RIGHT SPEAK: Students at 40% of Baltimore high schools failed math proficiency exam: ‘Educational homicide’; Americans have poor math skills. It’s a threat to US standing in the global economy, employers say, and other C-Virus related stories

Students at 40% of Baltimore high schools failed math proficiency exam: ‘Educational homicide’:

Something doesn’t add up.

None of the students at 40% of Baltimore’s public high schools tested proficient on the state math exam given this past spring — with a staggering three-quarters earning the lowest possible score, an alarming report revealed this week.

At 13 of the school district’s 32 public high schools, 1,295 students of the 1,736 who took the exams scored a 1 out of 4, meaning they were nowhere close to proficiency, Fox 45 reported.

“This is educational homicide,” Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of the Baltimore-based nonprofit People Empowered by the Struggle, told the outlet.

The results were shockingly low even at the city’s top high schools, where just 92 students, or 11.4% of the 809 students who took the exam, tested proficient, the outlet later found.

“Parents, guardians, supporters, need to be outraged,” said Sheila Dixon, a Democratic Baltimore mayoral candidate.

“It’s sad and disheartening because, first of all, today, more than ever, the school system has the money and the resources.”

During the 2022-23 school year, the Baltimore City Public Schools had an annual budget of $1.6 billion, its largest ever, and also scored $799 million in federal COVID-19 grants. --->READ MORE HERE

AP Photo/Reba Saldanha

Americans have poor math skills. It’s a threat to US standing in the global economy, employers say:

Like a lot of high school students, Kevin Tran loves superheroes, though perhaps for different reasons than his classmates.

“They’re all insanely smart. In their regular jobs they’re engineers, they’re scientists,” said Tran, 17. “And you can’t do any of those things without math.”

Tran also loves math. This summer, he studied calculus five hours a day with other high schoolers in a program at Northeastern University.

But Tran and his friends are not the norm. Many Americans joke about how bad they are at math, and already abysmal scores on standardized math tests are falling even further.

The nation needs people who are good at math, employers say, in the same way motion picture mortals need superheroes. They say America’s poor math performance isn’t funny. It’s a threat to the nation’s global economic competitiveness and national security. --->READ MORE HERE