Four in ten Baltimore public high school students earned a 1.0 GPA during the past school year.
Fox Baltimore&#8217;s “<a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-41-of-high-school-students-earn-below-10-gpa">Project Baltimore</a>” — which “examines the unique challenges that confront the Baltimore area’s public school systems” — discovered that nearly half of students in City Schools earned grade point averages below a D.
The outlet reported:
<blockquote>Project Baltimore obtained a chart assembled by Baltimore City Schools. The chart shows the average GPA for every high school grade in the city — freshman through senior. In the first three quarters of this past school year, according to the chart, 41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a 1.0 grade point average. In other words, nearly half of the 20,500 public high school students in Baltimore earned less than a D average.
On the other end of the chart, 21 percent of city high school students earned a GPA of 3.0 or better; a B average. That’s about half as many who earned below a D. We can also see the district lost 706 high school students during the first three quarters of the year.</blockquote>
“It&#8217;s heartbreaking,” former Baltimore City Council President candidate Jovani Patterson told Fox. “If almost half of our kids are failing, what options do they have after high school? This is really disheartening. It&#8217;s sad to see this.”
COVID-19 and government lockdown policies have presented significant challenges to the United States — and particularly to students affected by school shutdowns.
For instance, a group of economists from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/covid-school-closures-will-hurt-us-economy-for-decades-economists-project">forecasted</a> that American economic productivity will be reduced by 3.6% over the next three decades as a result of school closures. Since labor productivity is “an integral component of the production of goods, services, and wealth in an economy,” students affected by “reduced education and lower productivity” will be a “drag on the future GDP of the United States for decades in the future.”
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/as-many-schools-remain-closed-suicide-related-er-visits-rise-by-51-among-teenage-girls">revealed</a> that the number of emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts rose by 51% among teenage girls during 2020. Although the number of incidents dipped between spring 2019 and spring 2020, the rates began to drastically rise at the onset of COVID-19 and lockdowns. 
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-times-teachers-unions-moved-the-goalposts-on-returning-to-in-person-instruction">The Daily Wire</a> has reported, teachers unions are working to delay school reopenings. Emails between the American Federation of Teachers, the CDC, and the Biden administration indicated that the union <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-nations-second-largest-teachers-union-influenced-cdc-on-school-reopening-guidelines-delayed-return-to-classrooms">lobbied</a> to keep learning virtual. 
The <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/teachers-union-collaborated-with-cdc-on-school-reopening-emails/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&amp;utm_medium=site%20buttons&amp;utm_campaign=site%20buttons">New York Post</a> detailed:
<blockquote>The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, her top advisors and union officials — with Biden brass being looped in at the White House — in the days before the highly-anticipated Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening guidelines.
Emails show a call between Walensky and Weingarten — the former boss of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers — was arranged for Feb 7.</blockquote>
An October <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-data-from-200000-students-across-47-states-reveals-shockingly-low-covid-case-rate">study</a> involving more than 200,000 K-12 students found that COVID-19 transmission rate on campuses was negligible, with a transmission rate between students of 0.13%. The figure climbed to 0.24% for school staff.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

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Following COVID, 4 In 10 Baltimore Public High School Students Earned Below A 1.0 GPA

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This week, the Baltimore City Public Schools, attempting to avoid holding students back who have poor grades, announced a new grading policy that would enable students who failed one class to still proceed to the next grade.
The school district said it was taking the new approach because of effects caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Chief Academic Officer Joan Dabrowski said the new approach is meant to &#8220;avoid the punitive approach of failing students,&#8221; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/27/us/baltimore-schools-failing-grades/index.html?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=2021-05-27T23%3A46%3A03&amp;utm_source=twCNN&amp;utm_term=link">according to CNN</a>.
&#8220;This is not about a failure, but it is about unfinished learning and giving multiple opportunities, multiple onramps for young people to complete that &#8230; learning,&#8221; Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises added.
A high school student who normally would receive an “F” for a course will now receive a &#8220;No Credit” designation. For students in second through eighth grades, &#8220;Unsatisfactory&#8221; or &#8220;Fail&#8221; will now be marked &#8220;Not Completed.&#8221;
Dabrowski explained, &#8220;In all of these instances, we want to emphasize the word &#8216;yet.&#8217; Not completed yet, no credit yet.&#8221;
“Sixty-three percent of middle and high school students are failing at least one class according to Baltimore City Public Schools — that&#8217;s nearly 25,000 students out of the nearly 40,000 sixth through twelfth graders in the district. Even more worrying, 51% of students in grades 2-5 and 37% of Kindergarten and first-graders failed at least one course during this school year,” CNN noted.
The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/more-than-1000-baltimore-school-officials-make-100000-a-year-as-students-continue-to-fail">reported in March</a>:
<blockquote>School officials in Baltimore are making more than $100,000 a year even though they’re failing students in the district. The Washington Examiner <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/baltimore-school-officials-making-100k-failing-test-scores">reported</a> that 1,307 school employees are paid more than $100,000 a year, with the highest-paid teacher earning $156,601. Of the more than one thousand officials earning six-figures, 316 are teachers. This is double the number of teachers making more than $100,000 in 2018. The median teacher salary in Baltimore last year was $73,592, while the average income in the city was just $29,843.
The Examiner noted that Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises was the district’s highest-paid employee, making $339,000 a year, $22,000 more than she was making just three years ago.
The news comes after Project Baltimore <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/city-student-passes-3-classes-in-four-years-ranks-near-top-half-of-class-with-013-gpa">reported</a> earlier this month that a high school student managed to rank near the top half of his class despite failing all but three classes over four years and obtaining a 0.13 grade point average. The unnamed student is Tiffany France’s son, whom she thought was going to receive his diploma this year. She learned just this year, however, that he would not graduate.
“He&#8217;s stressed and I am too. I told him I&#8217;m probably going to start crying. I don&#8217;t know what to do for him,” France told the outlet. “Why would he do three more years in school? He didn&#8217;t fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that&#8217;s the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn&#8217;t deserve that.”
 …France’s son was not the only student at the school who kept moving up despite failing. Project Baltimore reported that hundreds of students were promoted while failing most of their classes and skipping school.</blockquote>
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Following COVID, 4 In 10 Baltimore Public High School Students Earned Below A 1.0 GPA

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