A Project Baltimore investigation has found five Baltimore City high schools and one middle school do not have a single student proficient in the state tested subjects of math and English. These are the dumbed-down Common Core tests.
Despite the fact that the students are illiterate, many are on track to pass and graduate. At least half will graduate.
Following are the schools failing the children in what can only be described as a national disgrace:
- Booker T. Washington Middle School
- Frederick Douglass High School
- Achievement Academy at Harbor City
- New Era Academy
- Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High
- New Hope Academy
- There are schools like this throughout the nation, mostly in our cities.
High school students are tested by the state in math and English. Their scores place them in one of five categories – a four or five is considered proficient and one through three are not. At Frederick Douglass, 185 students took the state math test last year and 89 percent fell into the lowest level. Just one student approached expectations and scored a three.
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One student who did graduate and who struggled despite all odds to become proficient said that he thinks the students aren’t proficient because they aren’t learning what’s on the tests.
Government schools are too busy indoctrinating to concentrate on reading and math.
Also problematic is the home life. These are minority children who are living in broken homes and in poor neighborhoods.
The schools say they are not to blame for not one student reaching proficiency. They need more funds.
Theses schools spend $16,000 per child per year and that should be enough to teach reading and math.
The lack of supervision at home, however, is one very difficult problem to overcome. Homes where a parent is in prison and another is on drugs is more difficult again. No matter how much one may love his/her child, the parent has to be able to parent.
Thank a liberal for demonizing the family unit.
Frederick Douglass High School for example is filled with emptiness. A documentary, “Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card”, talks about a “back-to-school night” for parents early in the school year. The camera pans the auditorium and it is largely empty. At the Christmas concert the school’s well-regarded choir is belting out a lovely “Messiah,” again to a largely empty auditorium.
The Freedom Project states the obvious:
Part of the problem, of course, has been the carefully engineered destruction of the family, especially in black communities. Many of the children in these schools are not only victims of a dumbed-down indoctrination program masquerading as “education,” but they’ve also grown up in homes without fathers, a natural consequence of federal welfare and pseudo-“education” policies. Certainly, personal responsibility also plays a role.
Then the author at Freedom Project, Alex Newman, refers to the whole language approach which ignores phonics:
But the most important factor, in this writer’s view, is still the quack methods used to teach reading in government schools across America, sometimes known as “whole word” or “sight words” or “look-say,” as opposed to 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.
As an educator, I have to agree that it has an effect. Some children can learn by that method but many can’t. It’s best when used with phonics instruction.
Far more important, however, is the fact that 66 percent of the Douglass educators are not certified. The school is running on substitutes and other emergency fill-ins.
Unions that put their own well-being above that of the students are also to blame as are the politicians who cater to them. The schools are for children, not staff.
The documentary was very politically motivated but it wasn’t necessarily wrong. It targeted “No Child Left Behind”, a failed but well-intentioned program launched by President George W. Bush. Barack Obama made it far worse with “Race to the Top” and Common Core. What they did was subjugate local control of schools to the federal government and dictates of corporations.
The feds published Common Core, more tests and unfunded mandates but none of that directly addressed the core problems. They also abandoned vocational occupations.
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