The Accountability and Implementation Board, shown in a May 2023 photo, is responsible for seeing the Blueprint for Maryland's Future to reality. File photo by William J. Ford.
The Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board has done a remarkably praiseworthy job of fulfilling its mandate to hold state and local educators accountable for carrying out the sweeping demands of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. Do you know who the AIB is not holding accountable? The governor and General Assembly, although it has the power and duty to do so.
Annapolis is ignoring growing evidence that the Blueprint is in deep trouble as a result of inadequate funding. It’s not the only implementation problem but it is the one that most endangers the long-run success of the Blueprint.
Funding shortfalls have been obvious for at least three years . They include a lack of funding for classroom essentials, interventions for struggling learners, career and technology education, and special populations, and a crushing burden on local governments. When local education agencies were asked their greatest challenges in implementing the Blueprint, funding was high on their lists.
Yet, the governor and legislators have not confronted the scope and magnitude of the dangers ahead.
Is there anything the AIB can do to prod action (even though its members are appointed by the governor)? The answer is yes. The AIB has a lever to force Annapolis to pay attention — if it has the political courage to use it.
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Under the Blueprint, the AIB is charged not just with planning for implementation and exercising oversight. Little-known but crystal-clear provisions in the Blueprint require it to recommend “legislative changes, including any changes necessary to ensure that the implementations have adequate resources.” A further section requires it to determine whether “funds provided by the state and local governments are consistent with the Board’s estimate of what is necessary to fully implement” the Blueprint.
To track compliance with these (and other) provisions, the AIB must file reports by Nov. 1 each year. Its 2022 and 2023 reports are silent on whether Blueprint funding is adequate. The AIB says it’s laying the groundwork to do so: It has established benchmarks to measure progress and will use this data over the next few years to assess funding sufficiency.
But that’s too late. The evidence of inadequacy is plain and painful to see.
The denial of reality was displayed at a recent joint meeting of the AIB and the state board of education. They were wrestling with setting targets for Blueprint progress, like the numbers of students achieving proficiency in reading and math. The targets were “aggressive” and “ambitious,” all agreed.
But questions about whether there were enough resources for the targets to be met were brushed aside without specific answers.
It was evident in two recent meetings of the state board. In one , it was reviewing Blueprint provisions calling for students to meet high career and college standards by the end of the 10th grade. The discussion focused on interventions in the 11th and 12th grades for students who don’t meet the standards. Fortunately, state superintendent Carey Wright interjected that “a pre-K to 12 strategy is required … we can’t wait until high school.“ In fact, the Blueprint compels intensive interventions in all grades.
At the most recent meeting , the superintendent’s proposal to retain third graders who don’t achieve grade level in reading – a feature of her remarkable success as state superintendent in Mississippi – ran into trouble. Several board members and local educators argued that there was too little funding for interventions in grades K-3 to avoid retention for large numbers of students.
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They’re right. The Blueprint only includes a small amount of money for interventions, mainly for struggling readers, in grades K-3, and that expires in fiscal 2026-2027. And there is no funding at all for interventions for students below grade level in grades 4-12.
Why this disconnect between the Blueprint’s ambitions and the resources to enable it to succeed?
Of course, the big political reason is the unwillingness in Annapolis to face up to the need to raise taxes to pay for adequacy. This applies even to paying for the current (inadequate) price tag, which rises to $4 billion annually in 2033.
No doubt, raising revenue is harder these days given the state’s projected budget deficits in the years ahead. Still, there’s no alternative if the state is to fulfill its constitutional mandate to provide an adequate education for all our schoolchildren.
And despite Annapolis’s reluctance, Maryland has the wealth to raise a lot more revenues if it has the political will.
The steep political climb must begin by telling the truth about the lack of resources. State and local educators shy away from truth-telling because they fear incurring the displeasure of the governor and General Assembly. So it’s up to AIB to do its statutory duty. It must, without delay, at least sound the alarm over the most obvious and critical fiscal hole in the Blueprint: timely interventions for struggling learners.
At the same time, educators must convince Annapolis and the public that Blueprint money will be well spent. Better management is as important to the Blueprint’s success as more money. Still, mistrust can be overcome if state and local educators show that current funding is being spent efficiently.
On that score, MSDE is demonstrating a promising new capacity to ensure effective implementation. The AIB, to its great credit, has fully enabled and supported MSDE’s renaissance. But now it’s fiscal crunch time, the ball is in the AIB’s court, and it must talk the Blueprint truth to Annapolis power.
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