Thirteen Baltimore City high schools don’t have a single student who has achieved grade-level proficiency in math.
High school students took the Maryland state math exam in spring 2023. Of the 32 high schools that issued the exam, 13 produced no students who proved proficient in math, Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore reported this week. In fact, 74.5 percent of the students who were tested scored a one out of four on the test — the lowest score possible.
Even in the district’s five top-performing high schools — at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Baltimore School for the Arts, Baltimore City College, Western High, and Bard High School Early College — only 11.4 percent of students were math proficient.
Baltimore City Public Schools blamed the lack of proficiency on “chronic underfunding,” in a statement, saying that, “We acknowledge that some of our high school students continue to experience challenges in math following the pandemic, especially if they were struggling beforehand.”
The district offers summer learning resources, professional development funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, increased tutoring, and extended learning periods. The district, on that website, doesn’t mention high school math proficiency rates.
Although the district claims its zero-proficiency rates are a result of underfunding,
BCPS has a $1.7 billion dollar budget, which included for the 2023-24 school year $25 million for high-dosage tutoring, an additional $1.5 million for math tutoring, $45 million in extended learning programs, and $25 million for summer programs. On top of that, BCPS received $799 million of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds this school year.
Through a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, the district also allocated $9 million of its budget this year to replacing school buses with clean fuel or zero-emission school buses. BCPS’s superintendent, Sonja Santelises, has a $445,000 salary, the highest among Maryland’s public-school leaders.
“It’s not a funding issue,” Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of the Baltimore nonprofit, People Empowered by the Struggle, told Fox45. “We’re getting plenty of funding. I don’t think money is the issue. I think accountability is the issue . . . We have a system that’s just running rogue, and it starts at the top.”
Project Baltimore is a reporting project that investigates the Maryland public school system. Its reporters obtained exam results from an outside source, and when the Maryland State Department of Education officially releases the results this month, Project Baltimore expects the documents will be heavily redacted.
Low proficiency rates beset school districts nationwide — in Oregon, Nevada, Illinois, and more. Minnesota also reported a zero percent math proficiency rate in 75 of its schools during the 2022-23 school year.