Project Baltimore, an investigative reporting initiative, analyzed the recent release of Baltimore City Public Schools 2022 test scores and made a shocking discovery: 23 of the city’s schools failed to produce a single student who was proficient in math. An additional 20 Baltimore schools had just one or two students who could do math at their grade level. These appalling failures account for over a quarter of the city’s 155 schools (elementary through high school) where students take the MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program) tests.
The Maryland State Department of Education recently released the 2022 state test results known as MCAP, Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program.
Baltimore City’s math scores were the lowest in the state. Just 7 percent of third through eighth graders tested proficient in math, which means 93 percent could not do math at grade level.
This, even though the Baltimore school district hovers around third place for per-capita educational spending. “Baltimore is often ranked in the top three per capita spending districts,” writes top attorney and academic Jonathan Turley. “The total budget for Baltimore public schools is roughly $1.2 billion. That is for a city with a total population of roughly 600,000 (The greater Baltimore metropolitan area is 2.8 million). In 2015, the school population was 84,000 kids.”
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In a separate article, Turley had more to say on the subject:
What astonishes me is the lack of criticism of the school and political leadership of these major cities who have failed the African American community for decades. It is hard to imagine how the school system could possibly do worse while receiving some of the highest levels of federal and state expenditures per student.
This is not due to a lack of funding or support. It is a catastrophic failure that is not being addressed in the media despite occurring annually in cities like New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and other media hubs.
My heart breaks for these kids. What future can they possibly have? Who will hire a job applicant raised and “educated” in this blue-city remedial disaster? How will they be able to handle their own affairs as adults?
The appalling situation sure sounds a lot like “systemic racism” in action. Except the massive failure to provide equal education for minorities — the “inequity,” in modern parlance — is being perpetrated at the hands of fellow people of color. This is also the case with another much-ballyhooed oppression of African Americans, the killing of black people. Yet all the murderous cops and white supremacists in America can’t hold a candle to the number of blacks killed by members of their own community.
The entire situation is intractable and devastating, and millions of African Americans will suffer throughout their lives because of it. What a pity the race hustlers who run the country actively prevent an honest assessment and united effort to be made to lift these Americans out of their misery.
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