What happened in Baltimore?

Parents Forum
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I teach in Baltimore City schools. The teachers there bend over backward to help their students but for many kids, we are the only ones they can count on in their lives. Nothing can replace an involved family.

In this case, the student in question missed the equivalent of half a school year for his first three years of high school. I’m sure his records show a similar attendance record prior to high school. Students are years behind because they start behind and stay behind. I teach 5-7-year-olds and it isn’t uncommon for me to have multiple students missing upwards of 50+ days of school. They enter kindergarten behind and then miss tons of school every year. By middle school, they are behind by 2-3 years and by high school, they read on an elementary school level.

The mother of this student is defensive because she dropped the ball. We issue progress reports four times per year and report cards four times per year. How she didn’t know her child’s grades is beyond me. I personally think issuing grades four times per year is overkill especially since parents can access their child’s grades online whenever they want. He can’t learn and pass his classes if he doesn’t attend school and you need to do the work if you want to pass. I think this attendance issue was probably ongoing but when he started high school, his grades mattered since he needed a certain number of credits to graduate. Kids don’t just show up to high school and miss half of the year without a record of prior attendance issues. Nothing happens to students who miss this much school BTW. It takes years and years just to get a parent to truancy court.

There is definitely a funding issue in the city. Well, what I mean to write is that there is a lack of funding because the funding has been disappearing. The school buildings are disgusting and crumbling. Don’t let the 2-3 new schools built each year fool you. There is a backlog of maintenance issues that would take 10 years to fix. The money isn’t there. Nobody knows where it is.

If there is nobody at home making you do the work, many kids won’t do it. If our students are marked absent, they get a robocall to all of the phone numbers in our system. Many times, parents don’t update phone numbers so they can claim they didn’t know their kids weren’t in school. That might be true in this case. The student might have skipped school and the parent didn’t know because the school didn’t have updated phone numbers. Why the parent never asked to see a report card is a mystery.

It takes many, many years for students to get to this point. It starts with attendance issues and ends with students unable to do the work because they missed so much instruction. Teachers can only do so much.

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I’d love to know the names of the documentaries. These are some good ones about schools in Baltimore.
https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Times-At-Douglass-High...050013&s=instant-video&sr=1-12

The other one is called The Learning about Filipino teachers being recruited to teach in Baltimore City schools.

This book is also very eye opening.
https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Terrordome-Years-Baltimore-America/dp/0826219861

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Thank you for your service. (I know that sounds trite but I mean it sincerely.) My son and DIL lived in Baltimore for many years. Went to undergrad & grad school there. Rented then bought a house. Had no problem walking around day or night. But when the baby came and they started thinking about school, they headed for the suburbs. I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I don’t know what the answer is.

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And therein lies the crux of the problem. Broken dysfunctional homes lead to broken dysfunctional schools. I don’t know what the solution is. I’m not sure there is a solution.

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When the environment is such that non-dysfunctional families flee (whether in schools by sending the kids to private or magnet schools, or in housing by leaving the area (possibly through low income housing programs or Section 8)) leaving a greater concentration of dysfunctional families (in the school or area), that can make the problems more difficult to solve. A school with a few kids from dysfunctional families may be able to help them despite the family problems. A school where a large number of kids from dysfunctional families may be overwhelmed, and may be drained (of teacher and counselor time, inability to move forward in the curriculum, etc.) to the point that kids from non-dysfunctional families are neglected.

Having low SES kids or families go to non-low SES environments (schools or housing) can be beneficial for them, but those “left behind” may find it even more difficult to escape the greater concentration of dysfunction that they are left in.

Agree that finding a solution that works for most (without the “left behind” result) is probably more difficult than just noticing that there is a problem (though there is plenty of disagreement on even identifying the problems more specifically).

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@MDMom2023, I would also.like to thank you for putting forth the effort in the Baltimore City schools. A dedicated teacher can make a world of difference for some children.

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Please folks, let’s avoid calling out others and rebukes. I really want to avoid closing this thread.

Remember, Cc is not a debating society.

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That’s the frustrating part, especially as a parent. There are so many people and entities with vested interests in keeping things the same. The gravy train or status quo is more important than implementing change to improve education and helping kids. Square peg, round hole.

I remember going to school board meetings in high school and seeing teachers reprimanded. They tried to improve academic standards but were shut down because parents complained their kids couldn’t make GPA requirements to play sports. I also saw the flip side with some teachers that had no business setting foot in a school but somehow maintained their jobs. The sad part was being 14 or 15 years old and seeing this garbage and how the world really worked.

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The people in Appalachia might not of been marginalized and neglected by the government (debatable at times) but the coal companies sure did. I have my grandparents stories and pay stubs as proof.

I absolutely believe @EconPop. Some of the worst stories I heard growing-up were how some of the Black miners were mistreated which is an understatement.

Side story. We’ve been to Atlanta a few times. S20 goes to GT. We stopped by the MLK park. My favorite part was his old church. You could walk in, sit down and listen to his sermons. We sat for 20 minutes and left. Walking out my wife and I looked at each other and at the same time said “not much has changed”.

It’s good to understand the history but the bigger issue is how to fix these issues today. I wish I knew.

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Section 8 doesn’t seem to lead to non-dysfunctional, but poor households leaving poor areas. Whether it is that Sec 8 won’t pay enough (not true these days), or that LL’s see these households as undesirable tenants, most of the voucher holders use them for units in the inner city or poor towns with poor schools. And in fact, most of the households that I have known who have Sec 8 are highly dysfunctional, and that’s putting it very nicely. Sec 8 recipients pay only 1/3 of their income as rent - the voucher covers the rest. If they have no income, the voucher covers their entire rent. And STILL, a significant percentage of them (my local housing authority says over 20%) wind up evicted for serious lease violations and criminal activity, or non-payment of that sliding scale, tied-to-their income, small amount of rent. I have sat in court and watched as the public housing authority tried to evict a woman who only had to pay $50/month, which she hadn’t paid for over 2 yrs. She was on every form of public assistance that there is, had lots of kids, and she was risking eviction and the loss of her voucher over not paying $50/month, which she most definitely had coming in monthly - far more than that. I really don’t think that parent teacher conferences were high on her list. Frankly, it appeared that getting her next fix was the highest thing on her list.

Now consider that every parent that is not in that situation has taken advantage of any opportunity to get their kid into a better school than the general public one. Now consider a classroom full of children whose parents, for whatever reason, did not fill out the form to get their kid into a magnet or suburban school. This is how you wind up with an entire school, an entire district, where few parents make sure the kid did his homework, went to bed at a decent hour, and got up, got ready, and got to school on time.

It’s a tragedy. It’s only a band-aid to get some of the kids, the kids whose parents are able to put in an application, into better schools. Those kids are helped, but so many who need the help even more, are left behind.

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Having low-SES kids go to non-low SES schools can be beneficial for them…

I see this statement frequently and can appreciate how that seems like a logical construct. Is there data that shows that is consistently the case?

I have seen data in the past for a district that indicates that’s not necessarily the case. Some of the worst outcomes for low-SES students were in the highest SES schools and some of the best were in low-SES schools. In other cases high SES schools had good outcomes with low-SES students and low-SES schools had poor outcomes with low-SES students. It was a mixed bag. This thread got me curious, so I just looked at some of the school reports and it’s still a mixed bag.

While my kids were in elementary school, the school was doing above average across demographic groups. Now it’s the opposite. Demographics haven’t changed. What changed? The school leadership turned over.

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I have been a landlord for 30 years. I have had S8 tenants over the years and have some currently. I have talked with many landlords who have S8 tenants. My experience with S8 tenants differs greatly from the picture you describe. I guess different people in different locations have different experiences. Also, oftentimes when a landlord finds himself/herself in multiple unsatisfying landlord-tenant relationships, it is because a landlord has poor communication skills and/or is generally an incompetent landlord.

I know from my conversations and my research that many times landlords refuse to rent to S8 voucher holders. Also, many residents of upper-middle income and more affluent neighborhoods prevent zoning changes necessary to include even small amounts of affordable housing to be built nearby. While some residents prefer to reside in higher-density areas for public transportation options, research clearly indicates those two things (landlords refusing S8 tenants and neighborhoods preventing low-income housing options) are significant reasons S8 voucher holders cannot escape high-density poverty neighborhoods.

Lastly, regardless of whether a tenant is using S8 vouchers or not, it is the landlord’s responsibility to vet the applicants. Poor vetting by landlords is the #1 reason landlords have trouble-making tenants, not whether or not the tenants utilize S8. The last time I accepted applications for a S8 eligible property, I received over 40 applications. Thanks to good screening practices, I have a wonderful S8 family which has been in that unit for over 3 years now. Good vetting/screening ≠ completely disallowing S8 tenants.

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“what’s left” is mostly (77%) Black kids, it is really easy to infer that the number refers to Black kids. it ignores all the other reasons that Black people never left the poverty-stricken areas of cities - everything from not being eligible for the loans that enabled White people to move to the suburbs, to laws which restricted them from buying houses or renting houses in good school districts, to districting of schools to exclude poor Black areas.

I agree that keeping on throwing money as a failing schools district won’t help, especially if the issues are the result of the poverty of the families sending their kids to school.

The best teachers and classroom in the world won’t help a kid do that well if they have nowhere to study, little to no supper, and are exposed to assorted toxins in the rental that the family could afford.

People in poverty do not have the time and energy to look for, and prepare their kids for, testing into better schools.

That’s what low wage labor looks like today in the USA: Low pay, long hours, no healthcare, no days off, often without basic safety protocols and protections. Not the sort of life that is conducive to making sure that your kids are finishing their homework, or often even going to school.

Also, from descriptions I’ve heard of Baltimore schools’ physical condition, many are so bad, that the money that they are putting into the schools now doesn’t even start to fix the collapsing buildings.

The article was brought to represent what is happening in the Baltimore public school district. So yes, I think that I was justified in making that extrapolation. Furthermore, even if we are talking about 500 kids - that is a lot of kids that you are claiming are failing because of their behavior or their parents’ behavior.

If one kid fails in a class, it’s likely to do with the kid or the kid’s parents. If half of a school is failing, that is on the school. When half of the school district is failing, that’s on the school district. More than half the the public schools of Baltimore are failing, and that kid is just one among tens of thousands.

You did your very best, and you did well, but you cannot solve the problems caused by generational poverty. It is also unfair to expect you to do so.

Just for everybody’s interest:

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I agree not much, not enough has changed.

I think true change has to be substantial and structural. It’s hard to piecemeal a solution for a systemic problem that large.

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One of my kids attended such a school, very briefly as an exchange student. She will tell you that there was almost no adult presence in her classmates lives-parents missing, in jail,or stoned, or nominally with grandparents who were overwhelmed. The teachers did the best they could with kids who were basically abandoned by the adult family members in their lives. So no, I don’t think it is the school’s fault necessarily if 500 kids are failing. Abandoned kids often are.

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I am probably going to be the contrarian in this group but I think we lost a major opportunity to change the course of events 50-60 years ago. Passing the Civil Rights Act was necessary because it got rid of legislative segregation and discrimination. At the point in time the majority of black and inner city families were still intact. I am of the belief that the family structure is the first form of self government and those that come from intact families tend to respect authority (because they have that structure in their lives), value education and have less crime (see number one). What we did was subsidize the breakdown of that culture in the name of helping the very group which is now in crises. Today a minority of those who live in low SES neighborhoods live with intact families. Lacking those values inner city students do not value education, and authority (including teachers). Since more 3/4 of black children are born out of wedlock now the problem is self replicating and spending more money on it only continues to subsidize it. Baltimore, Detroit etc. are prime examples of where those policies lead. You may delete this thread if I’ve made the discussion too political. I just think the problem’s core is not the schools or even SES but values.

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The problem is far more complicated than intact families. The divorce rate is very high in this country among not only blacks. So a two parent household is not outcome determinative. There are also many dysfunctional two parent families. And many single black parents value education and raise well educated successful kids.

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It’s true that an overabundance of fatherless families are part of the problem. However, it is a mistake to assume that situation arose on its own because of some mysterious reason we may choose to assign to certain groups of people, or because of the Civil Rights Acts. The post-slavery root of that problem began with Jim Crow laws implemented at during Reconstruction to destroy any chance for African-Americans to create a foothold for equality and prosperity.

One book I recommend that goes deep into the creation of this is “Slavery By Another Name” by the Atlanta bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, Douglas Blackmon. He describes how the Jim Crow implementation of “vagrancy” laws allowed racist deputies to arrest African-American men for no cause, fine them for the imagined offense, imprison them, and rent them out as slave labor to white farmers and business owners until their false debt was deemed to be paid - often years later. This continued until America entered WWII and President Roosevelt realized he could not convince African-American men to join the military until he ended this continued form of slavery in America. Though Roosevelt signed the paperwork in the 1945, the practiced continued in several states into the 1950s. And continued inequitable treatment by law enforcement through the 60s, ensured even more African-American families were stripped of the possibility of being intact.

When oppression like that continues unabated for nearly a century after African-Americans first enjoyed “freedom” in America, the impact of it does not quickly fade away. Fortunately, some have risen from that damage, but many more continue to suffer.

As much effort as was put into the oppression must be put into the repair in order to properly undo the damage. Broken families may be part of the problem, and the systemic injustices detailed in this book are only part of the cause of an overabundance of broken African-American households. There is no simply solution. It’s a simplistic approach to start and stop at poor academic performance in 2021. The cause goes back much further, and a true solution will have to be much broader.

BTW, for those who wish to learn more about this but do not want to read a 400-page book, there is a DVD by the same name that is fantastic. Tragic and horrific, but fantastically informative. I read the book myself, and watched the DVD with my children.

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@Lindagaf . Moderator, please consider closing this thread. It’s time. I think that it has MORE than served the OP’s original intent.

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That’s an interesting point. :face_with_monocle: