23 Baltimore City Schools Have Zero Students Proficient in Math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two thoughts to ponder:

-About 10 years ago Oprah was ready to make a significant donation to BCPS. When he people started looking at the books she walked.

-Ed Burns who retired as a homicide cop to become a middle school teacher needed counseling for PTSD because of his time in the schools. He also served in Army infantry during Vietnam before becoming a cop.

I didn’t know that about Oprah. Why wasn’t the publicized? She should have blown the lid open on it so things could improve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would like to believe that good parents & good parenting is the answer, but social media has too much influence over kids to feel confident in this answer.

The problem is a lot of these parents are illiterate themselves. When that is the starting point how do you fix things by just relying on "good parents," and how can the kids hope to catch up?

You can try to fix the system, but Baltimore's corruption is so endemic. Much of the funds never reaches the ground level where teaching happens. You're pouring money into a sieve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two thoughts to ponder:

-About 10 years ago Oprah was ready to make a significant donation to BCPS. When he people started looking at the books she walked.

-Ed Burns who retired as a homicide cop to become a middle school teacher needed counseling for PTSD because of his time in the schools. He also served in Army infantry during Vietnam before becoming a cop.

I didn’t know that about Oprah. Why wasn’t the publicized? She should have blown the lid open on it so things could improve.

I can imagine that the BCPS administration would have been enraged and dragged Oprah into a dirty, public slugfest. She'd have all kinds of people calling her racist. Not worth the trouble and the damage to her reputation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would like to believe that good parents & good parenting is the answer, but social media has too much influence over kids to feel confident in this answer.

The problem is a lot of these parents are illiterate themselves. When that is the starting point how do you fix things by just relying on "good parents," and how can the kids hope to catch up?

You can try to fix the system, but Baltimore's corruption is so endemic. Much of the funds never reaches the ground level where teaching happens. You're pouring money into a sieve.

Baltimore teacher again. There is so much missing money out there. Where is the casino money? We need extra staff and more teachers to help work with small groups. That’s where the real learning happens the most. They love small groups because someone is paying attention to them. They crave this. We should have regular adult mentors for older students. They need to see what else is out there in the world for them. It’s sad to see kids on a field trip when they’ve never been anywhere. Everything excites them because they rarely do anything. We could use that money for monthly field trips. So many possibilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One solution might be to have schools separated out by how students score on these tests. Put all the failing students together and then start with the very basics. Teach them to read. Provide intensive services at that school and give the teachers specialty pay for teaching in those schools. Smaller classes too. Keeping kids who can’t read on the standard curriculum and just presenting they can is not helpful to them. Decades ago someone came up with teach for America as a sort of peace corp for inner city schools. It was hugely popular and fairly prestigious for a while. It was criticized (often with good reason) but we need some kind of similar solution now — a way to convince people that this is important community service and yes it will be hard but your country will be grateful. Now it’s like “yeah, we’ll give you an impossible and often dangerous job and we will absolutely call you lazy and criticize you when you fail. And the pay is not great and the hours are totally not flexible with a super early start time. Please apply!”

Your solution is known as “tracking” or “ability grouping.” It is a common sense approach, and crucially needed in school systems such as Baltimore city schools.

Democrats have vehemently opposed any type of tracking or ability grouping. For decades, democrats have worked to dismantle any separation by ability. Notably (though not the only example) democrat Bill DeBlasio specifically terminated the entire gifted and talented program in NYC schools, in order to stop the possibility of “tracking.”

If you are opposed to what is happening in Baltimore, stop voting for democrats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would like to believe that good parents & good parenting is the answer, but social media has too much influence over kids to feel confident in this answer.

The problem is a lot of these parents are illiterate themselves. When that is the starting point how do you fix things by just relying on "good parents," and how can the kids hope to catch up?

You can try to fix the system, but Baltimore's corruption is so endemic. Much of the funds never reaches the ground level where teaching happens. You're pouring money into a sieve.

How can there possibly be corruption there? It’s 100% democrats and has been for many decades. How can they hide corruption? Who could they possibly blame when money goes missing? It’s not like they just have a couple of years to get through and then new party and everyone can point fingers at someone else. This is very clear. Why don’t people care? I don’t understand how this is happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two thoughts to ponder:

-About 10 years ago Oprah was ready to make a significant donation to BCPS. When he people started looking at the books she walked.

-Ed Burns who retired as a homicide cop to become a middle school teacher needed counseling for PTSD because of his time in the schools. He also served in Army infantry during Vietnam before becoming a cop.

I didn’t know that about Oprah. Why wasn’t the publicized? She should have blown the lid open on it so things could improve.

I can imagine that the BCPS administration would have been enraged and dragged Oprah into a dirty, public slugfest. She'd have all kinds of people calling her racist. Not worth the trouble and the damage to her reputation.

Someone might call Oprah racist? That’s so ridiculous it’s funny. I can’t believe that was the reason. I know Oprah cares about kids (she started her own school!) so there must be a real reason that she kept this quiet.

[Anonymous]

I work as a case manager in DC and have worked in Baltimore city in the past.

A couple things:

1) DCUM always talks about how these kids are growing up in homes where parents are working two jobs. Uh no. The vast majority of these parents are not working and never have. Their parents never worked. Lets get real here. The kids coming from households where parents are working two job are actually THE SUCCESS stories.
They are very rare but those parents tend to be involved in the lives of their kids. It's not PC to talk about this but there are generations of kids born to parents who don't work, have never worked and make bad decision after bad decision. Almost every pregnancy (out of wed lock and to parents with no jobs) is purposeful. I work for a medicaid
plan in DC and one of our most often requested services for young women is IVF (which we don't pay for). A lot of people are in the hell of their own making. Really, really, really bad decision making. Some of it is just cultural, some of it is due to drug and alcohol use, some is due to low IQ. People who don't have one of these things
working against the usually rise out of poverty into the working class.

2)If you really want to help people rise above poverty then their first, second, and third need is housing. You need to give people free housing. It's the biggest obstacle to upward mobility in cities, especially cities like DC. Anyone who works with the poor in DC hears requests for housing at a rate of 10 times anything else. We hear it all day, every day. If we could fix housing, we could fix just about anything. But this is very, very expensive to house people, especially in DC. And it is super expensive to house people who don't work and who will never work (frankly who don't intend to work, have mental illness so they can't work, have 4, 5, 8, 12 children and can't work, etc). I mean, in DC it's $24k-48K per year, per household. It's very tricky because most of the people who work with the poor (as nurses, case workers, social workers, etc) can't even afford to live in DC themselves.

Anyway, some very complex issues that won't be solved in our generation. But housing would be a good start.

[Anonymous]

Baltimore teacher here. Most of my students’ parents do not work but they also won’t answer the phone during the day. Frustrating.

[Anonymous]

zero might not be an indication of failure and might be an indication of protest. Just saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:zero might not be an indication of failure and might be an indication of protest. Just saying.

There are discussions about 18 year olds at a second grade reading level in Baltimore. Are they protesting too?

[Anonymous]

I don’t think there’s any protest going on. Most of the kids just don’t care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think there’s any protest going on. Most of the kids just don’t care.

Because the parents dont care.

[Anonymous]

I have a feeling this is wrong

You have to be good at mathematics on the fly if you are remotely good at being a drug dealer and you can’t tell me that zero kids are dealing

At least 1 or 2 kids are in these schools

I was a good student in mathematics but did not have the horsepower mentally to calculate the count and de-ups on the fly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work as a case manager in DC and have worked in Baltimore city in the past.

A couple things:

1) DCUM always talks about how these kids are growing up in homes where parents are working two jobs. Uh no. The vast majority of these parents are not working and never have. Their parents never worked. Lets get real here. The kids coming from households where parents are working two job are actually THE SUCCESS stories.
They are very rare but those parents tend to be involved in the lives of their kids. It's not PC to talk about this but there are generations of kids born to parents who don't work, have never worked and make bad decision after bad decision. Almost every pregnancy (out of wed lock and to parents with no jobs) is purposeful. I work for a medicaid
plan in DC and one of our most often requested services for young women is IVF (which we don't pay for). A lot of people are in the hell of their own making. Really, really, really bad decision making. Some of it is just cultural, some of it is due to drug and alcohol use, some is due to low IQ. People who don't have one of these things
working against the usually rise out of poverty into the working class.

2)If you really want to help people rise above poverty then their first, second, and third need is housing. You need to give people free housing. It's the biggest obstacle to upward mobility in cities, especially cities like DC. Anyone who works with the poor in DC hears requests for housing at a rate of 10 times anything else. We hear it all day, every day. If we could fix housing, we could fix just about anything. But this is very, very expensive to house people, especially in DC. And it is super expensive to house people who don't work and who will never work (frankly who don't intend to work, have mental illness so they can't work, have 4, 5, 8, 12 children and can't work, etc). I mean, in DC it's $24k-48K per year, per household. It's very tricky because most of the people who work with the poor (as nurses, case workers, social workers, etc) can't even afford to live in DC themselves.

Anyway, some very complex issues that won't be solved in our generation. But housing would be a good start.

Thank you for keeping it real, PP. God bless you.