Even though it spends more per pupil than every other large school district in the country save for two, Baltimore City Public Schools is failing to teach students even the basics they need to get by in life. Reports indicate that at least six schools in the district failed this past year to produce even one single student who was proficient in either English or math.
An investigation by Project Baltimore found that five high schools and one middle school in the district should pretty much be shut down at this point because they're serving no useful purpose whatsoever. Booker T. Washington Middle School, Frederick Douglass High School, Achievement Academy at Harbor City, New Era Academy, Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High, and New Hope Academy all failed to pass even just one student that met the minimum requirements for exceptional proficiency in either of the two subjects.
Frederick Douglass High School had the worst results out of all six schools. With 185 students in total, a shocking 165 of them achieved a 1/5 on the proficiency scale, with 1 indicating that these students in no way met proficiency expectations. Nineteen students partially met expectations ranking at 2/5, but were still considered to be not proficient. Only one student scored a 3/5 for "approaching expectations," though even this one was dubbed not proficient. Not a single student at Frederick Douglass achieved a 4/5 or a 5/5, which would have put them in the proficient category.
Amazingly enough, some of these non-proficient students are still on track to graduate. According to Freedom Project, this is because of "radically dumbed-down exams linked to Common Core," a controversial curriculum approach that in many ways deforms traditional mathematics and corrupts children's minds.
Baltimore school officials: It's not our fault, even though we're teaching kids common core and other educational quackery
What this investigation reveals is the pressing need for major reforms within the government school systems of our country. They spend gobs of taxpayer dollars – in this case, a whopping $16,000 per student, ranking in as the third highest spending district in the country – and yet they're utterly failing to teach our children what they need to know to get by in life.
And yet, they routinely demand more money in spite of all this, including in Baltimore where district officials refuse to even admit that they should take any blame for the dismal success rate amongst its students. Speaking to the media, Baltimore City Schools Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, Janise Lane, for instance, expressed adamant opposition to the notion that the problem stems from anywhere other than the students themselves.
"I wouldn't say the school district is at fault," she stated.
Made up of mostly poor, minority children, Baltimore's public schools are, indeed, affected by other problems besides just those that occur in the classroom. Many of the students who attend school there come from broken families without fathers, and are victims of what one news outlet describes as "dumbed-down indoctrination program[s] masquerading as 'education.'" This includes learning things like "whole word" and "sight words" instead of traditional phonics.
"By turning these otherwise healthy children into functional illiterates with quackery first exposed more than 100 years ago, the government schools set the stage for a lifetime of failure, dependency, and deception," writes Alex Newman for Freedom Project.
"Illiteracy prevents these children from going out and learning on their own – no reading of the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or anything else. And the results of that are predictable, too: violence, broken families, drugs, gangs, hatred, support for government dependence, and more."
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