After Four Years, Hogan’s (Short)Change Maryland Plan Goes Nowhere
Hogan’s education privatization agenda fails to gain traction
On Monday night, as the clock struck midnight, the Maryland General Assembly celebrated Sine Die on their fourth and final session of the 2015–2018 term. Gov. Hogan — having yet again testified or negotiated on zero bills in the 90-day session — did his best to spin the session as productive and bipartisan due to his leadership.
And for the most part, he fooled the press. The Baltimore Sun wrote an editorial titled, “Larry Hogan: Closet Democrat?”
They then declared Gov. Hogan a winner, writing, “Gov. Larry Hogan avoided damaging fights with the legislature and can credibly claim a record of accomplishment this year on health care, economic development, gun control and more as he heads into his re-election bid.” Maryland Matters wrote something similar.
While Hogan may take credit for not stopping the work of Democratic leadership in the General Assembly, little of his own agenda passed, especially on the most important issue for 2018 voters: education.
SB301, Hogan’s bill to increase the emphasis on standardized testing in school ratings, and reduce the focus on attendance rates, school safety and climate, and access to a well-rounded curriculum, was voted down 7–4 in the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee.
HB355, Hogan’s legislation to create an “investigator general” to publicly shame public schools — and answer directly to the governor’s political appointees while doing it — never got a vote in either House or Senate committees.
And faced with pressure about his A- NRA rating in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, Gov. Hogan made a desperate pitch to support the pro-public education Fix the Fund Act, but with $125 million going to metal detectors, bullet-proof doors and windows, and armed school resource officers — measures that do more to make schools feel like prisons than actually make them safer.
But his proposal disappeared as quickly as it came, with the legislature passing its own bipartisan school safety bill after working through the tough details that lawmaking requires — something Hogan has never made time for.
“His school measures do nothing practical to allay fears; they stoke them. They exploit the horror we feel each time a child is murdered in this way — the what ifs we run through — so he can appear the hero willing to take action. But if he really wants to save Maryland’s children and ensure their future, he needs to focus on funding their educations first.” — Tricia Bishop, Baltimore Sun editor
Hogan also proposed cutting $17.7 million from schools in his Budget Financing and Reconciliation Act, which if adopted would have resulted in $88.9 million in cuts over five years. The programs he wanted to cut?
- After-school and summer programs in districts with a majority of students coming from low-income backgrounds;
- College-readiness scholarships for low-income public school students;
- The Teacher Induction, Retention, and Advancement Pilot Program, aimed at retaining excellent teachers in the state; and
- Stipends to help cover the cost for teachers to receive National Board Certification.
Hogan’s cuts didn’t stick. The legislature fully restored funding for the after-school and summer programs and the National Board Certification stipends. They also added back $4.7 million of the $5 million cut from college-readiness scholarships. And the teacher retention program got back $3 million of the $5 million taken away in Hogan’s budget.
But Hogan didn’t just try to cut funding for programs; he also tried to reduce money to rebuild Maryland’s crumbling and overcrowded public school buildings. When the legislature passed a bill raising the floor for annual school construction funding from $250 million to $400 million, Hogan vetoed the bill because it took away his ability to politicize the funding allocation process. Fortunately, the legislature quickly overrode the governor’s self-serving veto, making small but important progress in eliminating its $4 billion backlog of school facilities projects.
Hogan’s Education Legacy: Legislative Failure
Gov. Hogan, at this point, is used to having his education privatization agenda stopped in its tracks. This session was nothing new. Here’s a rundown of how his education privatization agenda got stalled in his first three years:
2015
Funding Cuts: Hogan proposed $144 million in cuts to Maryland public schools in his first budget, including $64 million by freezing and capping the inflation factor in Maryland’s funding formula which ensures that schools get more funding as the cost of providing education goes up. If his formula changes had been approved by the legislature, hundreds of millions of funding would have been cut throughout Hogan’s years as governor. But the legislature restored the $64 million for FY2016 and prevented those cuts from carrying over into future years.
Charter Schools: His bill to water down quality and accountability standards for charter schools — including allowing non-certified teachers to work in charter schools — was gutted and amended to make Maryland’s strongest charter school law in the nation even stronger.
Tax Credit Vouchers: Hogan also proposed a typical Republican education proposal to give wealthy individuals and corporations tax credits for making contributions to organizations that in turn grant vouchers to private schools. The $15 million neo-voucher scheme didn’t fool anyone and failed to gain approval in the House and Senate.
2016
Funding Cuts: In total, $132 million of Hogan’s 2015 education cuts were reversed in a bipartisan budget. But later that summer, the governor withheld $68 million and lied about it going to educator pensions (it didn’t).
That funding is called the Geographic Cost of Education Index, designed to ensure that school districts in higher cost-of-living areas get more funding so they can, you know, afford larger expenses. So the legislature decided in 2015 to mandate that the governor fully fund GCEI in all budgets moving forward, and he was forced to include that funding in his 2016 budget and each budget since — which amounted to $418 million over three years.
Tax Credit Vouchers: Hogan once again proposed legislation to create a tax credit voucher program for private schools, but it failed to move through the General Assembly.
2017
School Accountability: When Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, it tasked each state with crafting its own school accountability system — rating school success on a series of indicators and then creating a process to improve low-performing schools. Gov. Hogan asked his appointed State Board to consider rating schools on an A-F scale, base those scores almost entirely on test scores, and then take over failing schools and hand them over to private operators (private schools, charter schools, and private management companies).
So the legislature intervened. The General Assembly worked with educators, parents, and civil rights groups to craft the Protect Our Schools Act, legislation that ensured test scores were accompanied by other important metrics — like attendance rates, stakeholder surveys, and access to well-rounded courses and curriculum — in determining school success. It also ensured that parents and educators in their communities had the power to turn around struggling schools instead of having them handed over to the state, and prohibited the privatization of school operations.
After the legislation received bipartisan support in the House Ways and Means Committee, Gov. Hogan called a press conference and declared his opposition to the bill. Here was a perfect chance for Hogan to work with Democrats on a plan to improve school performance, but he turned it into political theatre.
The General Assembly went on to pass the legislation with Democratic votes. Gov. Hogan then vetoed the bill at a very low-performing charter school in Baltimore City, but the legislature overrode the action before the session ended and it became law. The State Board of Education went on to submit an ESSA implementation plan to the U.S. Department of Education within the requirements of the new state law, and despite Hogan declining to sign that plan, the federal government approved it anyway.
Charter Schools: After failing to advance his efforts to lower standards for charter schools in 2015, Gov. Hogan introduced new legislation in 2017 to create an “independent” authorizing board to sidestep the local board of education process for approving new schools. The House Ways and Means Committee, knowing that such a system has led to waste and fraud of taxpayer dollars in other states, voted it down 15–8.
Hogan‘s Three Legislative “Wins” on Education
While the governor’s Shortchange Maryland education agenda has mostly stalled, he does have three “wins” that have slowed academic progress for public school students:
- Of his $206 million of proposed education cuts, Gov. Hogan has successfully prevented $98 million from going to public schools during his time as governor. Though, if his initial $64 million cut to the Thornton Funding Formula had been approved by the legislature, it would have cost our schools hundreds of millions of additional dollars throughout his four year term.
- Gov. Hogan has one accomplishment that Betsy DeVos supports: starting the state’s private school voucher program, known now as BOOST. The governor won $5 million for the program during negotiations with the legislature in his second budget, $5.5 million in his third, and now $7 million in his fourth budget. That means, of the $98 million taken from public schools by Gov. Hogan’s budget cuts, almost one-fifth of it has gone to private schools.
- After campaigning to end budget gimmicks and the raiding of special reserve funds, Gov. Hogan continued the practice of using Education Trust Fund dollars — much of the revenue Maryland raises from casino gaming — to direct general funds away from public schools. In fact, the governor used $1.4 billion dollars in the Education Trust Fund to free up general funds for non-education purposes in his four budget proposals. That’s a large reason why Maryland public schools are underfunded by $2.9 billion every year.
Gov. Hogan might not be seen as extreme in today’s Republican Party. But if he had gotten his way as governor for the last four years — and if not for leaders in the General Assembly — our schools would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions would have been sent to private schools, “failing schools” would have been taken over by the state and handed over to private management companies, standardized testing would have been emphasized even more than it is today, and charter schools would have their own authorizing boards and would be able to employ uncertified teachers. That’s his real record — not an exaggerated advertisement.
As it is, he still blocked almost $100 million for public schools and sent a good chunk to subsidize expensive private schools. Under Hogan’s watch, Maryland’s national ranking has dropped 16 spots for 8th grade reading achievement and 11 spots for 8th grade math.
The bottom line is: If Maryland is going to return to the top of education rankings, and more importantly, offer an equal opportunity at success for all students — no matter their neighborhood, race, or family wealth — we need a governor with a vision for how to improve our public schools and the political will to fully fund a plan to get it done.
We can no longer afford to play defense against an anti-public education governor when the average school is annually underfunded by $2 million. We need a champion.
