Baltimore school posts no proficient math scores for four years

Achievement Academy at Harbor City High School in Northeast Baltimore posted zero proficient math scores for four straight years, a record that raises hard questions about how a city alternative high school serving 228 students was allowed to keep missing the mark. Over that period, 134 students took the state math exam, and not one reached proficiency.

The school sits at 2201 Pinewood Avenue in Baltimore’s Community Learning Network 9 and serves grades 9 through 12 as an alternative placement high school in Baltimore City Public Schools. The district’s public directory lists Kristin Taylor as principal, and state and city school listings show 228 students enrolled at the school.

The math results are especially stark because the school’s public funding rose even as enrollment fell. The analysis found Achievement Academy received $20,014 per student in 2021, when enrollment was 372, and $42,618 per student in 2024, when enrollment had dropped to 202, more than doubling the per-student amount in three years. For families sending students to a school meant to help young people who struggle in traditional settings, that gap between resources and results goes straight to graduation readiness and the ability to move on to college or work.

Maryland’s report card system puts math achievement alongside graduation rate, English learner progress, postsecondary readiness and school quality measures such as chronic absenteeism, which makes a four-year run of zero math proficiency an accountability failure, not just a bad test result. The state’s report card framework is designed to show whether schools are building the skills students need after high school, and Achievement Academy’s numbers leave that question unanswered in the most basic subject.

Carl Stokes, the former Baltimore City Council member and charter school operator, said the school should be closed and argued that leadership was failing students. For a Northeast Baltimore neighborhood school with a published address, a named principal and substantial public funding, the central issue is no longer whether the math scores are alarming. It is what City Schools will do now to prevent another class of students from leaving without the proficiency they need.