The Schools Are Failing Black Children and the Teachers’ Unions Know It

In Baltimore, in 2023, twenty-three schools produced not a single student who tested proficient in mathematics. Not one child in any of those buildings could demonstrate basic grade-level math skills (Baltimore City Public Schools, 2023 Assessment Data).

Hold that sentence in your mind. Do not move past it. The enormity of what it describes tends to slide off the mind like water off stone. The people who run these schools are counting on exactly that reaction.

Twenty-three schools.

Zero percent proficiency. These are not schools in any real sense. They are buildings where children sit for seven hours a day in the presence of adults who, through union contracts, earn salaries, benefits, and pensions that many of those children’s parents will never match. The adults get paid. The children learn nothing.

This is not just Baltimore. It is Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Gary, Newark, and dozens of other American cities. In each of them, the school system has become a machine that swallows resources and produces failure with an efficiency that would be impressive if it were not catastrophic.

The Numbers That Should End Careers

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (the NAEP, known as the Nation’s Report Card) is the only nationally representative, ongoing assessment of American students. It has measured what children know and can do since 1969. The 2022 results reveal a crisis in Black educational achievement that, by any honest standard, is a humanitarian emergency inside the world’s wealthiest nation (NCES, NAEP Report Card, U.S. Department of Education, 2022).

Nationally, only 15% of Black eighth graders scored proficient or above in reading. Only 11% scored proficient in math. These are not cherry-picked numbers from a strange year. They have been roughly stable, with small shifts, for two decades.

In some urban districts, the numbers are even worse.

• Detroit — 4% of eighth graders proficient in math
• Cleveland — 5% proficient
• Milwaukee — 7% proficient

To be clear about what “not proficient” means. It does not mean the student earned a B instead of an A. It means the student cannot show competency at the basic level expected for their grade.

• An eighth grader who is not proficient in reading cannot reliably understand a newspaper article
• An eighth grader who is not proficient in math cannot perform operations that are prerequisites for any form of higher education or skilled work
• These children are being moved through a system that is handing out diplomas that certify nothing, closing off their futures before they reach adulthood

The adults responsible for this — the administrators, the school boards, the union officials, the politicians who fund the system and receive its political contributions — will retire with full pensions.

The Proof That It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

If this failure were an unavoidable result of poverty or racism, we could declare the problem unsolvable. It is not. We know it is not because schools operating in the same neighborhoods, serving the same children, drawing from the same zip codes, are producing world-class results. These schools are the most damning evidence against the traditional system. They wipe out every excuse.

Success Academy, the charter school network founded by Eva Moskowitz in New York City, runs 47 schools serving about 20,000 students. The vast majority are Black and Latino. The vast majority qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In 2023, 85% of Success Academy students passed the state math exam, compared to 38% statewide. In English Language Arts, 68% were proficient, compared to 47% statewide (Success Academy Charter Schools & New York State Education Department, 2023 Assessment Data).

These schools do not merely close the achievement gap. They obliterate it. Success Academy students in Harlem outperform students in Scarsdale, one of the wealthiest districts in New York State.

Same children. Same zip codes. Same demographic profile that produces single-digit proficiency in the traditional public schools across the street. The variable that changed is the institution — the curriculum, the expectations, the school culture, the accountability of the teachers, and the willingness to remove adults who cannot perform.

KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program) runs 280 schools serving over 100,000 students nationally. Most are Black and Latino. A long-term study of KIPP alumni found that 45% earned a four-year college degree. The national average is 34%, and for low-income students, it is roughly 11% (KIPP Foundation, Long-Term Outcomes Report, 2023).

KIPP is not producing miracles. It is producing competence, consistently, at scale, in the exact communities where the traditional system produces failure.

Top 5 Solutions That Are Already Working

1. KIPP Public Charter Schools (21 states and D.C.). KIPP runs 270-plus tuition-free public charter schools that serve mostly low-income Black and Latino students. The model emphasizes extended school days, rigorous academics, and college preparation. An independent study by Mathematica found KIPP students gained the equivalent of 90% of an extra year in math and two-thirds of a year in reading, and 48% of KIPP NYC alumni graduated college compared to 11% of low-income peers nationally. (Mathematica Policy Research, 2013; Mathematica, KIPP College Completion Report, 2019)

2. Harlem Children’s Zone (Central Harlem, NYC). This cradle-to-career pipeline covers more than 100 blocks in Harlem and includes Baby College parenting workshops, Promise Academy charter schools, health programs, and a College Success Office. Nearly 100% of Promise Academy seniors were accepted to college, over 1,800 scholars graduated college, and researchers found the program closed the Black-white math achievement gap entirely. President Obama modeled a $210 million federal grant on the Harlem Children’s Zone approach. (Dobbie & Fryer, American Economic Journal, 2011; HCZ Annual Reports)

3. Mississippi Literacy Reform (Statewide, Mississippi). Mississippi overhauled reading instruction across the state by adopting science-of-reading methods, placing literacy coaches in every school, adding a third-grade reading gate, and strengthening teacher licensing standards. The result was one of the most dramatic turnarounds in American education — Mississippi rose from 49th in NAEP reading to 21st by 2022 and to 9th by 2024, a gain equal to roughly one full year of learning. The entire reform costs about $15 million per year, or $32 per student. (NAEP, 2022–2024; The Conversation, 2024)

4. Sobral/Ceará Literacy Reform (Sobral, Brazil). In one of Brazil’s poorest regions, the city of Sobral rebuilt its schools around structured literacy, frequent testing, merit-based principal selection, and performance bonuses. In 2000, 48% of local children could not read. By 2003, more than 91% could. Sobral rose to the number-one spot on Brazil’s national education quality index by 2017, and its public schools now outperform private schools in São Paulo — all on below-median per-pupil spending. (World Bank, 2020; RISE Programme, Harvard Kennedy School)

5. Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (Nationwide, India). Pratham groups children by what they actually know rather than by age, then runs targeted 30-to-50-day learning camps focused on basic literacy and numeracy. Among 346,000 children in camps, reading ability jumped from 19% to 79%. Six randomized controlled trials confirmed the results, and Pratham has reached 76 million students through government partnerships. J-PAL ranked TaRL among the most cost-effective of 27 education interventions worldwide. (Banerjee et al., J-PAL; Brookings Institution, 2016; World Bank, 2021)

The Bottom Line

The numbers tell a story that no union press release can override.

• 0% — Math proficiency in 23 Baltimore schools (Baltimore City Schools, 2023)
• 4% — Black eighth-grade math proficiency in Detroit (NAEP, 2022)
• 85% — Math proficiency at Success Academy, same zip codes as the failing schools (NY State Ed Dept, 2023)
• 45% — KIPP alumni college graduation rate vs. 11% for low-income peers nationally (KIPP Foundation, 2023)
• $400M+ — Union political contributions since 2004, 94% to the party that blocks school choice (OpenSecrets.org)
• 50,000+ — Students on charter school waiting lists in New York City alone (NYC DOE)

The question is not whether Black children can learn. Dunbar answered that a century ago. Success Academy answers it every year. KIPP answers it across 280 schools in communities where the traditional system produces illiteracy.

The question is why we tolerate a system that fails — not sometimes or partly, but completely and continuously — to educate Black children. And why the political coalition that claims to fight for Black advancement is the same coalition that protects the institutions most responsible for Black educational failure.

This is not conservatism. This is not progressivism. This is arithmetic. Every year spent defending the system is another year of children who cannot read — warehoused, processed, credentialed, and released into an economy that has no use for an adult who was failed by every adult who was supposed to teach them.

The unions have made that failure permanent. Permanence is profitable. The children are the cost.