Blueprint plan fostering dramatic changes
Teacher raises, science of reading are among reforms
Clarence Crawford, president of the Maryland State Board of Education, started Tuesday’s meeting with a declaration.
“Business as usual in Maryland public education is over,” he said. “It’s dead.”
The state is overhauling its public education system as part of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a 10-year reform plan with billions in funding. Public school leaders are contending with significant changes to teacher salaries, literacy instruction and academic standards while figuring out how to budget for those reforms.
Crawford acknowledged those “legitimate questions” but emphasized that holdouts need to get with the program.
“When you ask people to make major behavioral changes, it was also important to say that we’re going to support everyone in the process,” Crawford said in an interview. “But it’s also equally important to say that everybody who’s engaged must be all in and that there is not going to be any room for people coming along, saying, ‘Nope, I don’t agree. I don’t think we should do … this, that or the other.’ ”
The bumpiness was anticipated at this point in the Blueprint’s implementation, which was passed by the state legislature in 2021, Crawford said. The Maryland State Department of
Education can offer training and coaching, but ultimately teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards need to accept the changes.
Among the reforms are educators no longer using balanced literacy, a method of reading instruction in which students learn to read by recognizing whole words using context clues. Instead, public schools will use the science of reading, a research-based teaching approach that emphasizes phonics, or matching sounds to letters.
As part of the Blueprint, Maryland teachers are financially incentivized to become National Board-certified, a multiple-year process that nearly 2,000 teachers started last academic year, said Joe Doctor, chief operating officer at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Teachers who become board-certified can earn $10,000 more a year or a $17,000 raise if they also work at a low-performing school.
Maryland’s focus on the science of reading prompted the National Board to revise its materials and remove mention of balanced literacy instruction, Doctor said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Other major reforms include raising teacher salaries to a minimum starting salary of $60,000, providing free prekindergarten for students living in a certain poverty level, and setting new academic standards that students must meet by graduation.
County superintendents are facing tight budgets as federal funds tied to the coronavirus pandemic expire and the state provides a smaller percentage of Blueprint funds.
Superintendents in Cecil and Howard counties have proposed staff layoffs and cuts to public school programs. Cecil County Executive Danielle Hornberger has said she will provide only the legal minimum in school funding. Baltimore County is using zero-based budgeting, or evaluating every expense and justifying budget items that are chosen.
“I suspect that we’re going to probably evolve into more of a zero-based budget, a mission-based budget, where we’re looking at priorities, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work, and then from that drawing a baseline,” Crawford said at Tuesday’s meeting. He added that there’s a possibility for future adjustments to the Blueprint, but not without first trying to follow the original plan.
State board members were joined Tuesday by the seven-person Accountability and Implementation Board, a powerful oversight authority that’s an independent unit of government.
The two boards have some overlapping responsibilities and have struggled to work together in the past. That relationship has improved over the past year, Crawford said.
The boards’ leaders have shown a unified front this General Assembly session, testifying on education policy bills together. Although the boards’ leaders meet monthly, Tuesday was the second time the two full boards have met.
Rachel Hise, the executive director of the AIB, addressed confusion about the state’s new college and career readiness standard, which the state board approved last month.
There are two options for students to be considered ready for college or a career. One is having both an unweighted GPA of at least 3.0, plus either earning an A, B or C in Algebra 1 or scoring at least proficient in Algebra I on the MCAP. The second option is to score at least proficient in both Algebra I and English 10 on the MCAP.
The designation can’t be taken away once a student meets the standard, even if their GPA declines. Once met, students can take apprenticeship and other industry credentials, take community college cases and participate in advanced courses.
Students must meet the standard by the end of junior year and no later than graduation. But what happens to students who are not on track is still being resolved.
Students who fail a class usually retake it, Hise said, and get discouraged if they don’t have additional support to be successful the second time.
“I think we really need to be thinking about what are best practices around the interventions for students who aren’t yet college- and career-ready, again, with the goal of making sure that we get them to that point before the end of high school,” Hise said.