5 ms·
Navon Warren grew up in West Baltimore. He was three months old when his father was shot to death. Before his 18th birthday, he would lose two uncles an
by x0x0 9y ago
Navon Warren grew up in West Baltimore. He was three months old when his
father was shot to death. Before his 18th birthday, he would lose two uncles
and a classmate, all gunned down on the streets of Baltimore.
If Navon is in any way representative, I'm really not sure what they expect schools to do. The school only gets them for 35 hours a week, 8 months per year. Over half the school qualifies for free lunch, which I think is a standard poverty indicator (though crazily enough, half isn't high poverty! [1]). Not much of that sounds like a home life or environment conducive to learning. I'm guessing the school pays poorly too, combined with what sounds like pretty horrific circumstances for much of the student body, makes me guess they aren't getting the best teachers either...
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-lunch-a-proxy-for-poverty https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-lu...
- daveFNbuck 9y agoIf the kid with the skill, effort and determination to get 4th place in the junior Olympics is representative and they can't get a single one of them to pass a test, the school is failing these kids a lot worse than I thought.
- pmorici 9y agoBaltimore has hundreds of schools. Did that kid even go to one of these bad ones? It also has a hand full that are very good.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoIt would be incredibly bizarre and misleading to include an interview with a kid that didn't go to one of the failing schools the article is about. From the article: > Warren is set to graduate this year from Frederick Douglass High School A little later in the article Frederick Douglass High School is listed as one of the 6 failing schools.
- pmorici 9y agoAh, I'm getting my Baltimore stories confused I was thinking we were talking about the chess champion from Baltimore. The kid in this article is successful at sports not academics. Those tests aren't testing their athletic ability.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoHe is successful at sports to such a degree that his upbringing is clearly not a complete barrier to success. Yet none of the students at his high school are proficient in english or math. This indicates that it's probably not the students' fault.
- pmorici 9y agoI'm guessing if you went and talked with the parents and peers at those schools that they would place high value on athletics and low value on academics.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoThey could provide for counseling and therapy within the schools themselves. Currently, to receive mental health services, parents usually need to initiate these requests by navigating through a bureaucratic maze
- acjohnson55 9y agoThe schools do provide counseling and therapy. Just not nearly enough. If a child doesn't have a good advocate, they typically need to be completely debilitated by their emotional issues before getting help, since simply having horrifically traumatic life experiences is commonplace in schools like these. By that point, it's trying to put a band-aid on a deep wound. They need intensive intervention, but receive maybe an hour a week from a school psychologist who is probably handling a case load that would crush most people's souls.
- afarrell 9y agoAlso, given that most mental health services are available only 9-5, it is going to be prohibitively expensive for a parent to pick their kid up from school regularly to drive them cross-town. Maybe there is a bus they could use, but it would be much harder than going to a wing of the school. Or (speculating whildly on something more complex than I'm representing) maybe they could set up some sort of online videochat therapy so those kids who could afford a £35 android phone and wifi could access therapy from outside school?