The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is a “remarkably bold” education reform plan, but it is in danger of falling short of it ambitious and laudable goals, Kalman Hettleman writes. File photo by Danielle E. Gaines.
To put it bluntly, it’s now or never for the governor and General Assembly to save the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. Otherwise, the Blueprint is doomed and so are future generations of our schoolchildren.
If I sound alarmist, I mean to. Still, this is extremely painful to write. The Blueprint is remarkably bold. Hard-working educators across the state have put their hearts and souls into its implementation. Those who crafted the Blueprint – among them the Kirwan Commission and General Assembly – deserve great credit. And some progress in some areas has happened.
Still, the unvarnished truth must be told: The Blueprint, as things now stand, will not come close to achieving its lofty ambitions.
The evidence is irrefutable. Cracks are showing in each Blueprint pillar as a result of unrealistic goals, insufficient management capacity and inadequate funding.
For example: In their 2024 implementation plans, local school systems generally view the Blueprint as unrealistic and unfunded. The Maryland Association of Counties pleads for the Blueprint to be “aligned with current implementation realities.” The Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland (a prominent voice for local school districts) has detailed many serious challenges.
Problem areas keep emerging, including prekindergarten expansion, career and technology education, and, most important, funding to carry out the state’s high-visibility literacy plan.
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Money woes get the most attention, as Gov. Wes Moore (D) and legislators, in the face of the state’s projected fiscal shortfalls, threaten funding cuts. Moore has already proposed delaying the Blueprint initiative that provides teachers with more time for planning and tutoring.
But equally problematic is the management overload on state and local educators. The scope of the Blueprint is probably more sprawling and complex than any state school reform plan in our nation’s history. Too many tasks to be done, too quickly — far beyond the capacity of even energized bureaucracies.
In the process, numerous progress milestones are being moved back. Especially revealing is the bill passed in the last General Assembly session to delay independent evaluation of Blueprint progress from Oct. 1, 2024 to Jan. 15, 2027.
I foresaw this crisis in a 2020 paper, “The Ideal and the Real: How the Blueprint for Maryland Fails to Provide Adequate and Equitable Funding for Poor, Black and Brown Children,” detailing management and funding concerns that have come to pass.
Now, a chorus of similar criticism is heard from educators and advocates across the state. As one educator told me, the Blueprint founders seemed out of touch with the everyday work of teaching, especially core instruction in reading and math.
The mantra of the Blueprint’s defenders is “Give it more time.” But, believe it or it not, the Blueprint has been around for about five years, including the Kirwan Commission and the first legislation in 2019. There has been plenty of time for implementation to be much farther along than it is. And the more the delay, the more danger of turnover in education leadership and shifting political winds in Annapolis that could do even more damage to the Blueprint as a whole.
In the meantime, the governor and General Assembly have done very little to confront the challenges. While proclaiming steadfast loyalty to the Blueprint, they have shown no stomach for the difficult task of reviewing the big picture and considering revisions.
I am mindful of the formidable budget problems ahead. Nonetheless, leaders in Annapolis have so far not considered revenues, with the exception of the commendable House support last session for additional revenue.
Where do we go from here? As earlier noted, some headway is in process, including teacher salaries, expansion of prekindergarten, college and career readiness standards, literacy plans and community schools. Still, overall implementation so far reveals that the Blueprint will not come close to living up to its original promise to enable all schoolchildren to meet high academic standards.
What leadership will it take to recognize and repair the Blueprint’s fraying pillars?
Leadership must come first and foremost from the governor and legislative leaders. They must acknowledge the truth and mount the bully pulpit to gather public support for the tough political decisions ahead. They must ensure adequate funding; insist on an immediate hard-nosed evaluation of progress and lack of progress; strengthen the Maryland State Department of Education’s authority; and, most of all, fill in the big holes in the Blueprint, most particularly to focus attention on classroom instruction.
Second is the role of the Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board. It’s statutorily mandated to annually recommend “legislative changes, including changes to ensure that the implementations have adequate resources.” For all its accomplishments, it has fallen down on this responsibility. The AIB must pull back from its overload of operational tasks and make evaluation the center of its duties.
Last but not least, state and local educators must build trust and assure Annapolis and the general public that they are making the best of difficult circumstances – working tirelessly (as they are) and efficiently.
There’s little in this column that I haven’t written before, more or less. But as the years have gone by, the evidence of grave danger to the Blueprint has accumulated. Time is running out. Alarms must be sounded, and the inconvenient truth about the dangers must be told. The future of the Blueprint, and with it the fate of our schoolchildren, urgently cries out for review and revision.