As school year begins, education reform plan faces a reckoning

Erin Doolittle walks around her prekindergarten classroom Aug. 19 at Hillcrest Elementary School in Frederick County. The first day of school there was Aug. 21. Photo by William J. Ford.

When Maryland public schools welcome nearly 890,000 students back to classes in the coming days, it will also be the beginning of year three of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s sweeping education reform plan.

But the plan’s future is suddenly up in the air, as state and local lawmakers are raising new concerns about its costs in a time of budget uncertainty.

That was highlighted last weekend, when Gov. Wes Moore (D) told a gathering of county leaders the plan may need to be refined due to pending fiscal challenges. Moore said he supports the goals of the Blueprint but the challenge now is “to address our fiscal challenges … and right now, everything is on the table.”

But Paul Lemle hopes the state stays the course.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in our students and our educators. So, it makes no sense that people would say it’s not a good thing, or blame it for some other problem,” said Lemle, a Howard County  high school social studies teacher who began a three-year term this month as president of the Maryland State Education Association.

“The bad part of it is when you hear local elected officials saying, ‘Our budgets are tighter. We can’t afford it.’ That’s wrong,” Lemle said Monday, while in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. “It’s a really short-sighted perspective because the Blueprint is doing exactly what it is intended to do – improve educator salaries, put more people into the profession, hire more of them.”

The Blueprint law passed in 2020, but was vetoed by then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R). The General Assembly overrode his veto in 2021, but implementation was pushed back a year because of COVID-19 school closures.

The education plan is based on five priorities, or pillars: hiring and retaining high-quality and diverse teachers, early childhood education , providing additional resources for students in need , preparing students for college and technical careers , and governance and accountability.

Some aspects of the Blueprint have already been implemented, such as an increase in prekindergarten enrollment and more high school students able to take local college courses for free, a plan known as dual enrollment.

But local school officials for months have outlined challenges in implementing the Blueprint, such as funding, diversifying teacher workforce and the need for more flexibility from the state to continue implementing the 10-year plan.

And county government leaders joined in last week at the Maryland Association of Counties conference, where high costs and inflexibility of the plan were mentioned frequently.

“Between state revenues, between fund balances getting lower, it’s going to be more and more cataclysmic without course corrections on the way,” Dorchester County Councilman Michael Detmer (R) said during a Saturday session. He said he is skeptical the Blueprint’s supporters will readily agree to changes.

A Thursday session on the Blueprint’s early childhood pillar – which includes a requirement that school districts provide a mixed-delivery system to serve students in both public schools and private child care centers – brought a plea for flexibility.

“No matter what the issue is, one size never fits all and pre-k is a great example of that,” said Del. Jefferson Ghrist (R-Upper Shore), who moderated the discussion. Ghrist voted against the Blueprint three years ago, but said he does support the early childhood part of the plan.

Better collaboration

Erin Doolittle, a prekindergarten teacher at Hillcrest Elementary in Frederick County, agrees that one size doesn’t fit all. But she said that she likes what she’s seen of the Blueprint so far.

Doolittle said the Blueprint has provided additional support for her school, where she’s entering her 21st year teaching, like the requirement to have a coordinator in schools designated as community schools. For her school, the coordinator organized a weekly afternoon gathering with families this summer at a local park, where children read books, practiced the alphabet and did other activities. Doolittle said parents could also receive information about transit services in the county.

Hillcrest serves as a community school that partners with local organizations to help teachers as well as parents and students’ families. Last school year, Doolittle said at least 75% of her 20 students spoke English as a second language at home.

As Doolittle prepared her classroom Monday for classes that began Wednesday, there were colorful phrases in English and Spanish posted around the room, such as “Nadie es como tú y ese es tu poder” – or “No one is like you and that is your power” in English.

“I think with the community schools coordinator, we’re being intentional about how we’re integrating the community and helping the community, rather than just kind of throwing things out there and hoping something helps,” she said. “We’ve always served as a community school, but the Blueprint has improved collaboration tremendously.”

In Doolittle’s room, she has several stations for reading, art and a carpet for morning meetings next to a full-size touchscreen board. Besides recognizing letters and numbers, social skills are a key component in prekindergarten, like learning to ask for help, being able to work with others and showing patience while waiting for a teacher to acknowledge them.

Since children are 3 and 4 years old, they take daily naps, or rest time, for about an hour. The goal is to get that down to about 40 minutes near the end of the school year, Doolittle said, so students’ bodies and minds are able to handle kindergarten.

“I think pre-k is kind of this very nebulous thing. What we’re doing is very, very different,” Doolittle said. “They’re singing and dancing and learning. There’s a lot going on, but it’s fun.”

Doolittle’s advice for state lawmakers and other officials to improve the Blueprint: “Just come and visit the classroom. See what’s going on. Then you’ll see how it really works.”

‘Still learning the Blueprint’

Unlike Doolittle, Michelle Early, calls herself “a career changer.” She worked in nonprofit management, retail management and for one year at a bank before settling on teaching. She is beginning her fourth year this week as a business teacher at Frederick County’s Walkersville High School.

“I’m still learning the Blueprint,” she said Tuesday in her classroom, where she was getting ready for the start of classes Wednesday.

But Early, who teaches students in grades nine through 12, said the Blueprint has given her students more opportunities for college and career readiness. For those who may not want to enroll in free community college courses, Early said the school offers field trips to visit local businesses. Students can also get certified in a particular industry and get a job prior or after high school graduation.

“I see the excitement level on those students faces,” Early said. “Some aren’t or don’t want to go to college, but having another option for them makes all the difference.”

One part of the law she appreciates is increasing teacher starting salaries to $60,000 by July 2026. Early said she’s fortunate to work down the street from her school, but knows of other teachers who work in the county and live in Washington County or even Pennsylvania, because they cannot afford to live in Frederick County.

“Our wages are not enough. We go beyond the 35-to-40-hour work week,” she said. “This is beneficial for educators.”

One aspect of the Blueprint she’s still trying to grasp encourages teachers to earn national board certification, which recognizes them as “accomplished,” or experts in a certain area.

Every school district in the state has at least one teacher with that designation. But the state Department of Education said in a teacher workforce report in May that slightly more than 1,200, or 74%, of Maryland teachers designated as National Board Certified were concentrated in Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

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The report notes more than 3,000 teachers during the previous school year of 2023-24 registered to receive “fee support” to pursue the certification. Once certified, teachers are eligible for a $10,000 raise, with an additional $7,000 for those who teach at an “identified low-performing school.”

Early thinks educators who pursue continuing education should be rewarded just the same as those who seek national board certification.

“As a teacher, I can see the importance of national board certification. Michelle, the person, I don’t see that a national board certification should be more important than someone who works at [earning] a doctorate,” she said. “Shouldn’t we as educators compensate that person in an equitable manner for having achieved that doctoral status, just as we are compensating someone who’s doing national board certification?”

Lemle, the teacher’s union president, said national board certification for a teacher improves the quality of instruction in the classroom by providing teachers with “incentives to stay in the classroom instead of … becoming administrators or leaving a classroom for other positions.”

“That’s why it’s money so well spent for our kids because we’re improving teacher quality and keeping them [teachers] in the classroom,” he said.