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Student performance held back by poverty and violence | READER COMMENTARY

For The Baltimore Sun
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Derwin Hannah walks past vacant, boarded row homes toward a makeshift memorial built with weathered stuffed animals on Furrow Street in Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge community which had the most homicides in 2022. File. (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun)

Derwin Hannah walks past vacant, boarded row homes toward a makeshift memorial built with weathered stuffed animals on Furrow Street in Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge community which had the most homicides in 2022. File. (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun) (Karl Merton Ferron/The Baltimore Sun)

A recent editorial in The Baltimore Sun called for an investment in a quality education by the new governor, Wes Moore. On the following page, ironically, there was a commentary, “Blight is violent; why aren’t we prosecuting delinquent property owners in Baltimore?” (Jan. 24).

In years of debate about public education and after decades countless studies on the subject, it has been clear that poverty affects student performance and ability to learn more than any other factor. Nneka Nnamdi makes an excellent point about urban blight and violence in Baltimore — which we have been reading about for decades — and the owners of vacant houses.

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These issues do not stand in isolation. When will someone else connect the dots?

— Anne Groth, Tucson, Arizona

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