School officials in Baltimore City and County say the new school ranking data proves their strategies are working.
But the data also calls for continued focus on chronic absenteeism, language proficiency for non-English-speakers, and social studies support.
Both districts are celebrating signs of progress from this year’s data, leaders said. Baltimore City improved at a higher rate than the statewide average, especially among its lowest-rated schools, The Baltimore Banner reported.
And three Baltimore County high schools ranked among the top four schools statewide.
County Superintendent Myriam Rogers said she is “confident that our system is moving in the right direction.”
“The Maryland report card data provides an important snapshot of our system,” she said in a press conference Tuesday. “We know that there is much more work to be done to ensure that every school in our system is meeting the needs of all of our students.”
Joan Dabrowski, Baltimore City’s chief academic officer, said addressing chronic absenteeism – which refers to students who miss 10% or more school days in a year – will improve overall scores.
“There has been some real huddling around the issue, because we know it is the most important thing that we have to do,” Dabrowski said in an interview with WYPR. “We have to get our students to school so that they can be involved in all this great work that we're doing.”
Three out of four city schools earned the lowest score on chronic absenteeism measures – meaning 40% or more of their students are chronically absent. The same is true for nearly one-third of Baltimore County schools.
The state education department returned to pre-pandemic measures of chronic absenteeism this year, after adjusting in the 2021-2022 school year.
“Very few schools were able to actually earn extra points, because we did improve, but they raised the bar on what it meant to get all the points in that particular area,” Dabrowski said.
Both districts have honed in on chronic absenteeism this year. Baltimore County will fully launch an attendance campaign next year. Dabrowski said every city school has an attendance team to follow-up with chronically absent students.
The city district is also focusing more on social studies curriculum after earning low points in this year’s new rating category, Dabrowski said.
“Sometimes it takes becoming a testing subject to get the importance that it rightly deserves,” she said. “As all districts are experiencing, making sure that we have high quality instructional materials and curriculum for our social studies teachers has got to become a priority for us.”
Only four total city and county middle schools had more than half of its students score as proficient on the state social studies test.
Dabrowski said increasing academic support for non-English-speaking students is also a priority. More than 60% of city schools had less than half of their English-learning students on track for proficiency, according to state report card data.
“We know that in city schools, our multilingual learning population is rapidly growing. They're the fastest growing population in our system,” Dabrowski said.
Dabrowski said Baltimore City has invested heavily in tutoring and summer learning programs in the past year. But Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds are expiring.
“We know that with ESSER dollars going away, we're going to have to be very strategic about what we can continue to fund,” she said. “Those are things that we're now seeing play out and bear out in the data.”
