State Education in the City

On Tuesday, March 13th, I attended Dr. Marion Orr’s talk titled State Education in the City as a part of The Year of the City’s “Baltimore’s Big Three” lectures. The purpose of Orr’s talk was to discuss the devastating low socioeconomic status that cripples Baltimore today: how it occurred and why it persists.

To better understand the city, Orr articulated to his audience that Baltimore is this region’s “Poor House,” and can especially be viewed in such a way due to Baltimore’s school systems. To sum up the school’s conditions, Orr revealed that Baltimore has the highest school drop out rate of the surrounding districts, has received at least five different superintendents in the passed decade and lacks a substantial amount of state funding and resources; just to name a few. “So how did we get here?” asked Orr.

Around the 1950’s Baltimore experienced a dramatic change in demographics, a “racial makeover” as Orr had said, which in turn triggered an economic restructuring of the city. Between 1950 and 1980 Baltimore experienced a 70% decrease of whites from the demographic makeup. Within the 70’s alone, 135,000 whites left Baltimore due to the unsatisfactory taxes, schools and neighborhood conditions. This decrease resulted in the transformation of school districts especially an age structure change and faculty change. White school aged children dropped from 140,000 to 41,000 children, while the number of black faculty members increased to make up 94% of the total faculty. By the 1990’s an economic restructuring was visible when a replacement of “ blue collar” jobs, such as working with manufacturing companies, was replaced by “white collar” jobs. This greatly affected the poorly educated, who just so happened to be the majority of Baltimore’s population because only about 9% of black people received a college education. Poverty then concentrated the city’s core.

The reality of Baltimore’s economic makeup is that 30% of families live in poverty while some schools consist of 100% of its students living in poverty, which unfortunately greatly affects Baltimore’s inner city schools. Socioeconomic status continues to challenge the city, especially when resources are scarce, teacher salaries are low (causing school systems to hire unqualified replacements), there are inadequate supplies of textbooks and technology and so on. It is sad to say that $170,000 is spent per student in Baltimore City, where as $491,000 is utilized per student in surrounding counties such as Montgomery County.

I believe that Loyola College, through its Jesuit education, does a wonderful job of presenting awareness to the individual about his or her surroundings. The Year of the City is just one major way that faculty, staff and students are provided the opportunity to take part in such lectures like Orr’s, which truly exposes the truth about the city we live in. I find it interesting that I can say to someone “Yeah go to Loyola College…I live in Baltimore City” yet don’t really live like the majority. For once I am the minority, living in huge apartment dorms, worrying about where I am going to live next year on campus, while many people surrounding me on the streets are worrying about where they are going to sleep for the night. After attending such a lecture like Orr’s or any of the other “Big Three” lectures, I have realized how much I take for granted, like attending such a prestigious Jesuit- education college, yet at the same time I am very proud to be a part of a community that is so in-tuned to providing awareness and help to others.