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Completely agree. Baltimore City Schools received 29 federal Covid grants totaling $799M to fight learning loss. Yet, in 2023, just 9.1% of all 3rd-8th graders tested proficient in math. MEANING, taxpayers gave an additional $799M and 91% of Baltimore students are NOT math proficient. New test scores, known as MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program), obtained by Project Baltimore, revealed that 23 schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools, had not one student that could do math at grade level. Calverton school (https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school...) A Calverton educator, who reached out to Fox45, claims to have received that text. “[It instructed me to] go into my grade book, make sure no students are failing, and essentially change the grade if they are failing so they will pass with a 60 percent,” said the teacher, whose identity we are concealing upon request.
“I was frustrated as a teacher. We’re public servants. And when we see things like grade changing, that’s self-serving. That’s not helping the kids.”
After watching Fox45’s recent investigations into allegations of grade changing at Calverton, the City Schools employee contacted Project Baltimore to say a couple things. First, according to the teacher, grade changing at Calverton is “very common.”
Second, the educator told Fox45, changing grades is the easiest and fastest way to pass more students, which makes the school and its administrators look better. But, it does a huge disservice to not just the kids, but our entire community.
“Teaching a whole generation of kids that they don’t have to be accountable for their actions, or that hard work isn’t valued or valuable when they are in school, is so discouraging and damaging.”
Adding insult to injury, the same teacher said that he even passed kids who had been on his roster all year but didn’t bother to show up for a single day of class.But this teacher says grade changing at Calverton goes much further than just taking a failing grade and making it a 60. Some students who pass, according to this educator, don’t even have grades because they’ve never showed up to class. “There were students on my roster all year that I had never met, had never seen. On paper they passed my class and passed onto the next year.”
“I love my job and I love my students,” concluded the teacher. “I want to see the students at Calverton and other schools across the city, get a fresh start. And it’s going to be hard because the students are used to this now. But the students deserve better and our city deserve better.”
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Only 9% testing proficient is horrifying, and every teacher and administrator involved should be replaced. It's hard to compare teaching to a corporation, but whenever you have a metric that you only hit 9% on, you wouldn't wouldn't last long.