F-Minus: A Tale of Two Cities’ School Districts

The Nation’s Report Card recently went public. It’s the kind of thing that kids hide from their parents. 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress offers a grim view of America’s classrooms. Between 2022 and 2024, the share of fourth graders reading below basic level grew from 37% to 40%; among eighth graders, from 30% to 33%. Fourth grade math improved slightly, from 25% to 24% (i.e., fewer students below basic). Alas, below-basic eighth grade math performance crept up from 38% of students to 39%.

These figures are all worse than before COVID-19 ruined everything.

“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.

“This is educational homicide,” Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of People Empowered by the Struggle, told Papst. “We have a system that’s just running rogue, and it starts at the top.”

Since 2021, Rodriguez’s group has demanded the resignation of Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises over pathetic test scores, dismal graduation rates, and limited transparency. Rather than quit, Santelises recently extended her contract through the end of the 2025-26 school year. 

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

“We acknowledge that some of our high school students continue to experience challenges in math following the pandemic,” Baltimore City Public Schools said in a statement to WBFF. However, in 2017, Project Baltimore also found that 13 local high schools had zero math-proficient students. Many of the same campuses were in the 2017 and 2023 Halls of Shame. So, don’t blame COVID-19 for this catastrophe.

It’s not about money, either. “We’re getting plenty of funding,” said Rodriguez. In 2022, Baltimore’s schools scored a record $1.6 billion in taxpayer funds and $799 million in federal COVID-19 relief.

Meanwhile, money is the least of Chicago Public Schools’ worries. 

As Wirepoints, a local think tank, observed, per-student spending rose from $15,822 in 2017 to $29,169 in 2024—up 84.35%. Chicago’s parents are paying more. But remember: They are getting less.

Through those years, black students’ SAT reading proficiency slid from 18% to 12%—down 33.3%. For reading: 12% to 7%—down 41.7%.

When I discussed all of this last week before the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Law School’s Federalist Society, left-wing students pinned the tail on alleged right-wing white racists.

Nice try!

Baltimore and Chicago have been run by Democrats for decades. 

Thomas McKeldin, Baltimore’s last Republican mayor, was elected in 1963. He left office in 1967—58 years ago. William H. Thompson was the last GOP mayor of Chicago. He arrived in 1927 and was gone in 1931. Democrat mayors have ruled the Windy City for 94 years.

Democrats dominate school boards, and the teachers unions have maintained their kung fu grip on these and most cities, since at least the 1980s.

Blaming “whitey” won’t work, either. Since 2007, Baltimore’s last five chief executives have been black. Chicago’s current mayor, Brandon Johnson, is black. So was his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot.

The Left’s tired, typical excuses will not work.

These national outrages spring from left-wing, black Democrats’ disastrous policies. Black students suffer in Baltimore, Chicago, and other Democrat-run cities across America. Their minds are being crushed in schools whose administrators care less about them and more about themselves, their salaries, and their pensions. 

Atop this stinking pile sit black liberal Democrats who betray their own people while pointing fingers everywhere, starting with the shopworn bogeyman of “white racists.”

But, ultimately, responsibility rests with voters who keep electing these destructive clowns.

“More and more money for increasingly bad results,” Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints lament. “Our politicians get away with this because we let them.”

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