The State of Education in the City

Dr. Marion Orr’s lecture, entitled The State of Education in the City, centered around the terribly low socioeconomic status of Baltimore City. He explained how the change in the demographics of the city, starting in the 1950s, actually ended up changing the whole economic status of the city. He mainly centered on how this poverty line happened in the first place, but he also talked about why nothing is being done to change it.

Dr. Orr explained that beginning in the 1950s, all the whites in Baltimore City began to leave. This mass exodus was mainly caused by taxes, schools, and neighborhood conditions which were becoming more and more of a problem each year. This lasted until about the 1980s, when there were barely any whites left in Baltimore. With this sort of evacuation of Baltimore came an influx of African-Americans. However, Baltimore was also restructuring itself in other ways. As the number of corporate jobs in the city increased, the number of manufacturing jobs began to decline. This hurt the newcomers, because most of them were poorly educated, and needed these opportunities. Thus the Baltimore City as we know it came into being.

With high poverty, comes low student performance. All these new people were too much for the school systems to handle. Most of the White teachers that remained began to leave. There were many more black students than there were white, and the school systems had to accommodate them all. Baltimore’s drop out rate rapidly increased. Because of the loss of so many teachers, the schools were forced to hire unqualified replacements. So not only are they having difficulty because of their socioeconomic status, but they are also not being taught by qualified teachers. It is not surprising that they have the highest dropout rate in Maryland. Poverty itself adversely affects student performance, and about 30 percent of all the students in Baltimore City Schools live below the poverty line.

Dr. Orr began to talk about reasons why this is such a sticky situation. The schools don’t have the amount of resources they need to teach better. They are also receiving a very low tax base, and a higher number of students in special education classes, which takes even more tax money away from them. Also, people are reluctant to help out in these areas because they are frightened of what Baltimore has become. More and more schools are shutting down because of money problems and bad management. This causes a real crisis, because there are not enough schools to accommodate the huge amounts of children in Baltimore to begin with.

I think what Loyola does in its Year of the City program could really potentially benefit the city. It is almost like charity, but it benefits us as well as them. For example, our teaching Field Experiences put us right in the city. We get to teach at Title I schools, and work one-on-one with the students that are part of Dr. Orr’s statistics. We could potentially make a difference in the lives of some of these children living in such poverty. Hopefully, we can reduce the dropout rate, and hopefully keep these kids in school long enough that they will be able to support themselves afterward. I know that this is very optimistic, but at some of my placements I can actually see this happening.

Another thing Year of the City does is reduces the racial barrier. We get to interact with people of other races, mainly African-American, and they get to show us the good in Baltimore city that Dr. Orr was talking about. Work with the assets. Together, we could start the restructuring that Baltimore needs. Not that I truly believe that a bunch of college students could change the entire city demographics, but there are differences that we can and do make every day with these kids.