Maryland Now Leads the Fight to Protect Public Education from Betsy DeVos
And Gov. Hogan isn’t happy about it
Yesterday, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Protect Our Schools Act by veto-proof majorities in both the House (87–50) and Senate (32–15), overcoming misleading threats and false talking points from Gov. Hogan. The governor now has six days to sign it into law, allow it to become law without his signature, or veto it — and he has been quite clear that he will stand with Betsy DeVos and school privatization advocates and reject the bill. Amid surging grassroots support for the bill from Maryland educators, public education advocates are calling on legislators to override Gov. Hogan’s anti-public education veto.
The legislation prevents the Hogan administration from using a new federal school accountability law — the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)— to convert public schools into privately-operated and for-profit charter schools, issue private school vouchers with federal funding, create a privatized state-run school district, or hire for-profit management companies. ESSA requires states to set aside 7% of its federal Title I funds for improving low-performing schools, and this legislation ensures that none of that funding can be redirected to private and for-profit operators. Instead, it will now be invested in real evidence-based solutions — determined by educators, parents, and community leaders — to improve existing neighborhood public schools.
Invest and Improve: A Smarter Way to Hold Schools Accountable for Equity in Education
For the last fifteen years, schools have operated in a deeply counterproductive “test and punish” culture that has narrowed curriculum, stripped away instruction time, led to teacher shortages, and failed to close long-standing achievement gaps. Based on these failed results, Congress decided to get out of the way and give control over school accountability back to the states.
“We have an obligation to our children to try something new and change the status quo. It’s time to lead the nation in closing the opportunity gaps that lead to inequality in schools. The Protect Our Schools Act does exactly that.” — Gerald Stansbury, president of the Maryland State Conference NAACP
The Protect Our Schools Act makes Maryland a leader in the new “invest and improve” movement to hold schools accountable for narrowing inequities in opportunity as a way to close achievement gaps. To make room for multiple measures of student progress, the legislation limits testing-based measures of school success — like the PARCC test, HSAs, and other standardized tests — to 65% of the accountability system. The other 35% would be reserved for looking at whether all students have access to the same important opportunities to learn. This asks schools to direct time and resources to more than test administration and prep — instead, putting funding towards addressing the opportunity gaps that create the inequities in student outcomes.
“The Maryland proposal described in the Protect Our Schools Act allows for the consideration of both academic and opportunity indicators that are critical to any robust accountability system focused on student success and continuous school and district improvement.” — Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute
For example, the legislation makes school climate surveys — responses from students, parents, and educators on things like parental engagement, school safety, discipline policies, and support from administrators — indicators of school success. In addition to school climate, the Maryland State Department of Education and State Board of Education will get to decide on two additional “opportunity” measures of school quality, like class size and the percent of teachers with advanced certification, or the number of school counselors and access to career and technology education programs. The legislation also ensures that completion of a well-rounded curriculum — including the arts — is part of the equation.
“Testing alone cannot be the only tool to measure the success of a school, which is why it is essential the state must include other school quality and student success indicators. Significant research shows that this will provide a clearer picture of staff and student experiences in a school and which areas need improvement.” — Rick Tyler and Bebe Verdery, Co-Chairs of the Maryland Education Coalition
This new approach is backed by Maryland’s education stakeholder community, including: NAACP — Maryland State Conference, Maryland PTA, Parent Advocacy Consortium, CASA de Maryland, Disability Rights Maryland, Maryland State Education Association, ACLU of Maryland, Baltimore Teachers Union, Advocates for Children and Youth, School Social Workers in Maryland, League of Women Voters, Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance, Attendance Works, Maryland Coalition for Community Schools, and Maryland Out of School Time Network.
Now Hogan Is Lying About Loss of Federal Funding
Without any convincing arguments against the Protect Our Schools Act, Gov. Hogan is now attacking the bill by claiming it will jeopardize $250 million in federal Title I funding. Here’s his argument:
The Department of Legislative Services reviewed the original bill language that said testing-based and opportunity-based indicators should be weighed 51%–49% and thought the U.S. Department of Education might determine such a ratio does not meet ESSA’s standard that the test-based academic indicators be weighted “much more” in the aggregate than the other school quality indicators. If a state’s ESSA plan is rejected for non-compliance and the state refuses the subsequent opportunity to resubmit a new plan with necessary changes, federal law says the Secretary of Education may withhold Title I funding.
But there’s a huge problem with that claim. Nothing in the Protect Our Schools Act violates ESSA, especially now that the ratio of academic to school quality indicators is 65%–35%. The Maryland Attorney General’s office told legislators “nothing in House Bill 978 directly conflicts with federal law.” With no regulations in place — and language in ESSA that prohibits the Secretary of Education from rejecting a state plan unless it directly conflicts with federal law — there’s no way for Maryland’s plan to legitimately be rejected.
And this morning U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate education committee and Republican co-author of ESSA, weighed in to clarify congressional intent: “My goal with [ESSA] was to return that debate and those decisions right where they are: to the Maryland state assembly in Annapolis. They should decide how much test results should factor into their accountability system.”
Want to prevent the DeVos school privatization agenda from coming to Maryland? Email or call (1–888–520–6732) your legislators and urge them to override Gov. Hogan’s threatened veto of the Protect Our Schools Act.
