Fact: Baltimore City spends $15,483 per student, and its unionized, bureaucratic schools fail. As Terence Jeffrey of CNS News quotes a lawyer for Freddie Gray’s family as saying, “The education system has failed them.” The lawyer is right. “These kids have had bad experiences in school,” he said.

Jeffrey outlines the absolute failure of the unionized bureaucratic Baltimore City school system: 84 percent of eighth graders score below grade level in reading. Eighty-seven percent scored below grade level in math.

For $15,000 a year, Baltimore City students could get much better educations at Catholic schools, private schools, or even with an organized home schooling program (eight students could pool $120,000 a year to hire a personal tutor, as was done when Thomas Jefferson was young).

As Archbishop of Baltimore William Lori points out, the Catholic schools cost $6,000 a year and have a 99 percent graduation rate. Yet Democrats are committed to locking poor children out of those schools if it takes a dime away from funds for failing, unionized public schools.