Blueprint for Måaryland’s Future implementation guide. Screenshot.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: We need to stop worrying about saving the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. I offer this in rebuttal to Kalman Hettleman’s Dec. 16 commentary, “The inconvenient truth about the Blueprint.”
This is not a personal attack on Mr. Hettleman, a dedicated, longtime bureaucrat of the familiar Maryland variety that views ever-expanding government and ever-higher spending as the primary solutions to societal — and particularly educational — woes. (In December of 2023, he published a column titled, “We need more education bureaucrats. Seriously,” which tells you all you need to know about his inclination.) While I disagree with Mr. Hettleman’s preferred political solutions, I admire his dedication to advancing and communicating his principals.
My purpose here is to rebut the aforementioned Dec. 16 commentary, which both misprioritizes desired outcomes, offering few to no specific suggestions beyond higher spending, and advocates for a centralized-government-heavy political perspective and spending-heavy general approach to the pursuit of educational excellence.
His commentary seems to take the odd position that the “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future” is itself some sort of iconic monument worth saving at any cost, irrespective of any specific goals it purports to advance, despite his own admission of the Blueprint’s “unrealistic goals,” “sprawling and complex” scope, and “out of touch” nature.
Perhaps the article simply intends that “the Blueprint” be understood as a stand-in for “the goals the Blueprint seeks to advance,” but there is actually precious little evidence of that in his piece. The only specific goal put forth (repeatedly) is “more funding.” But to what end? The article doesn’t really say. The goal is simply, as stated in the opening line, to “save the Blueprint.”
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The commentary repeatedly emphasizes the point that the Blueprint per se, and not educational excellence, is the thing, with such lines as “it’s now or never … to save the Blueprint … Otherwise, the Blueprint is doomed,” “the more the delay, the more danger of … more damage to the Blueprint,” and “Those who crafted the Blueprint – among them the Kirwan Commission and General Assembly – deserve great credit.” Perhaps here is the point to interject that Mr. Hettleman himself served on the Kirwan Commission, perhaps explaining his misplaced devotion to preserving the Blueprint at all costs.
The article lambastes the delegates to the General Assembly for failing to make the changes necessary to, you guessed it: save the Blueprint. It grouses that, “While proclaiming steadfast loyalty to the Blueprint, they have shown no stomach for the difficult task of reviewing the big picture and considering revisions,” yet suggests no specific changes beyond more funding and a few vague recommendations to “acknowledge the truth,” “mount the bully pulpit,” and “fill in the big holes” in the Blueprint, whatever those may be.
Those vague recommendations are found within the piece’s equally vague prescription summary late in the piece, which I think can be accurately if somewhat cynically summarized and paraphrased as “The Blueprint is admittedly unrealistic, but let’s nevertheless elevate its priority above all other things, raise taxes however high is necessary to maximize funding for every imaginable wish-list program, and bully and scare the public and local jurisdictions into swallowing it whole (‘Alarms must be sounded,’ the piece insists) so that we can all hail the Blueprint as a success.”
I offer a differing perspective. I believe the key is not to try to save the Blueprint as some sort of Holy Grail of idealistic bureaucratic planning, feted by education bureaucrats, donned as a merit badge by its creators, and ferociously defended in all its excesses by the teachers’ union. Rather, the goal should be to find and encourage flexible, feasible solutions that actually work to improve educational outcomes in Maryland’s various local jurisdictions.
It shouldn’t matter whether the necessary changes are made under the banner of the Blueprint, but the needed changes are clear: More local control, more budget and timeline flexibility for local jurisdictions, more tools and flexibility for teachers to make and enforce rules and mete out effective, nontrivial discipline when necessary, a stronger link between teacher performance and compensation, a retreat from extreme levels of “inclusion” (previously known as “mainstreaming”), more focus on student and teacher merit and less on DEI, and (I’m getting dreamy here) school choice. At the very least, take the obviously necessary steps of relaxing timelines and giving local jurisdictions more flexibility in implementation.
Education is important. But the Blueprint, which is essentially an education bureaucrat’s wish-list-turned-state-mandate, is not. Outcomes are important, but commissions and their iconic plans are not. Children are important, but bureaucrats’ egos and resume enhancements are not. So yes — let’s stop worrying about “saving the Blueprint,” and start focusing on educational strategies that work.