Maryland Keeps Spending More on Education. Parents Have Every Right to Ask Where the Results Are.

The Blueprint promised better schools and stronger academic outcomes. Maryland families should not have to settle for lowered targets, missed goals, and another appeal for patience.

Maryland parents are not asking our public schools to perform miracles.

They are asking schools to do the job we have always expected them to do: teach children to read, write, understand mathematics, analyze critically and leave school prepared for whatever lies ahead.

That is why the latest academic results deserve more attention than they are getting.

In 2024, Maryland education officials established goals for the 2025-26 school year. Project Baltimore reported that the first target was 62 percent proficiency in English Language Arts for grades three through eight and 46 percent in mathematics.

Then the targets were lowered.

English dropped to 57 percent. Math fell to 37 percent.

Maryland still missed them.

The results cited by Project Baltimore showed ELA proficiency at 50.2 percent and mathematics at just 27.1 percent.

Think about that math number for a moment.

Roughly three out of four students tested were not proficient.

There is some encouraging news. Maryland’s scores are improving. The Maryland State Department of Education announced in July that MCAP performance had reached five-year highs in English and mathematics.

We should be happy about improvement. Teachers and students deserve credit when scores improve.

But improvement alone cannot become an excuse for ignoring how far Maryland remains from where it said students should be.

That matters even more because Maryland taxpayers are spending enormous amounts of money on the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

The Blueprint was sold as transformational education reform, not a modest adjustment to the existing system. MSDE says the plan will eventually increase annual education funding by about $3.8 billion.

That’s real money coming from real families.

So parents have every right to ask a very simple question: What are we getting for it?

When Project Baltimore questioned State Superintendent Carey Wright regarding the missed goals, she emphasized that the targets were aspirational and that Maryland should focus on the rising trajectory.

I understand that argument.

What I don’t understand is why taxpayers shouldn’t expect the state to take its own goals seriously.

If the government announces a goal, lowers it, and then misses the lowered goal, asking what went wrong isn’t an attack on teachers or public education.

It’s called accountability.

And accountability was supposed to be a central part of the Blueprint.

Maryland created an Accountability and Implementation Board. It established Expert Review Teams. The Blueprint itself contains mechanisms designed to determine whether policies are actually producing better results.

Then let’s use them.

Maryland Republicans should insist on a serious, transparent review of Blueprint spending and student achievement. Not another commission that produces a report nobody reads. Not another round of bureaucratic explanations.

Follow the money.

How much additional Blueprint funding is reaching classrooms?

Which reading and math programs are producing measurable improvements?

Which programs aren’t?

How much is being consumed by administration?

And if Maryland spends millions on a program that repeatedly fails to improve student achievement, why should taxpayers keep funding it?

Those shouldn’t even be Republican questions or Democratic questions.

They should be parent questions.

We also need to rediscover something education policy sometimes makes unnecessarily complicated: the basics matter.

Reading matters. Writing matters. Math matters.

Classroom discipline matters because even the best teacher cannot teach effectively in a room where disruption is tolerated.

Parents have a right to transparency about curriculum, school performance and spending. They should know whether their child is actually reading and doing mathematics at grade level, not simply whether that child is moving to the next grade.

And families need meaningful options when a school simply isn’t working for their child.

Supporting accountability does not mean opposing public schools.

Maryland has excellent teachers, strong schools and talented students. Those teachers deserve rooms where they can teach, and those pupils deserve a system with high expectations.

What Maryland cannot afford is a culture where spending itself becomes evidence of success.

Politicians love announcing investments. There are ribbon cuttings, press conferences and impressive numbers followed by the word “billion.”

Parents measure education differently.

Can my child read?

Can she write?

Does he understand fractions?

Will they graduate prepared for college, a trade, military service or a career?

Those are the measurements that matter around a kitchen table.

The Blueprint promised Maryland families transformational results. Taxpayers have certainly provided transformational amounts of money.

Now the results have to follow.

Stop lowering expectations when students fall short. Stop treating dollars spent as the scoreboard.

Set serious standards. Publish understandable results. Find what works and expand it. Find what doesn’t and have the courage to stop funding it.

Maryland’s children deserve that kind of accountability.

So do the people paying the bills.

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Endnotes

1. Maryland State Department of Education, “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.”
Official overview of Maryland’s Blueprint education reforms, including its goals, implementation structure and major policy components.
https://blueprint.marylandpublicschools.org/

2. Maryland State Department of Education, “Blueprint Funding.”
Official information regarding Blueprint funding formulas, implementation and financial accountability.
https://blueprint.marylandpublicschools.org/funding-2/

3. Maryland State Department of Education, “Governance + Accountability.”
Explains the Blueprint’s Accountability and Implementation Board, Expert Review Teams and mechanisms intended to evaluate implementation and student progress.
https://blueprint.marylandpublicschools.org/governance-accountability/

4. Maryland State Department of Education, “Maryland State Aid to Local School Systems.”
Official MSDE information regarding state education aid, funding calculations and programs supporting Maryland’s local school systems.
https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Pages/OFPOS/StateAid/index.aspx

5. Maryland State Department of Education, “Maryland State Department of Education.”
MSDE’s official website and source for statewide education announcements, including information concerning 2026 MCAP performance.
https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/Pages/default.aspx

Carol Hughes writes on education, government accountability, and state policy for Direct Line News.

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