
Several Baltimore schools have no students proficient in state tests - GlobalServices
http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-schools-no-students-proficient-in-state-tests
======
acjohnson55
Wow, funny to see this on the front page of HN, as someone who once taught
high school math there. That two-year stint was the most challenging
experience of my life, _by far_.

I was the founding math teacher at a brand new turnaround school with a rookie
principal. I had 5 weeks of training, and my job my first year was to prepare
my students for the very same state test mentioned in this article. To connect
that with the typical HN world, I was literally a day 1 employee at a startup
meant to replace an institution that had failed in more or less the exact same
situation. Despite the intensity of the experience, it was deeply
transformative for me.

To briefly react to this article, I am not surprised. Baltimore is a poor and
segregated city. But that socioeconomic stratum has many layers. There are
many ways to end up at a better school. Some are selective, others are high
demand and have a lottery, still others you simply sign up for. So you need to
have good academic performance or have someone looking out with you with even
just the modicum of savvy required to simply opt for a better school. If you
have neither of those things, you end up going to your default neighborhood
school (e.g. any of those 6 mentioned in the article), which is certain to be
completely swamped with students coming from deep poverty and social
dislocation. These are schools that tend to have the same number of 9th
graders as 10th, 11th, and 12th combined, due drop outs and transfers.

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

\----

I journaled my experience here:
[https://alanjayteaching.wordpress.com/?order=asc](https://alanjayteaching.wordpress.com/?order=asc).

Another Teach For America Baltimore alumnus wrote a book on her experience. I
found it to echo many of my own reflections, almost eerily so:
[https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Terrordome-Years-
Baltimore-A...](https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Terrordome-Years-Baltimore-
America/dp/0826219861).

One of the schools mentioned, Fredrick Douglass High, has a deep history, and
its modern day woes were profiled about a decade ago in the HBO documentary
Hard Times At Douglass High: [http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/hard-times-at-
douglass-high...](http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/hard-times-at-douglass-
high-no-child-left-behind).

~~~
madengr
So was it like the cop turned math teacher in season 4 of The Wire?

~~~
acjohnson55
If all the most intense moments of my brief teaching career were compressed
into like 2 weeks: that's what Season 4 is like. So in one sense, it's
truthful. But it's also a bit misleading.

The real day-to-day experience was much more mundane and psychologically
draining over the long grind of the school year, punctuated by sporadic crises
and constant minor disruptions. It's an unbelievable amount of work to buy
supplies, plan lessons, physically maintain your classroom, perform your
material, engage those students, respond to the dynamism of hormonal
teenagers, resolve conflicts, grade work, help administer the school, coach,
conference with your colleagues, and follow-up with parents. Somewhere in
there, you _maybe_ get attend to your own physical needs. And no matter how
badly you fuck up, you wake up at 6am to do it all again the next day, and the
next.

The challenges you face are manifold. I had a student arrive that spoke zero
English. I had students who were refugees from Iraq, one of whom survived a
school bombing. I had multiple students return after stints in the justice
system. I had one student who lost his cousin, aunt, and grandma all in one
day in a fire. I had a 14 year who had never learned subtraction. I had
students with deep psychological issues, including one I believe
(unprofessional) to be a sociopath. I had one student quietly stay after class
to ask me if he could have one of my soups for lunch, since he hadn't eaten
all weekend. I had to report one student's account of sexual abuse. I had
students in rival gangs, and far worse, students who were gang wannabes. This
is just what I remember off the top of my head, year's later.

Put 25 or so students of these students in a room, and you never know what's
going to happen in a given class period. The class, like a sports team,
succeeds or fails as a unit. Many of these students come from home lives and
neighborhoods where the idea of education lifting them out of poverty is
demonstrably a total myth. You need to convince them that their whole
experience is false, and get them to buy into the idea that solving for x is
worth a damn.

That's what it's like.

------
x0x0

       Navon Warren grew up in West Baltimore. He was three months old when his 
       father was shot to death. Before his 18th birthday, he would lose two uncles 
       and a classmate, all gunned down on the streets of Baltimore.
    

If Navon is in any way representative, I'm really not sure what they expect
schools to do. The school only gets them for 35 hours a week, 8 months per
year. Over half the school qualifies for free lunch, which I think is a
standard poverty indicator (though crazily enough, half isn't high poverty!
[1]). Not much of that sounds like a home life or environment conducive to
learning. I'm guessing the school pays poorly too, combined with what sounds
like pretty horrific circumstances for much of the student body, makes me
guess they aren't getting the best teachers either...

[1] [https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-
lu...](https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-lunch-a-
proxy-for-poverty)

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
They could provide for counseling and therapy within the schools themselves.

Currently, to receive mental health services, parents usually need to initiate
these requests by navigating through a bureaucratic maze

~~~
afarrell
Also, given that most mental health services are available only 9-5, it is
going to be prohibitively expensive for a parent to pick their kid up from
school regularly to drive them cross-town. Maybe there is a bus they could
use, but it would be much harder than going to a wing of the school.

Or (speculating whildly on something more complex than I'm representing) maybe
they could set up some sort of online videochat therapy so those kids who
could afford a £35 android phone and wifi could access therapy from outside
school?

------
lhnz

      > Last year, not one student scored proficient
      > in any state testing.
      >
      > “That’s absurd to me. That’s absurd to me,” says
      > Warren’s mother Janel Nelson. “That’s your teachers
      > report card, ultimately.”
    

This is bad. Teaching is an incredibly stressful job and putting more pressure
on teachers only causes them to leave to schools in which their effort pays
off.

Children need to be taught to take on more autonomy for their grades and other
outcomes in their life. It's okay if they need to be spoon-fed a little bit
when they first join a school, but they must be weaned off this if they are to
have a chance in the "real world".

~~~
benchaney
It's ridiculous to blame the students in this case. If every single student
failed, that is either a problem with the teacher, or a problem with the test.

~~~
pmorici
Problem with the parents.

~~~
benchaney
Every parent in the school? If it were a problem with a handful of students
maybe, but if every student fails, there is a more systematic issue at play.

~~~
pmorici
It's self selecting. Any parent that cares even a little bit will realize the
school is crap and get their kid out of that situation asap.

~~~
benchaney
Maybe if they are can afford to move and switch school districts. Or if they
live in a school district where they can choose their school (which also
correlates with income).

Edit: Also, If a school is so bad that you have to move away from it to avoid
being considered a bad parent, that reflects worse on the school more so than
the parents.

~~~
pmorici
I'd encourage you to go learn about Baltimore city schools. The failing
schools being discussed in the OP are Middle and High Schools. Baltimore
doesn't have school zones at the high school level. Any student that lives in
Baltimore could go to any of the high schools. Some are good others are total
garbage. Bottom line, you don't have to move, you do have to be proactive
though.

[http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/Domain/9530](http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/Domain/9530)

~~~
benchaney
Thats a fair point, but it doesn't change the fact that it is ultimately the
school's fault. Besides, it isn't like you can just choose to go wherever you
want. There is a lottery process and obviously not everyone gets their first
choice.

~~~
pmorici
The lottery process is only for the charter schools. The rest of them have an
application process similar to applying to colleges. Baltimore has more than
24 high schools.

[http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/about/by_the_numbers](http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/about/by_the_numbers)

------
b6
This is such an eggshells issue. I think a lot of people probably feel
extremely reluctant to speak openly about this, or try to diagnose it, and
that seems very bad, because children are suffering and their futures are
being compromised.

I don't doubt for a second that the school systems are letting kids down, at
least somewhat. I'm a huge critic of public education, based on bitter
experience. On the other hand, schools cannot be expected to produce great
results no matter what else is happening in a child's life.

If we were to look at the demographics of these schools, would we find that
99% of the students are black? It matters in this case because there's an
epidemic of fatherlessness among American blacks, and it's known to be very
detrimental to the development of children. Who knows how much of a role this
factor plays, but not mentioning it seems like a doctor not mentioning smoking
might be the culprit in a patient's cancer.

If I'm wrong and there's some other more likely smoking gun in this situation,
please tell me. I would like to know about it.

~~~
extra88
Why would you latch onto fatherlessness rather than poverty, lack of safety,
or lack of a healthy environment?

~~~
humanrebar
1\. Single parent households have it harder on average. In American culture,
that generally means that mothers (and grandmothers) raise the kids, not the
dads. "Fatherlessness" is shorthand for this.

2\. Men actually bring some things to family and neighborhood culture. Some
people might get offended at this notion, but it's not controversial to say
that femininity is wonderful, distinctive, and has special things to offer.
But this must also be true of masculinity. I'd argue that men, generally
speaking, have different ways to approach the problems you list. This is
applying the "diversity makes us better" principle in a place really needing
some new ideas and new strength.

~~~
extra88
> have it harder on average

"Harder" meaning the affects of poverty, right? Having two parents involved is
only one way to address that.

Starting with talking about fatherlessness and "culture" is blaming the
victims and, frankly, racist. I'm not saying a cycle of negative learned
behaviors is irrelevant but there are so many other factors to address first.

~~~
humanrebar
> "Harder" meaning the affects of poverty, right? Having two parents involved
> is only one way to address that.

Not just poverty. Middle class single parent households have it harder than
equivalent two parent households as well. We respect good single parents
especially because we recognize how much harder it is to, say, take classes in
the evening or lead the PTA if you're also making sure your kids are clothed,
educated, fed, nurtured, safe, and so on.

> Starting with talking about fatherlessness and "culture" is blaming the
> victims and, frankly, racist.

I don't think this cultural issue is unique to black communities or even urban
ones. I've already posted on race and fatherlessness:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14387245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14387245)

Please stop attacking allies. There's enough convincing to do without
outgrouping and ending discussions of important issues by throwing around
conversation killing (and frankly inaccurate) epithets.

...as far as blaming victims... I'm not interested in putting anyone in
stockades on any of this. I do think we need to recalibrate our cultural
calculus on what kids need to properly thrive. Home situations should
absolutely be on the table, not for the purpose of judging, but for the
purpose of setting expectations for prospective parents, people deciding
whether to make marriages work, people picking out potential mates, etc.

Part of the problem, in my mind, is that in our effort to avoid victim
blaming, we framed certain life choices as valid forms of self actualization
instead of truthfully really hard situations. There has to be a way to be
supportive and loving to single parents without also misleading the next
generation into thinking that finding committed partners isn't also a big
priority.

> ...there are so many other factors to address first.

Are there? Why is the social injustice of family structure on the bottom of
the list?

------
DanielBMarkham
These are not schools. I don't know what to call them, "Public institutions
for young people waiting to go into dysfunctional lifestyles" comes to mind.
There could be others.

Shut them down. Seriously. If you are failing this terribly, the very _least_
you owe taxpayers and the poor kids and parents associated with those schools
is honesty. Not spin. Not statistical bullshit. Honesty. Shut the damned
schools down. The resources we are allocating there are actively working
against the public interest.

I'm sure the cries will come out "What to do with these at-risk kids?"

That's a great question, and folks can have a wonderful public discussion
about that. Unfortunately, that discussion gets into winners and losers --
various interests have various goals that they want to achieve.

So let's separate that out, put it aside for a few months. For now, close them
down. Immediately. Try some brutal honesty and see if it doesn't move the dial
forward a little bit.

~~~
analog31
There was a story on NPR yesterday, about a small region of Indiana -- a
hotbed of school choice -- that looks like it will soon have no functioning
schools. So this is happening already.

In my view, the problem is that every kid is guaranteed a chance to attend
school. This is even written into some state constitutions. Thus all of the
schools are joined together at the hip, even if they don't want to be. The
higher functioning schools depend on selective admissions and operating at
near capacity, which in turn requires the government to operate last-resort
schools.

 _This is a continuous government bail-out of the selective schools._ So you
can't just shut it down because the successful kids need it. In fact, periodic
or continuous government bail-outs are probably a feature of any attempt to
privatize what is necessarily a public good, such as health care and possibly
air travel.

I'd prefer a return to totally public education and more intensive efforts to
battle poverty and segregation. But a possible measure for eliminating the
last-resort schools would be to take the kids who can't get into any school,
and assign them to schools at random, then let the successful schools figure
out how to deal with them.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Good points, and although we may have different worldviews you have some neat
ideas.

The problem I was trying to address in my comment was _organizational
inertia_. If you have scores of people in a big building creating their own
system of doing things, it becomes impossible to change those ways. It's not a
matter of policy, philosophy, or whatnot. It's simply the way large groups of
people operate.

You might be able to take those same teachers and administrators, put them in
tents in a park next door, and have vastly-improved results. Or not. Whatever
your philosophy of "how to do good school", if it's not working in a
particular instance, you have to deal with the organizational inertia first
and foremost no matter how you'd like the rest of the game to play out.

~~~
analog31
In my view, the "organization" we're dealing with is the economic and
environmental milieu that kids are exposed to from birth. Focusing on schools
rather than addressing, e.g., segregation, is _organizational inertia_ on a
grand scale. Better segregated schools is like faster horses.

Randomly assigning kids to schools would create a dis-incentive for schools to
depend on segregation to achieve their results.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
So your thesis is that it's silly to talk about school effectiveness because
of the larger socio-economic condition of the population.

In other words, given certain external conditions, there should be no
successful schools.

Proceeding down this path of analysis, you should find counter-examples, if
they exist, and begin listing conditions that make schooling impossible.

Also not my point, but certainly a fun exercise. So close the schools, provide
the useful public services they offer (if any), and work on the larger
conditions.

The question remains whether or not the political structure that is paying for
and supporting these organizations is honest enough to stop the dysfunction
when it's thrust in their face. Even in your scenario, close them.

ADD: I want to point out that there is this Stupid Human Trick we all do: when
presented with a situation that involves difficult-yet-implementable
decisions, we point to some larger, impossible-to-solve situation and demand
that this situation be addressed first. It's a way not to deal with things.
I've spent decades watching Cold War arguments play out with "Well, if we had
peace in the Middle East, these other things would also fall into line"

We were never getting peace in the Middle East. But it was easier just to
throw their hands up and ask for the moon than it was to make the simple,
immediate decision that was achievable.

~~~
analog31
_So your thesis is that it 's silly to talk about school effectiveness because
of the larger socio-economic condition of the population._

No.

------
markvdb
Here's the example Maryland high school tests:

[http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index...](http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index.html#/04)

------
leemailll
i hate to say this but Baltimore city is kind of a mess in recently years.
Crime, riot, administration corruption. Also lead paint is still a thing
there, which is really harmful for developing brain

------
adventured
For reference on what these tests might look like (mostly Algebra).

The article indicates they're primarily talking about high schools (and one
middle school). I'd suspect that the testing questions are not too far removed
from the HSA (High School Assessment) tests of prior years. The HSA used to be
a required test you had to pass to graduate in Maryland high schools (I
believe they've changed to a new testing platform in recent years, to
something called PARCC).

If you click on the following link, then click on the "What does HSA look
like?" tab, then scroll down for Algebra for 2009.

[http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index...](http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index.html)

------
golergka
Out of curiosity, what are those math tests like?

~~~
michaelt
[http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/look_...](http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/look_like/2009/algebra/view.html#/01)

Looks OK to me, for an 18 year old. Nothing on integration/differentiation or
imaginary numbers, and the use of matrices doesn't really show why they're
useful - but that stuff can be covered in the first year of college.

~~~
kofejnik
Checked it out. Actual math is trivial (too trivial, in ex-USSR most of that
is covered by 5th-6th grade, or 12-13 y.o.), but the test itself is horrible
imo. Multiple-choice sucks for math, by design it tends to focus on minutiae
of definitions or your knowledge of exact approaches taught in school; also
too many trick questions (like X axis labeled with uneven steps, who does that
at all and how is this relevant to statistics understanding?) and questions
like:

\--------------------------------------------- Look at the pattern below.

2.6, −5.2, 10.4, −20.8, . . .

If this pattern continues, what is the sixth term?
\-------------------------------------------------------

which sound like a bad IQ test where any answer is valid but you need to guess
what test designer had in mind that evening.

Probably because they had a checklist of "competencies" and tried to
separately test each of them.

------
yeasayer
10 years since The Wire season 4, the situation is still the same.

~~~
humanrebar
Seven years since Waiting for Superman.

------
theprop
This is no surprise to anyone who's seen the Wire.

------
swampthinker
Wish the article would like to the study that examined these schools

~~~
e2e8
As far as I can see, Project Baltimore is just this organization's name for
its articles on Baltimore issues. There was not any separate study.

------
logicallee
I don't believe the headline and report. (The schools include "Excel Academy"
and "Achievement Academy". Statistically, zero proficient students at any of
these schools would essentially have to mean not one student can spell the
name of their school.)

Sorry. No matter the shape of their bell curve, the article is sensationalist
and cannot possibly be correct. What's their source? How can such an absurd
fact be so?

Edit: I thought proficient meant "competent" (one of the definitions).
According to the article, "Just one student approached expectations and scored
a three." whereas 4 and 5 on the 5-point scale were deemed "proficient.".
However, I still have trouble believing it. This includes graduates. At
Frederick Douglas, just one of the schools surveyed, "half the students
graduate and just a few dozen will go to college". Apparently we are to
believe that among all these schools, with all its graduates, and all its
college attendees, not 1 student scored a 4/5 in English and Math. That's not
how bell curves work.

~~~
linkmotif
You're definitely not from Baltimore and most likely not from the United
States.

~~~
logicallee
No, I'm not from Baltimore. The article says "a few dozen" kids will go to
college from Frederick Douglass High School, which is one of the 6 named high
schools and middle schools. If we take "a few dozen" to mean 25, and apply it
to the 6 schools, that is at least 150 college-bound students.

Out of 150 _college-bound_ students, you believe that exactly 0 had a 4 out of
5 in both math and English?

We are not talking about generalities or averages here. The article makes the
extraordinary claim of "exactly 0." This is simply an extraordinary claim.
Like saying nobody is over 6 feet tall in an American city of a population of
500,000. I mean sure, the average could be lower - but _not one_?

Since you seem to know a bit more about Baltimore, could you expand on the
reason for this extraordinary fact?

Maybe it is a statistical anomaly based on the total number of high schools
and middle schools, that 6 should happen not to have any students with an over
4 in math and English. Plus I note that they say math _and_ English. Perhaps
if they said "math or English" they would have.

So it definitely seems a bit fishy to me.

~~~
linkmotif
> Out of 150 college-bound students, you believe that exactly 0 had a 4 out of
> 5 in both math and English?

Yep. I'm sorry my previous comment was flip. But I totally believe this
figure.

I'm from Baltimore. I didn't go to one of these schools. These schools are in
totally broken communities where maybe some people do graduate high school but
those graduations aren't meaningful in any sense. Those schools aren't
schools. They are pre-prisons. The teachers have no chance and kids who may
want to learn have no chance either. These are brutal, lawless environments
policed literally by city cops.

That there could be exactly 0, zero people who succeed in the environment
seems not only possible but actually necessary. These aren't schools. They are
pre-prison holding facilities.

~~~
logicallee
thanks for starting to respond more seriously, but I just don't understand and
would like your further clarification. You call them pre-prison but what does
the "few dozen" of them going on to college mean? Prisons don't produce
college diplomas, so what is that figure? I am totally confused. Please direct
your attention to the cited figure of a few dozen of each of these schools
going on to college. That is not anywhere near 0.

~~~
linkmotif
So college in the US is overwhelmingly just more of high school. Also 50% of
people who go to college drop out. Being college bound doesn't mean anything.
Especially if you are a URM and even more so from a place like one of these
schools. People are anxious to give these people a chance and some opportunity
to succeed, which I think is great but doesn't mean they are prepared for
college. At least not what college used to be. College really is just more
high school, or what high school used to be. There are remedial algebra and
English courses in college. People I know with college degrees don't know the
difference between their and there and definitely can't articulate thoughts in
writing. That's the situation in the US in 2017. Unless you graduate from a
top college, college just means to went to high school twice. Even top schools
are full of basically illiterate people who are just wealthy. Ask them to
write something and you'll get a bunch of gibberish. I'm not exaggerating.
It's pretty sad.

