“23 Baltimore Schools Have Zero Students Proficient in Math”

"Another 20 Baltimore City Schools had just one or two students test proficient in math."

After another State of the Union address which promised more education spending, behold what you get for a $1.6 billion budget with $21,000 in per student spending.

Do the math.

The Maryland State Department of Education recently released the 2022 state test results known as MCAP, Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Baltimore City’s math scores were the lowest in the state. Just 7% of third through eighth graders tested proficient in math, which means 93% could not do math at grade level.

But that’s not all. WBFF combed through the scores at all 150 City Schools where the state math test was given. In 23 Baltimore City schools, there were zero students who tested proficient in math.

Among the list of 23 schools, there are 10 high schools, eight elementary schools, three middle/high schools and two elementary/middle schools.

Exactly 2,000 students, in total, took the state math test at these schools. Not one could do math at grade level.

It’s also important to note that another 20 Baltimore City Schools had just one or two students test proficient in math.

I blame systemic racism.

Governor Wes Moore is black, Mayor Brandon Scott is black, as are 10 out of 14 city council members, as is “Dr.” Sonja Santelises who heads the school system, but if the black Memphis cops can be evidence of systemic racism, why not?

The answer is always to spend more money. Here’s what Baltimore is spending.

Baltimore City Schools will be spending about $21,000 per student this year, thanks to a massive education funding increase. Maryland lawmakers passed the bill, known as Kirwan, two years ago. Now that funding is kicking in, the question is whether more taxpayer money will result in better student outcomes.

For this coming school year, City Schools’ budget has ballooned to $1,620,788,542. That’s nearly $230 million more than the previous year’s budget of $1,393,777,695. It amounts to about a 16 percent increase. Enrollment in City Schools is going down and has been for years. So, that’s a lot more money for fewer students.

And worse results, but maybe if we spend $1.6 billion per student, he’ll finally be able to get a...

Visage à trois #771

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #954

 

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #952

Report: James O’Keefe on the Verge of Being Ousted From Project Veritas as Board Attempts ‘Hostile Takeover’

James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, was put on paid leave from his non-profit journalism enterprise on Wednesday amid what some are calling an attempted “hostile takeover” being executed by certain board members.

The Project Veritas Board of Directors will reportedly decide whether to remove him from his leadership position in a meeting scheduled for Friday.

Project Veritas put out a statement in response to this news Wednesday evening, saying that the board is conducting an “internal evaluation to assure our long term success.”

“Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and Management are constantly evaluating what the best path forward is for the organization,” the statement read. “There are 65+ employees at Project Veritas dedicated to continuing the mission to expose corruption, dishonesty, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions,” the statement read. “To our supporters: We hear you, we care about you, and we will never give up.”

Project Veritas’ Official Response to Today’s News Reports

Despite what the Corporate Media tries to portray about our organization, know this: We have never been more motivated and dedicated to our mission than now. pic.twitter.com/sB7Cz97b5M

— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) February 9, 2023

Earlier Wednesday, according to New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, Veritas’ executive director, Daniel Strack sent an internal message to Project Veritas employees saying that O’Keefe would be taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO.”

In the message, Strack reportedly referred to what he called “a distracting time” at the organization and said that a board meeting had been held to discuss “the health of the organization.” Strack added that while “we have not come up with final solutions yet we have made a few immediate decisions.”

Strack was formerly the managing director (MD) at Goldman Sachs, but was ousted after less than three years. He reportedly joined Goldman in 2001, made MD in 2013 and left the company in September of 2016.

According to reports, O’Keefe recently fired two top Project Veritas executives—Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Barry Hinckley and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Tom O’Hara—due to their alleged insubordination. O’Hara, according to his Project Veritas bio, has over 25 years of experience in business, accounting, financial and reporting operations. He joined the organization in October of 2018.

Hinckley, who has pronouns in his LinkedIn bio, became CSO at Project Veritas in November of 2022.

According to the Intelligencer, the board of directors then voted to rehire the executives, and put O’Keefe on paid leave.

Reportedly, Project Veritas is divided between “a group of employees who are perceived to be loyal to O’Keefe, including his communications adviser, R.C. Maxwell, and the board, which has been dissatisfied with what it perceives as O’Keefe’s mismanagement.”

A letter dated February 6 was circulated at Veritas featuring eleven pages of testimonies from anonymous employees criticizing O’Keefe, with one staffer allegedly calling him a “power-drunk tyrant.”

Hinckley, according to the Intelligencer, later wrote a message to the staff saying he had “stood up to a bully” and had lost his job as a result.

An anonymous source from the pro-O’Keefe camp, shared his version of events with a Veritas insider. The source alleged that Matt Tyrmand, a member of the board, O’Hara, and Hinckley led “a six-and-a-half hour struggle session versus James where they subjected him to...

Morning Mistress

The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1293

Before You Click On The "Read More" Link, 

Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.

If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.  

Please Leave Silently Into The Night......

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1993

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 

from the beautiful to the repugnant, 

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 

you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 

You have been warned.

Hot Pick Of The Late Night

 

Girls With Guns

Visage à trois #770

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #953

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #952

Smeared By MSNBC For Refusing To Teach Kids To Hate Each Other, Colorado School District Hits Back

After being targeted by a dishonest corporate media smear campaign on behalf of left-wing teachers unions, Colorado’s conservative Woodland Park School Board and parents are fighting back and correcting the record.

Home to Merit Academy, the school chartered by parents for education in valor and responsibility, the Woodland Park School District earned the ire of the propaganda press after it decided against using Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book “Between the World and Me” in its teaching. The book, district leaders said, violated state and local social study standards, which aim to teach kids “so they may become worthy of their ancestors by becoming full members of the American republic … self-reliant citizens who respect the dignity and the rights of their fellow Americans, who love their country, and who cherish our liberties and our laws.”



These standards, of course, cut against left-wing narratives, so MSNBC’s Chris Hayes aimed his fire at the conservative district last week. “Even in states that aren’t laying down edicts about teaching about race, local school boards are pursuing that agenda,” Hayes said, “like in Woodland Park, Colorado, where a school board member grilled a high school teacher about one of the texts taught in a history elective.”

Hayes was referring to a board meeting on Jan. 25 during which the school district’s Vice President Dave Illingworth interviewed an applicant for an empty board position, quoting from Coates’ book and asking the interviewee if he agreed:


In his 2015 book ‘Between the World and Me,’ Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, among other things, ‘The power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, white people would cease to exist.’ My question to you: Do you agree with this teaching? Would it be appropriate or even lawful to teach a child to view a person as inherently bad or dangerous simply because of the color of their skin?

“I wasn’t grilling a teacher,” Illingworth told The Federalist. “I was talking to somebody who had applied to serve on the Board of Education.”

But that was just the beginning of the media’s lies.

More concerned with furthering left-wing narratives than getting the facts right, Hayes invited Coates to defend his book unopposed on live television. Illingworth, of course, wasn’t invited — but he and other Woodland Park parents and leaders aren’t letting the smears slide.

Lie #1: Woodland Park Wants to Indoctrinate Kids

While the MSNBC host claimed that removing Coates’ book from Woodland Park curriculum was meant to suppress black history, Illingworth rejects that assertion.

“It wasn’t that the book was removed from classrooms or removed from the library or any sort of order went out … to discourage people from reading or anything like that,” Illingworth said. “It just wasn’t a good fit for the standards that were adopted.”

In accordance with the aforementioned American Birthright Social Studies (ABSS) standards — which Woodland Park adopted in addition to state requirements and which require social studies to cultivate love, not hate, for their country, and respect for their fellow Americans, not disdain for them based on the color of their skin — WPSD Superintendent Ken Witt deemed Coates’ book noncompliant.


“It is incumbent on educators to use thoughtful review in selecting curriculum materials, and on the district in approving them,” Witt said. “This informs our civics curriculum choices.”

“My main criteria on those standards is: Is it going to allow us to improve the way that we teach history, civics, social studies, to our kids, the complete truth, warts and all?” Illingworth said. “I believe, and it’s the belief of many others who have looked at these standards, that yes, it will allow us to do that.”

Lie #2: Coates’ Book Doesn’t Teach Hate

During his MSNBC interview with Hayes, Coates argued that his condemnation is not against white people but against “white” as a category. But whether Coates condemns “white people” or “whiteness,” the effect is the same, and Illingworth says Coates used “a friendly forum with Chris Hayes” to “strawman” the values of Woodland Park, which has committed to teaching history as it is: a web of complex issues that...