” commenter from another.
I couldn’t even guess whether there are 2 or 20 different people commenting here under the “Anonymous” pseudonym FRAUDULENTLY capitalized as if Anonymous were a proper noun and once again raising the question of whether the University where the Professor is employed has ever had an English Department.
In case you haven’t noticed, WordPress changed the login, allowing only anonymous posting for casual readers.
Why don’t you suggest that the previous, simple, and effective procedure of entering your site pseudonym and e-mail address be reinstated?
CC Sergeant at Arms Darren Smith
You wrote all those words to insult ANONYMOUS people only to find out that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Try being less arrogant.
What must be done to ensure we have a fair and balanced press, is to boycott everything pertaining to the corrupt monopoly that distorts and ignores facts.
Compare the data with demographic scores for students in South Dakota where the schools opened up sooner during COVID scare.
I think you’ll find these Baltimore schools rife with excuses for failure at learn math. Progressives provide the excuses.
Why study when you can cheat and get away with it?
Which reminds me, can a federal district chief judge assign the judge who will preside over his son’s lawsuit?
“Math” teachers don’t know math enough to teach it. That’s the underlying problem. It was all caused by Affirmative Action. I’ll bet the teacher demographic is on a par with the percentage of the racial balance. Fact check that if possible.
They just need more of our money.