The Maryland State Board of Education voted unanimously this week to re-elect Dr. Joshua L. Michael as its president for a third consecutive term, while electing Dr. James C. Bell as vice president, positions that will shape how the state’s ongoing overhaul of literacy, math and school accountability standards reaches classrooms in Southern Maryland and across the state over the coming year.
Both Michael and Bell were appointed to the State Board by Gov. Wes Moore and will serve one-year terms in their leadership roles for the 2026-2027 school year. Michael has now led the board for two full years, having first been elected president in 2024 and re-elected in 2025 alongside then-Vice President Dr. Monica Goldson; Bell, who joined the board in July 2025, takes over the vice presidency for the first time.
“I am honored to continue serving as President of the State Board,” Michael said in a statement. “Our focus remains clear: strengthen teaching and learning so every child in Maryland has the opportunity to succeed. The foundation we built over the past two years positions us to accelerate progress, and I look forward to that work with educators, families, and communities.” State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Carey M. Wright credited the pair’s leadership style for helping advance the board’s agenda. “I appreciate the collaborative leadership that Dr. Michael and Dr. Bell have fostered in seeking to provide every Maryland student access to rigorous, engaging, and supportive learning environments,” she said.
During Michael’s tenure as president, the board has pushed through some of the most significant changes to Maryland’s K-12 academic standards in more than a decade. In 2024, the board approved a literacy policy allowing third graders who fall short of reading benchmarks to be held back with parental consent, part of a broader statewide literacy push that state officials say has helped Maryland post some of the strongest fourth-grade reading gains in the country. In August 2025, the board adopted the state’s first overhaul of math standards since 2013, moving toward an integrated algebra pathway that collapses the traditional algebra-geometry-algebra II sequence into two combined courses and introduces key concepts earlier in students’ education; those standards take effect in classrooms statewide starting with the 2026-27 school year. The board has also been redesigning Maryland’s assessment and accountability system, with a new framework set to launch this coming school year, and has worked alongside the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board to set updated achievement targets for kindergarten readiness and 10th-grade college and career readiness.
Those reforms apply uniformly across Maryland’s 24 local school systems, including St. Mary’s, Charles and Calvert county public schools, all of which are implementing the new literacy and math frameworks and will transition to the state’s redesigned accountability system alongside every other district in Maryland. The math standards in particular represent a significant shift for local curriculum planning, since districts have roughly a year to integrate the new course sequence before it becomes mandatory.
Michael, appointed to the board in April 2023, is executive director of the Sherman Family Foundation, a Baltimore nonprofit that funds early childhood and K-12 education programs. He began his career as a middle school math teacher in Baltimore City, later served as director of school partnerships at UMBC, and was previously the State Board’s student member during the 2005-06 school year — making him one of the few board presidents to have also served in the board’s youth seat earlier in his life. He holds a bachelor’s degree and doctorate in public policy from UMBC and a master’s degree in school leadership from Johns Hopkins University, and lives in Baltimore City with his wife and three children, who attend public schools.
Bell brings more than two decades of Eastern Shore education experience to the vice presidency. He began his career as a math teacher in Talbot County Public Schools, where he was promoted to assistant principal after just two years, before becoming a principal and later supervisor of student services in Dorchester County. He went on to serve as director of student services and secondary leadership for the Seaford School District in Delaware and has served since July 2022 as director of instruction, academic support and community well-being at Building African American Minds. Bell holds a bachelor’s degree from Southern University and a master’s degree and doctorate from Wilmington University in Georgetown, Delaware. He and his wife live in Talbot County, where his two adult children work in the local school system and his younger daughter and four grandchildren are enrolled as students.
