Attendance At Baltimore City Schools Crashes To 13 Year Low Just As Juvenile Crime Spikes

Project Baltimore, an investigative reporting series conducted by a local Fox affiliate in Baltimore City, has sifted through over a decade of high school records and discovered that attendance at city high schools in 2017 suddenly dropped to a 13-year low of just 76%.  Just to state the obvious, the average high school in Maryland has around 1,200 students so that means that, on an average day, nearly 300 of them don"t bother to show up.

Adding insult to injury, Baltimore City Police Spokesman T.J. Smith told Fox 45 that it"s no coincidence that violent crime is spiking in the city just as more and more teenagers are opting to skip class.

From violent attacks on Halloween night, to a terrifying carjacking and a man pushed into the Inner Harbor. Baltimore City is under siege by criminals that, police say, are teenagers.

 

“Every single one of them involve juveniles, who are all walking the streets today because they are probably not in school, where they belong.”

Meanwhile, Project Baltimore found that 39% of Baltimore City high school students were technically considered "chronically absent," a threshold that should result in fines or even jail time for parents...that is, if school administrators actually fulfilled their reporting requirements.

As we kept digging, we discovered this: In Baltimore City, 39 percent of high school students are considered chronically absent, or truant, by missing more than 20 days. That’s 8,400 teenagers who regularly are not going to school.

 

“Hearing that number, that’s a lot of young people who could have something to do during those hours that might be on the street doing something they shouldn’t be doing,” said Smith.

 

If a child between 5 and 18-years-old doesn’t go to school, state truancy laws hold parents accountable with up to $500 in fines or jail time.

Of course, as we noted previously, another Fox 45 investigation found that truant kids are being routinely passed through Baltimore City schools even if they don"t bother to show up for a single day of class during an entire school year (see: "It"s Very Common": Baltimore Teacher Admits To Passing Students That Never Showed For A Single Day Of Class)

But this teacher says grade changing at Calverton goes much further than just taking a failing grade and making it a 60. Some students who pass, according to this educator, don’t even have grades because they’ve never showed up to class.

 

“There were students on my roster all year that I had never met, had never seen. On paper they passed my class and passed onto the next year.”

 

“I love my job and I love my students,” concluded the teacher. “I want to see the students at Calverton and other schools across the city, get a fresh start. And it’s going to be hard because the students are used to this now. But the students deserve better and our city deserve better.”

And, lest you think a 76% attendance rate is "normal", surrounding counties were found to be over 90%.

Not surprisingly, when asked about the excessive absences, a local high school in Baltimore City responded with nothing more than a generic sentence, undoubtedly drafted by an expensive, taxpayer-funded attorney, regarding the importance of regular attendance.

With nearly 40 percent of all city high schoolers truant, Fox45 asked North Avenue if it’s enforcing state law by reporting parents to police. We didn’t get an answer. Instead, we got a statement:

 

“Strong attendance is essential for students’ success, and the district has a longstanding commitment to ensuring that barriers to attendance are removed.” – Baltimore City Public Schools

 

The statement lists steps the District has taken to get kids to school, which include fostering strong relationships, providing laundry services, on-site childcare and running a re-engagement center to recruit dropped outs.

Of course, despite their poor attendance records, we"re almost certain that Baltimore City students will have unlimited access to $1,000 of dollars worth of student loans to attend whatever institution of higher indoctrination their hearts desire upon graduation in just a few short years...

Why The Next Recession Will Morph Into A Decades Long Depressionary Event... Or Worse

Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

Economists spend inordinate time gauging the business cycle that they believe drives the US economy.  However, the real engine running in the background (and nearly entirely forgotten) is the population cycle.  The positive population cycle is such a long running macro trend thousands of years in the offing that it"s taken for granted.  It is wrongly assumed that upon every business cycle downturn, accommodative monetary and fiscal policies will ultimately spur greater demand and restart the business cycle once the excess capacity and inventories are drawn down.  However, I contend that the population cycle has been the primary factor in ending each recession...and this most macro of cycles is now rolling over.  Without this, America (nor the world) will truly emerge from the next recession...instead it will morph into an unending downward cycle of partial recoveries...contrary to all contemporary human experience.

The evidence for my contention begins with the 25-54yr/old US population, which peaked in December 2007 and remains below that peak ever since (this population is presently about 400k fewer than Dec of "07).  However, total US full time employment is now 3.6 million above the previous peak in 2007.  This 25-54 to FT employment relationship is now 1:1...just as it was in 1980 and 1970.

Annual change in 25-54yr/old US population vs. annual change in total full time US employees (below).  The macro population cycle provided millions of new adults (consumers) and their increased demand restarted the more frequent gyrations of the micro business cycles...until 2008 and again now in 2017.  Some may take note that the Federal Reserve cost of money (the Federal Funds Rate in blue) generally followed the population cycle, only making some deviations for the business cycle along the way.

But the change per 8 year periods of the 25-54yr/old population and total US full time employment turns out to be not so dissimilar.  In fact, it"s a pretty nice correlation.

And so, since population growth means so much...two differing views on where this population is headed.  In red, the Census and in black, an unbiased view of growth based on the child bearing population, birth rates, and current and future immigration trends.

Why would I feel such confidence in a lowered estimate of growth?  Check the "08 Census projection for the 0-24yr/old US population through 2050 (blue line, chart below) and the massive downgrade of growth by the 2014 projection update (red line).  And it is still far too optimistic and the upcoming projection update will only further downgrade upcoming population growth, based on the ongoing declining birth rates combined with huge declines in illegal immigration since "09.

But if we widen out to the 15-64yr/old population vs. US full time employees...the chart below details both sets.

Taking a look at the annual 15-64 population growth should be pretty telling.  2008 wasn"t a debt crisis...it was an end of an atypical period of abnormally high growth which so many had assumed was in fact "normal".

The chart below taking the 8 year changes in the wider 15-64yr/old US population vs. full time employment.

Charting the change in the core population of the US vs. full time employment.  During each downturn in full time employment, the growth in the core population continued and eventually pulled the business cycle to a fresh start.  However, as the population cycle slowed the downturns were deeper and recoveries slower due to minimal growth in demand from the population cycle.

Below, focusing from the turn of the century "til now, the downtrend of core population growth is very plain and the negative impact on the business cycle should also be easily understood.  The expected Federal Reserve response is of course interest rate cuts to incent record quantities of new debt...to maintain the unsustainable present.  The next economic downturn will see no buoying impact of the core population growth to exit the downturn.

Anyway, the chart above makes it plain that the population cycle of the broad core of the US (and in fact, that of the 0-64yr/old population) is now on the precipice of turning Japanese...also known as depopulating (see chart below).

The next business cycle recession will be unending and is very likely to run years into decades and perhaps a century or more.  A declining population already indebted with record debt and zero interest rates will consume less...meaning overcapacity and excess inventories will never be fully cleared before the next downturn...and on and on and on.

But the absence of a growing consumer base isn"t just a US issue...this is a global problem.  The annual growth of the 0-64yr/old population of the combined OECD nations (most the EU, US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, S. Korea, Australia / New Zealand) plus China, Brazil, and Russia show the growth that has driven nearly all economic growth has come to an end...and begins declining from here on.  And when importers are shrinking, exporters have no one to export to...and on and on and on.  A recent article helps to detail the depopulation we are now facing...not simply a demographic issue that so many believe, HERE.

The end of growth is the start of the SHTF scenario in which we now find ourselves.  While this situation offers short term nirvana to investors, the economic repercussions are ultimately disastrous.