Two state education boards approved additional metrics Tuesday to improve student achievement, including measures to shrink the achievement gap between student groups, but they didn’t set a timeline for meeting that goal.
It was the second meeting this year between the Maryland State Board of Education and the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board. More than a year ago, the two boards approved “ambitious” goals on student achievement, attracting and retaining a diverse teacher corps and reducing chronic absenteeism.
The measures approved Tuesday deal with student groupings such as race and ethnicity, disability and language. Although results this spring from the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program test showed modest gains overall in language arts and math, achievement gaps between various student groups was substantial.
About 75% of Asian students and 68% of white students were proficient in language arts, for example, but only 39% of Black students and 34% of Latino students reached proficiency. Percentages were lower for students with disabilities (15%) and multilingual learners (11%). About 34.5% of “economically disadvantaged” students were proficient in language arts.
Math proficiency scores were even lower for those students:
- Blacks: 14%
- Latinos: 13.8%
- Economically disadvantaged:13.1%
- Students with disabilities: 7.6%
- Multilingual learners: 7.2%
State Superintendent Carey Wright said it will take more work than just looking at an entire subgroup of students to make gains.
“When you get your data back in, you look to see who’s doing well, who’s not,” Wright said to reporters after the meeting’s morning session. “We continue to do that work with the schools, but I think that you can’t just look at a whole subgroup and assume that one intervention is going to be the same for all kids in a subgroup. You better really look at each individual student.”
One way to help those students is through implementation of a goal approved last year to cut chronic absenteeism by half, from 30% reported in 2022-23 school year to 15% during this school year. Any student who misses 10% of school days is considered chronically absent; the current chronic absenteeism is 25%.
“If the kids are not in school, it is difficult to ensure that they get the kind of instruction that they need. So we are looking at those things comprehensively,” Blueprint board chair Isiah “Ike” Leggett told reporters.
The state formed an attendance task force and is partnering with a nonprofit called Attendance Works to come with up solutions, such as having all 24 school districts have a group “responsible for implementing the systemwide attendance strategy and supporting school attendance teams.”
No specific goal was set on how much of an improvement the state is looking to see in those student groups.
At least two goals established Tuesday are to increase kindergarten readiness rates for each student group and decrease achievement gaps among those students, with some data anticipated by December.
Geoff Sanderson, deputy state superintendent of accountability for the State Department of Education, said a data dashboard will be presented to state board of education next month.
Several education advocates, who support the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan and serve as members of the Blueprint Coalition, said more work must be done to improve student achievement.
Sharlimar Douglass, lead advocate and education policy analyst for the Maryland Alliance for Racial Equity, said Blueprint implementation should focus on racial equity.
“This means prioritizing investments in high-quality instruction, early literacy supports, rigorous and relevant math curricula and culturally affirming learning and guidance,” she said during public comment to both boards. “If we are not centering children’s humanity through love, there is no strategy, no professional book, or instructional method in the world that can prepare the teacher to elevate the child.”