COVID has changed the world, and one way in which its roots of revolution have taken hold is in the area of schooling.
How’s that transformation gone?
In the city of Baltimore, not too well.
Fox45 recently made such clear, as part of its “Project Baltimore” — an examination of the area’s public schools.
As it turns out, academic excellence isn’t ubiquitous in the Charm City.
According to information allegedly compiled by Baltimore Public Schools and obtained by Fox, grades aren’t great.
A chart indicates that only 21% of the system’s student body earned a B average or better.
That’s of nearly 20,600 kids.
On the other side of the spectrum, the grouping was large.
Per the data, almost half of the student body received less than a D average: Forty-one percent of high schoolers scored below a 1.0 GPA.
City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises, WBFF says, “first sounded the alarm” in January.
Sonja announced that “the course failure rate for students nearly doubled during the COVID shutdown.”
Pair the uber-low GPA with schools cutting corners:
A few months later, in May, North Avenue announced students would not be held back for failing classes. This most recent GPA data could indicate why City Schools made that decision.
To be clear, Baltimore wasn’t exactly tearin’ it up before.
During the second quarter of the 2019/2020 school year, just before COVID hit, 24% of high school students had a GPA below 1.0…
Still, worse is worse.
And Jovani Patterson doesn’t appear surprised.
He ran for City Council President last year but lost.
In a 2020 campaign ad, Jovani described things thusly:
“They take. They take. They take. Yet, despite the amount of money they get. We don’t see much change. Our schools outspend 97% of other major school districts.”
About the recent stats, he told Project Baltimore, “This is terrible. This is just further perpetuating a cycle of poverty, of despair.”
Patterson posed a potent question:
“If almost half of our kids are failing, what options do they have after high school?”
School in general has substantially changed.
As I covered previously, The Washington Post reprinted questions from a 1912 8th grade exam.
Here are ten:
- Write in words the following: 5764; .000003; .123416; 653.0965; 43.37.
- Find cost at 12 1/2 cents per sq. yd. of kalsomining the walls of a room 20 ft. long, 16 ft. wide and 9 ft. high, deducting 1 door 8 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in. and 2 windows 5 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in. each.
- At $1.62 1/2 a cord, what will be the cost of a pile of wood 24 ft. long, 4 ft. wide and 6 ft. 3 in. high?
- “William struck James.” Change the Voice of the verb. Adjectives have how many Degrees of Comparison? Compare good; wise; beautiful.
- Parse all the words in the following sentences: John ran over the bridge. Helen’s parents love her.
- Name and give boundaries of the five zones.
- How does the liver compare in size with other glands in the human body? Where is it located? What does it secrete?
- Define the following forms of government: Democracy, Limited Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give examples of each.
- Name three rights given Congress by the Constitution and two rights denied Congress.
- Sketch briefly Sir Walter Raleigh, Peter Stuyvesant.
Were any of the Maryland 8th graders charted challenged with such difficulty?
Either way, in light of the results, Republican state delegate Nino Mangione is calling for school administrators to be fired.
“We have an obligation to prepare and protect these students to give them the best chance in the future. When there is not even outrage among their own leaders, how can you expect there to ever be change. … [W]e should look at some of these leaders in the administration and think, let’s evaluate and let’s start firing people. Because this can’t go on.”
Council member John Bullock, on the other hand, doesn’t seem too shamed.
He called to COVID:
“One of the realities that we dealt with this past year with the pandemic is a lot of young people struggle, a lot of families struggle. On one hand, we talk about this unique circumstance were a lot of young people have not been able to be academically successfully given some of the challenges they are facing.”
Well, they may not have attained high marks where academic subjects are concerned, but there’s a chance students learned about societal oppressors and victims.
Perhaps some are too oppressed to study.
After all, that’s the case at Goldsmiths, University of London:
University Allows Deadline Extensions for Nonwhite Students With Self-Reported 'Racial Trauma' https://t.co/K2t2AdexD0
— RedState (@RedState) June 28, 2021
Back to Baltimore, hopefully they’ll pummel their problems.
They’ve got plenty:
Baltimore City student passes 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA https://t.co/UY9CV7Mkm9
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) March 4, 2021
Because:
In Baltimore, Students Who Fail Will Still Pass https://t.co/pS88a3Ipb2
— RedState (@RedState) May 29, 2021
And let’s not forget the 2015 riots…
Even so, over the last few years, not everyone’s given up on the city’s youth:
Throwback to 2015:
When an angry mother disciplined her son for joining the Baltimore riots. She’s a role-model everyone should follow.#GeorgeFloyd #Minneapolis #Riot #MinneapolisRiot #MinneapolisRiots pic.twitter.com/PhlMyyeVNS
— Man of Kiryu Coco 🥛🐉👌 (@Prototype_No_07) May 28, 2020
-ALEX
See more pieces from me:
Professor: Most Parents Should ‘Lose Veto Power’ Over Their Minor Children’s Gender Transition
Elite College Announces It Will Help Rid White Churches of Their Systemic Racism
Find all my RedState work here.
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