Baltimore City Schools: 41% Of High School Students Earn Below 1.0 Gpa

Baltimore City Schools has reached an alarming low in student performance. Project Baltimore has learned, during the first three quarters of this year, nearly half of high school students in City Schools earned a grade point average below a D.

When Jovani Patterson ran for Baltimore City Council President last year, he ran on a platform that included accountability in education.

“They take. They take. They take. Yet, despite the amount of money they get. We don’t see much change. Our schools outspend 97% of other major school districts,” Patterson said during a 2020 campaign ad.

When Project Baltimore showed Patterson how Baltimore City students have been doing this year, here is how he reacted.

“This is terrible,” Patterson told Project Baltimore. {snip}

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. {snip}

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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.

In January, City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises first sounded the alarm, announcing the course failure rate for students nearly doubled during the Covid shutdown. A few months later, in May, North Avenue announced students would not be held back for failing classes. {snip}

During the second quarter of the 2019/2020 school year, just before COVID hit, 24% of high school students had a GPA below 1.0. Now, it’s 41 percent.

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