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, <i>by far</i>.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I'd be happy to answer any questions.<p>----<p>I journaled my experience here: <a href="https://alanjayteaching.wordpress.com/?order=asc" rel="nofollow">https://alanjayteaching.wordpress.com/?order=asc</a>.<p>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: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Terrordome-Years-Baltimore-America/dp/0826219861" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Terrordome-Years-Baltimore-A...</a>.<p>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: <a href="http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/hard-times-at-douglass-high-no-child-left-behind" rel="nofollow">http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/hard-times-at-douglass-high...</a>.
<p><pre><code> 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.
</code></pre>
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...<p>[1] <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-lunch-a-proxy-for-poverty" rel="nofollow">https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-lu...</a>
<p><pre><code> > 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.”
</code></pre>
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.<p>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".
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Shut them down. Seriously. If you are failing this terribly, the very <i>least</i> 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.<p>I'm sure the cries will come out "What to do with these at-risk kids?"<p>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.<p>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.
Here's the example Maryland high school tests:<p><a href="http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index.html#/04" rel="nofollow">http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index...</a>
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
For reference on what these tests might look like (mostly Algebra).<p>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).<p>If you click on the following link, then click on the "What does HSA look like?" tab, then scroll down for Algebra for 2009.<p><a href="http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/assessments/high_school/index...</a>
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.)<p>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?<p>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.