This is so shocking

[Anonymous]

I live in a city with a failing district. We are on year two or three of a state takeover, and sometimes I feel like they are deliberately trying to tank the district because it's only gotten worse. My kid is in a charter school that does a lot of things right, but I see many of the same dysfunctions. So for example when my child was struggling in reading, I was told "She won't get services because so many kids are doing worse than her". I know that's not how IDEA works, but many parents would not. My child got a 1 in reading (1-4) scale and no one reached out to us for a conference. In order to get services, we had to spend 3k on an eval and go in with strong evidence of her disability.

What I see schools needing from my conversations with parents, teachers, and admins:
-All teachers need significant training in evidence-based reading methods (not just 8 hours of PD)
-special ed designations are controversial because that's been used to put Black and Latino kids in restrictive environments, but kids need access to more services for their specific learning needs
-full time aid in every classroom (this was the number one thing a young teacher friend asked for, another adult who can deal with serious behavior so she can keep teaching)
-services for families in or near schools (benefits screening, community health centers for example)
-a full time community coordinator in every school who can connect potential volunteers to the schools and listen to and support families (so many free potential resources are left on the table because schools don't have the capacity to work with outside individuals and orgs)
-more programming for families on how to support kids academically and emotionally (with transport, childcare, food to reduce barriers)
-trauma-informed schools with much more access to mental health care in school and in the community. As a volunteer, I've seen way to many kids who have experienced extremely traumatic events ("Miss, I saw them shot my uncle" and then are just expected to go about their business, and are punished if they act out.

This is more controversial, and many people I know disagree with me. I think teachers should not have a pension for retirement. It keeps people who are completely burned out and don't want to teach anymore in the system, because if you only have x years left it makes sense to keep pushing. Some of the school vendors contracts are ridiculous, I was told community members could not go in and deep clean our filthy neighborhood school before the new school year because the janatorial contract prohibited it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is more a failure of parenting than it is of schooling. Also, I suspect a significant number of these kids who are failing miserably are partially retarded, and I mean that in the clinical sense.

The parents aren't "partially retarded" but many parents, including right intelligent parents don't get involved in their child's education.

To be fair, many of those parents are very young and got a poor education themselves. It's not a problem of IQ, it's more of an issue that they just don't know any better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reports like this should launch revolutionary change in the Baltimore school system and a massive literacy campaign like never seen before.

It will not. They have not. This is not the first "report", "investigation" or even "push forward." I believe the last mayor called the school board, "A celebration of failure."

[Anonymous]

So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

Well, Baltimore has had an unemployment rate for young Black men as high as 40% and an incarceration rate for young Black men as high as 20%, so school to prison pipeline is not hyperbole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

It’s going to luxury clothes, luxury cars, and vacations for city officials and their cronies.

[Anonymous]

The liberal use of the r-word in this thread really shows the low intelligence of the posters here. Damn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

Well, Baltimore has had an unemployment rate for young Black men as high as 40% and an incarceration rate for young Black men as high as 20%, so school to prison pipeline is not hyperbole.

And the average life span for a black man in the city is 24 years old. So, it's not like it's much past college age.

The root of these problems are so deep, so bad and so incredibly dysfunctional that until the entire state wakes up and realizes which is going on in Baltimore City, there will be no change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

Well, Baltimore has had an unemployment rate for young Black men as high as 40% and an incarceration rate for young Black men as high as 20%, so school to prison pipeline is not hyperbole.

And the average life span for a black man in the city is 24 years old. So, it's not like it's much past college age.

The root of these problems are so deep, so bad and so incredibly dysfunctional that until the entire state wakes up and realizes which is going on in Baltimore City, there will be no change.

Or life expectancy is like 72 years old in Baltimore for everyone, but I'm sure 24 is about right for certain neighborhoods.

The problem is still real. I hope education gets more attention as they try and figure it out, again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

Well, Baltimore has had an unemployment rate for young Black men as high as 40% and an incarceration rate for young Black men as high as 20%, so school to prison pipeline is not hyperbole.

And the average life span for a black man in the city is 24 years old. So, it's not like it's much past college age.

The root of these problems are so deep, so bad and so incredibly dysfunctional that until the entire state wakes up and realizes which is going on in Baltimore City, there will be no change.

The Haves in MD and in Baltimore find too many ways to benefit from the situation to be invested in change, from the real estate agents who realized white people would sell low and Black people would sell high between the 50s and the 70s. to JHU which benefits from cheap labor, cheap land, and populations to get grant funding to study (that lead paint poisoning case where the JHU investigator put families in know lead-contaminated properties in order to study them-I thought that was an urban legend when I first heard about it, but it's true), the politicians of all races who benefit from a system where money flows in but oversight and community power have been hollowed out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So 12-17 students out of 575 are going to universities

Where will the remaining go?


What happened to summer schools? If they are getting all this money then where is it going?

Well, Baltimore has had an unemployment rate for young Black men as high as 40% and an incarceration rate for young Black men as high as 20%, so school to prison pipeline is not hyperbole.

And the average life span for a black man in the city is 24 years old. So, it's not like it's much past college age.

The root of these problems are so deep, so bad and so incredibly dysfunctional that until the entire state wakes up and realizes which is going on in Baltimore City, there will be no change.

The Haves in MD and in Baltimore find too many ways to benefit from the situation to be invested in change, from the real estate agents who realized white people would sell low and Black people would sell high between the 50s and the 70s. to JHU which benefits from cheap labor, cheap land, and populations to get grant funding to study (that lead paint poisoning case where the JHU investigator put families in know lead-contaminated properties in order to study them-I thought that was an urban legend when I first heard about it, but it's true), the politicians of all races who benefit from a system where money flows in but oversight and community power have been hollowed out.

first sentence should be "buy high" if you couldn't tell from context.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reports like this should launch revolutionary change in the Baltimore school system and a massive literacy campaign like never seen before.

It will not. They have not. This is not the first "report", "investigation" or even "push forward." I believe the last mayor called the school board, "A celebration of failure."

A PP had a list of things that would help things turn around, and I think those are great ideas. The solution cannot be just the school board. It has to be a community, government partnership.

Who is accountable here? Who's in charge? This is so unconscionable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And the average life span for a black man in the city is 24 years old. So, it's not like it's much past college age.

The root of these problems are so deep, so bad and so incredibly dysfunctional that until the entire state wakes up and realizes which is going on in Baltimore City, there will be no change.

No - the average life expectancy for a black man in Baltimore was 70 in 2015. It may have dropped to 68 in recent years, which is what it is in Philadelphia.
https://qz.com/393393/charts-baltimores-health-data-are-a-picture-of-inequality/
https://www.phillytrib.com/news/health/black-male-female-life-expectancy-lowest-across-the-city/article_9cbc5e9e-b55c-59b4-a1fe-49aefe97a6ec.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reports like this should launch revolutionary change in the Baltimore school system and a massive literacy campaign like never seen before.

It will not. They have not. This is not the first "report", "investigation" or even "push forward." I believe the last mayor called the school board, "A celebration of failure."

A PP had a list of things that would help things turn around, and I think those are great ideas. The solution cannot be just the school board. It has to be a community, government partnership.

Who is accountable here? Who's in charge? This is so unconscionable.

According to one study, Baltimore is the second most corrupt jurisdiction in the country:

https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/section/historypolitics/cleaning-up-city-hall-inside-baltimores-history-of-corruption/

"So how does Baltimore stand up against other jurisdictions? Is corruption the same everywhere? It’s difficult to tally every local, state, and federal corruption conviction city by city, but the short answer is no. According to a new University of Illinois at Chicago study of just federal public corruption convictions by judicial district, Baltimore has become the second most corrupt jurisdiction in the country—with a staggering 352 guilty pleas or verdicts over the past decade."

The study was done in 2021. It's tough to have much hope when the corruption is so endemic. What are you going to do? Funnel more money into it? Hope one superstar can turn it around?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reports like this should launch revolutionary change in the Baltimore school system and a massive literacy campaign like never seen before.

It will not. They have not. This is not the first "report", "investigation" or even "push forward." I believe the last mayor called the school board, "A celebration of failure."

A PP had a list of things that would help things turn around, and I think those are great ideas. The solution cannot be just the school board. It has to be a community, government partnership.

Who is accountable here? Who's in charge? This is so unconscionable.

According to one study, Baltimore is the second most corrupt jurisdiction in the country:

https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/section/historypolitics/cleaning-up-city-hall-inside-baltimores-history-of-corruption/

"So how does Baltimore stand up against other jurisdictions? Is corruption the same everywhere? It’s difficult to tally every local, state, and federal corruption conviction city by city, but the short answer is no. According to a new University of Illinois at Chicago study of just federal public corruption convictions by judicial district, Baltimore has become the second most corrupt jurisdiction in the country—with a staggering 352 guilty pleas or verdicts over the past decade."

The study was done in 2021. It's tough to have much hope when the corruption is so endemic. What are you going to do? Funnel more money into it? Hope one superstar can turn it around?

Baltimore has no hiring standards, they continually only seem to hire corrupt individuals and scammers.

They need to implement a high quality proctored online assessment tool for all job applicants who apply to BALTIMORE COUNTY/City jobs and department of education jobs no exception. This will definitely help to weed out questionable job candidates and assist with selecting the best applicants.