Maryland Sets a Vision for Action

Abstract

IN JANUARY, Quality Counts 2002, published by Education Week, declared that Maryland's program of goals and assessments is the nation's best. The report gave Maryland a numerical grade of 98 and a letter grade of A. Just two other systems received A's: New York (97) and Kentucky (94). Last year, Nancy Grasmick, Maryland's state superintendent, charged the Visionary Panel for Better Schools with reviewing the record of Maryland's public schools over the last decade and generating a set of creative ideas to accelerate progress over the coming decade. Seven task groups deliberated on educational issues and developed a set of recommendations. The panel's report -- Achievement Matters Most -- notes that all the recommendations can essentially be boiled down to just one: state and local school systems must align every aspect of education -- educators' preparation and professional development, policy making, testing, curriculum, leaders, and funding -- to support the classroom teacher and student. The details presented below are derived from the task groups' rationales, recommendations, and strategies. Accountability task group. Each school and district should be classified on the basis of both performance and progress, and such designations should be reported publicly. Targets for performance progress for each school and school district (with one- to three-year time spans) should be set, and no school should be considered to be making satisfactory progress if particular subgroups of students are not doing so. Similarly, even if overall achievement is high, no school or district should receive a designation as a high-achieving school or district if there are significant achievement gaps. If any school fails to make progress over a three-year period, progressively more intensive interventions should be provided. Achievement task group. As part of family and community outreach efforts, districts and schools must develop and implement a comprehensive parent and family involvement program and annually evaluate the program's performance with regard to its effect on eliminating achievement gaps. The state board of education should establish an independent oversight body to advise the board and report annually on the progress of schools, districts, and the state in their efforts to eliminate gaps in achievement and resources and the extent to which the annual achievement and resource goals have been met. The state accountability system should be designed to include performance standards for schools that measure the increased access and genuine involvement of historically underrepresented students in high- end programs (e.g., Advanced Placement courses, International Baccalaureate, programs for the gifted and talented, and honors programs). When districts deploy effective, seasoned teachers from schools with low-minority or low-poverty enrollments to schools with high-poverty and high-minority enrollments, these seasoned teachers will need to be aware that the techniques that work well with nonminority students may not be as successful with minority students. Thus district training and ongoing support must be provided for these teachers. Assessment task group. All elements of the state assessment program, including content standards, should be aligned with the high school assessment program. Data from the assessment system should be relevant and timely; disaggregated; supportive of the establishment of the different performance levels, so students can demonstrate high performance as well as acceptable performance; communicated in a user friendly and easy-to-understand manner; and informative, i.e., supportive of the continuous improvement of performance. Leadership task group. Current responsibilities that are noninstructional in nature should be eliminated from the job requirements of principals, and state certification programs and requirements should be revised to reflect directly the responsibilities of the principal's role as instructional leader. …