F-Minus: A Tale of Two Cities’ School Districts
9th February 2025
“I don’t know how many different ways you can say these results are bad, but they’re bad,” University of Washington researcher Dan Goldhaber told The Washington Post. “I don’t think this is the canary in the coal mine. This is a flock of dead birds in the coal mine.”
For a close look at this educational carnage, consider Baltimore and Chicago, two cities where school dysfunction merits serious prison time for the adults who perpetrate institutional child abuse against their students.
As of September 2023, 13 of 32 Baltimore high schools had zero students who were proficient in math, according to Maryland’s state exam.
To be clear: It’s not that less than 1% were proficient. Far worse: Not one individual student—not one teenage male, nor one teenage female—could compute at grade level in 13—or 40%—of Baltimore’s high schools. “The results are hard to believe,” wrote Chris Papst of WBFF-TV, Baltimore’s Fox affiliate.