Baltimore City Schools: 41% of high school students earn below 1.0 GPA | Hacker News Reader

Baltimore City Schools: 41% of high school students earn below 1.0 GPA

foxbaltimore.com

32 pointskoolba15 comments

For those who didn't read the article, this is talking about a substantial drop in performance after covid hit, going from 24% of students with a GPA below 1.0 in the second quarter of the 2019-2020 school year to 41% now.

This seems like a case of educators failing to properly adjust their methods and expectations in the midst of the pandemic. While understandable given the unprecedented nature of the event, the fact is if performance drops that widely the school needs to course correct.

Honestly though, we'd probably be well off just calling the 2020-2021 school year a wash and ignoring stuff like GPA from the past year. Just teach it all again and those kids who did somehow manage to learn the material last year get an easy year.

Despite what most people think, children are unable to effectively learn if they are not encouraged to in their homes. Most people rush to blame the schools and educators but in reality, most of the time its the parents that are to blame for their children's inability to do well in school.

Given that, its no surprise that in a city where the majority of children of the majority demographic are born into single-parent households, those children are unable to do well academically.

It also probably doesn't help that many of them weren't getting breakfast and lunch that the schools generally provide.

This was one of the big considerations when schools were shutting down--how many students were going to be without proper nutrition.

You can't have a super majority of children being born to single mothers who are also often teenagers, or only a year or two removed, with limited education and money and expect them to prepare their children for school.

So Mayor Tommy Carcetti didn't make a difference?

41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a 1.0 grade point average.

On the other end of the chart, 21 percent of city high school students earned a GPA of 3.0 or better; a B average.

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

In a normal distribution curve, 2.1% of the tested students will receive an A on the test, 13.6% will get a B, 68% get Cs, 13.6% get Ds, and 2.1% of the class gets an F.

So basically, in the time proceeding Covid, almost twice as many Baltimore students get a D score than should get it even before Covid.

In the article, it says that 21% got a 3.0 or better; however, it should be 15% in a normal distributed curve. So the B and higher is 5% higher than it should normally be.

What's going on here?

For an overview of the Baltimore public schools(From official Baltimore City School district: https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/district-overview)

Baltimore City, MD public schools have an average math proficiency score of 18% (versus the Maryland public school average of 41%), and reading proficiency score of 17% (versus the 41% statewide average).

There are 77,856 total enrollment; 38,195 students in pre-k to grade 5; 17,820 students in grades 6 to 8; 21,841 students in grades 9 to 12

75.7% African American; 14.2% Hispanic/Latino; 7.5% White; Asian .8%; 92% of all enrollment is minorities.

Students from low income households: 60%

165 total number of schools

2020-21 (FY21) budget: $1.39 billion

Baltimore $ spend per student: $17,853

National average $ spent per student: $12,201 per pupil

Total Teachers: 5,025

9 out of 10 of the school board is Black, and one White (https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/board-commissioners)

Teacher student ratio: 1 to 15

Teen Birth Rate is 59.5% in Baltimore, but 25.9% in the state of Maryland. (https://health.maryland.gov/phpa/OEHFP/EH/tracking/Shared%20...)

Percentage of children in single-parent households 64.8% (https://health.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/NHP%202...)

Proficiency: Mathematics: about 9% for Black; 40% for White; 50% for Asian; 15% for Hispanic

English language: about 15% for Black; 50% for White; 55% for Asian; 18% for Hispanic

The low income level of 60% shows how much of an effect that low income has on education. Not even a relatively high spending per pupil and excellent teacher to student ration cannot overcome a low income for the general population. Sure, a smattering of students will do great despite their having low income household, but not the overwhelming population in that income level.

I’m not sure how this works I know some school systems in other states were just openly passing kids for doing nothing during Covid

I know that politics are to be avoided on HN but many articles Fox News requires crossing the line into talking-about-politics territory. Faux News’s Tea-party-Republican agenda is to defund education and to selectively report on cases that support that agenda. There’s a reasonable likely-hood they could be reporting falsities in the place of facts or selectively leaving out the details why the education is so poor there. Nihilistically and pessimistically, ignorance is profitable, bad-politician-friendly, and only supports some far-right cognitive biases. Optimistically though, most people are politically moderate, smart, and well educated. As a moderate and as someone outside of Baltimore, my main takeaway is that it probably sucks to start a family in Baltimore — either by the bad education or by being a city with a large Fox News presence.

I’m kidding, at least Fox News has the best looking news anchors and better eye candy than every other channel except Sports Illustrated.

You're not wrong.

I've been watching FOX45 for over ten years. I would describe myself as politically moderate. And I've noticed this trend also. The Fox45 morning news show is filled with the cognitive biases you mentioned and a paid advertisements disguised as news stories.

After the news there usually a segment from their FOX news affiliates and it comes with the crazy opinion based news. There is never a point from the "other side" Like with something like PBS where they have one person from each side of the argument tell their story.

The news story about the Mosby's tax issue from months ago that has been resolved. They still report on it everyday. And if they don't report on that story. There will be some guy who got off on a legal technicality or because he was searched illegally without a warrant and it's somehow Mosby or her husbands fault. They always find a way to mention mosby's name but only in the negative.

The recent news story about the schools is suppose to make you hate Baltimore city school officials and show how ineffective or wasteful with their spending they are. Even go as to far to show some dumbass parents on there like "I don't know why he's failing" even though they don't help the kid at all with schoolwork.

Fox45 has spent all their efforts investigating the school administration when they should be interviewing kids. I bet they would never tell the story about how at Patterson high school truancy was such an issue they had hall monitors, who the student colloquied called bouncers. The bouncers job was to make sure kids were actually going to class. But it was often you'd see them bolting after a student and tackle them like a running back only to drag him back into the school to serve out the rest of his sentence for the day. Or how they swtiched to taking Scan-tron roll calls at every period because kids would leave the school after homeroom where attendance was taken originally.

>I know that politics are to be avoided on HN but many articles Fox News requires crossing the line into talking-about-politics territory. Faux News’s Tea-party-Republican agenda is to defund education and to selectively report on cases that support that agenda. There’s a reasonable likely-hood they could be reporting falsities in the place of facts or selectively leaving out the details why the education is so poor there.

Can you point out which parts of the article contains such "falsities" that you're talking about? Or did you see "fox" in the domain and assumed that the article must be bad? I skimmed the article and I'm having a hard time finding a "defund the schools" agenda in there.

Reputation does not reset with every article Fox writes.

What is that George Bush quote: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on…

Not a Fox News article. Fox 45 is the local WBFF affiliate.

Fox45 and Fox News are essentially totally unrelated. You are the unwitting victim of misunderstanding the somewhat complex and historical way TV stations are named in the US (out of curiosity, what is your approximate age and region you are from? I doubt an older American, raised with broadcast over the air, would ever make this mistake).

I will explain:

That site is from a local TV news station called "Fox 45 Baltimore" and they have some news. it is a local broadcast (formerly VHF or UHF, idk how digital HD broadcast works these days) TV station and FCC licensee in Baltimore that has nothing to do with Fox News. These licensees exist in neerly every major city, as do NBC, ABC etc affiliates. They harken back to an era of something called "broadcast station networks" in which local stations in different cities formed federations to share programming production costs. this system arose in the 1940s or so I believe.

Fox45 and other similar stations are beholden to a broad local audience, albeit skewing older because young people don't watch TV offline much.

Fox News on the other hand is a cable TV channel that has nothing to do with those other stations. it was likely founded decades later.

the idea that Baltimore would be a "city with a large fox news presence" is so laughable that I really have to imagine you are very young or from somewhere very far from the northeast US.

there is also a movie production company you may have heard of called 20th century Fox. it has produced many classics.

none of these 3 (and a variety of other companies with the Fox name) have neerly anything to do with each other. I believe it all comes down to licensing the same trademark from each other due to historical mergers, acquisitions, and sales over the last hundred years. The Fox name originated almost a century ago with an ancient early Hollywood company called Fox Films, and later merged with 20th Century something or the other.

corporate genealogy is the most monstrously complicated thing you'll ever study so I am sure I mangled many details. this is just what I remember as general common knowledge when and where I grew up. I was born in New Jersey in the 80s for reference. best regards, and enjoy reading more on this topic if it interests you. Wikipedia will be your friend here. Try reading about defunct networks like MBS, UPN, or The WB. or look at the odd Genesis of MSNBC. the MS, a younger reader might be surprised to learn, stands for Microsoft!

to be clear I am not criticizing you but rather taking joy in getting to introduce you to a truly complex field of knowledge that you never before realized was right in front of your eyes: the mind bending way corporations and brands with long histories are named. try looking at the corporate genealogy for general electric or IBM or Bayer or the former AOL Time Warner. it's as complex as anything in the software world

There is not a direct relationship between Fox News and Fox 45. That is true.

But...

Fox 45 Baltimore is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and corporation with a definite pro-Trump bias, and a history of making editorial decisions pushing stories to the right.

So you can say that Fox News and Fox 45 don't have anything to do with each other in a corporate tree, but the are both pushing the far right narrative because they largely follow the same editorial dictates.

Glad you brought that up, since the concentration of ownership of stations is an entirely separate, but even more serious source of bias. Station ownership is way less obvious to consumers than network affiliation.

For example, Sinclair also owns some NBC, ABC, CBS, CW, and Univision stations (a fact I only just looked up myself). I am sure many consumers (like the parent) assume all Fox stations are owned or managed by Fox, NBC stations by NBC, and so on, when it's much more complicated for historical reasons, which is what I want to draw attention to.

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