From [HERE] Baltimore City Public Schools reached a settlement over claims the system violated provisions of law, regulations and policy regarding student promotion, attendance, enrollment and grading.

After extensive discovery and a series of court orders limiting the evidence that plaintiff Jovani Patterson could introduce at trial and denying the school system’s motion for a summary judgment, the parties entered into the settlement.

Under the settlement, which doesn’t involve a financial payment, the school system agreed to publish more detailed data than the law requires on promotion and absence rates, including the number of students who move up a grade level or graduate after missing 30, 60 or 120 or more days of school. City Schools also agreed to audit grade changes in three randomly selected schools each year.More than 4,600 elementary and middle school students who missed 60 days of school or more during the 2021-2022 school year were promoted to the next grade level — nearly 9% of promoted students — according to court data obtained by FOX45 News and The Baltimore Sun. During the 2022-’23 school year, more than 3,200 such students were promoted, representing 6% of the promoted population. [MORE]

At the high school level, 1,890 students who missed 60 days or more of school were promoted to the next level in the 2023-’23 school year — 12% of high school students passed — the data show. The year before, 1,851 high school students who fit that category were passed (also 12% of the total passed).

These numbers are “alarming,” said Hedy Chang, the Executive Director of Attendance Works, a national non-profit  devoted to understanding how school attendance affects student learning. “Attendance is crucial to a child’s social well-being, health and academic achievement.”

The attendance data was generated from a lawsuit filed by Baltimore resident Jovani Patterson against the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners. In the lawsuit — which is financially supported by David Smith, co-owner of The Sun and executive chairman of Sinclair, Inc., the parent company of Fox45 News — Patterson alleges that Baltimore City Schools has failed to properly educate generations of students.

A motion to intervene in that lawsuit was filed last month on behalf of Fox45 News and The Sun, seeking to unseal school attendance records and other documents submitted as “confidential.” The attendance records have now been unsealed.

The data show that during the 2021-’22 school year, out of 54,906 elementary and middle school students, 4,828 of them missed 60 school days or more. Yet nearly 97% (4,671) of those chronically absent students were promoted to the next grade. The following school year (2022-’23), a similar story: Of 54,204 elementary and middle school students, 3,308 missed 60 school days or more, and 98% (3,256) of them were promoted.

In Maryland, schools are required by law to have 180 instructional days in a school year. If a student misses 10% of the school year, which in most cases is 18 days, that student is considered chronically absent. Chang says missing this amount of class time puts students “at risk” of falling behind, not being able to catch up, and dropping out. [MORE]