" ... WBFF’s Project Baltimore came out with a lengthy report focused on a student at a Baltimore public high school called Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts.
Although the student’s name is not disclosed, his mother, by the name of Tiffany France, is interviewed extensively; and since she is black, we shall assume that he is too.
It appears that the student, who supposedly thought he was about to graduate from the school, has just been told that he needs to go back and repeat the first three years.
In his three and a half years of high school to date, the student has passed just three courses, and has failed 22.
He has earned just 2.5 credits in that time.
His GPA is given as 0.13.
... and he was late or absent for some 272 days in the first three years.
Since a typical academic year has about 180 days of classes, that would mean that this student failed to show up for the majority, or close to a majority, of his classes in high school.
Meanwhile, in all this time only one teacher so much as requested a conference with the parents.
... then we find out that this student has a class rank at this school of 62 out of 120.
... he is right about at the middle of the class.
About half the students have even worse records.
At this school, this is the norm.
A follow-up article on March 5 has more detail on the “norms” at Augusta Fells:
The school’s attendance rate is 61%, 27 points below the district average.
At 48%, fewer than half the students graduate in four years.
And of the 434 students enrolled in 2019, two tested proficient in math and two in English.
All this in a school that gets $5.3 million a year from taxpayers.
The mother (said) :
“I feel like they never gave my son an opportunity, like if there was an issue with him, not advancing or not progressing, that they should have contacted me first, three years ago,” said France. . . .
“He's a good kid.
He didn't deserve that.
Where's the mentors?
Where is the help for him?
I hate that this is happening to my child.”
She certainly seems to have a point.
If the school had any competence at all, shouldn’t it have been all over the student and his parents to get him to show up?
And, did he ever turn in a single homework assignment?
If he turned in even a few, that should have been enough to get him at least some passing grades.
Was nobody following up, even a little?
But even though the mother has a point about the school, her own performance is even worse.
What kind of mother lets her kid fail to show up for school fully half the time?
Did she ever sit down with him once in four years to see how he was doing in, say, math or English, and to offer some help?
The article indicates that the mother holds three jobs, but it does not state how many hours she works.
Could she really never even have a minute to check how her kids are doing in school?
And dare we ask about the father?
Is this just completely none of his responsibility?
In short, the picture is one of both schools and families totally abdicating responsibility for raising and educating the kids.
But then, supposedly, these kids are going to go on to college and then get hired for senior executive positions with companies like Amazon or JP Morgan?
Needless to say, it’s not going to happen.
When it doesn’t happen, the blame will somehow not fall on these schools or parents, but rather on you and me because we are supposedly “systemic racists” or “white supremacists.”
Could things get any worse?
Yes. Another WBFF piece, this one from January 20, reports that the shift to virtual learning brought about by the pandemic has caused the course failure rate in the Baltimore City Schools to nearly double"
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