State Percentile Rankings Troubling For Several County Schools
Maryland Test Scores are being released by district and by school. Results for Talbot County appear to be mediocre with no school achieving a five-star rating.
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The State of Maryland now assigns a "star rating" to schools based on different performance indicators:
The "star rating" is made up of five different star levels, 1 being the lowest, 5 the highest. To determine how many stars a school gets, one adds up the "points" they get for their success in the indicators.
And you thought doing your taxes was complicated? The guide for how these points are determined is 34 pages long and available here:
Maryland Report Card - ReportCards - ReportCardSchool
MSDE_ReportCard_UserGuide_2023_v1.pdf (maryland.gov)
This is a very clever tactic. Here is the report card for Easton Elementary School in Talbot County:
At first glance at the star ratings, a parent might think that 3 stars out of 5 for Easton Elementary is not that bad. If you did it statistically, that would be a 60%; not passing but close. If your child came home from school with a 60% on a test, you would tell him/her to hit the books and try harder.
The problem is that in the area that matters, academics, the school only earned 7.3 out of 20 points in Academic Achievement and 16.9% out of 35 in Academic Progress. The school missed the target in both areas.
Easton Elementary did get 23.3 out of 35 points, the equivalent of a participation trophy, in areas such as "School Quality" which includes points for not having a high percentage of students who are "chronically absent" and whether students/teachers like the school and feel safe there. (Sadly, even in those categories, Easton Elementary only scored 3.2 points out of 7 for students and 1.6 out of 3 points for teachers.) The good news is that everyone thinks the students at Easton Elementary have access to a "well rounded curriculum" which could include everything from academics to ideological content regarding feelings, sexual identity, etc. They got all the points in that category. In other words, they have educational materials and curriculum.
That's how they managed 3 stars out of 5 stars. The school climate is good, the achievement is not.
The worst part of Easton Elementary Ratings is that it scored in the 26th percentile among elementary schools in the state. Sadly, Tilghman Elementary did worse coming in at the 13th percentile in the state, earning only 42 out of 90 possible points.
Schools in Talbot County that scored 3 out of 5 stars were Tilghman Elementary, Easton Middle (34th percentile), Easton High (41st percentile) and St. Michaels Middle High School (Middle 54th percentile, High 65th percentile).
The good news for Talbot was that Chapel, St. Michaels and White Marsh Elementaries scored 4 out of 5 stars. St. Michaels Elementary was in the 81st percentile, Chapel was in the 76th percentile, and White Marsh was in the 74th percentile among state elementary schools.
For Secondary schools, other areas are assessed such as "Graduation Rate" and "Readiness for Post Secondary Success." While this sounds good, remember that schools can control the percent of students who graduate "on time." Readiness for Post Secondary Success is a category that the state hasn't completely defined yet.
Both Talbot County High Schools scored only 3 stars. Easton had an overall score of 52 out of 100 points while St. Michaels had 57.1 out of 100 points. As state previously, Easton is in the 41st percentile ranks among state high schools and St. Michaels is in the 65th percentile.
Here are the numbers of schools with each "star" rating in Maryland in 2025:
1-star schools: 89 These schools scored below 30% on the performance formula and are considered in need of significant improvement.
2-star schools: 163 (30 to 45%)
3-star schools: 312(45 to 60)
4-star schools: 421 (60 to 74)
5-star schools: 98 (75% or higher)
The good news, perhaps, for schools is that the State is revamping its testing program for the upcoming state test. We will have to wait and see what those tests look like, because even educators don't know yet. However, most of the time when state tests are revived, they are made easier to create an illusion of schools improving in the state from year to year.
With the Blueprint for Maryland's Future coming under more fire from locals and legislators each year it is implemented, state officials will want to make sure they create a testing program which will demonstrate school improvement in Maryland. It won't matter if it is authentic improvement or just smoke and mirrors. After all, it's hard to justify mandated excessive spending and special programs when scores show no improvement. With Maryland's precarious financial situation and a looming election, the Blueprint may become a campaign issue in 2026.
Problem is, sooner or later, people will figure it out and will realize that the billions of dollars of spending being forced on the locals by the State are not improving the plight of our young people one bit. The ones who are losing in the deal are our young people, who are not getting the education and skills they need to be successful.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The test score battle in Maryland has been going on for decades. As a former Coordinator of Accountability(testing) and Staff Development in Talbot County, I remember the frustration of knowing that teachers are working as hard as they can and yet the results of state test not reflecting that hard work.
Every Fall, when scores came out, there was a tenseness and anxiety among so many in the system, knowing that the set of numbers would define the county system and the school for a year. I was the one who had to release and present these scores. One Superintendent told me during a year when Talbot County scores did not improve, "Don't talk to the newspaper about these scores. Let them find them on their own." I warned him that it was not a good approach, but he was so tired of getting beaten up about scores that it just didn't matter to him if that happened and he didn't want us to make it easy on reporters.
Needless to say, it backfired.
The problem is that the State has the locals "chasing their tails" with implementing the Blueprint and all the useless programs it mandates that they can't focus on their mission, education. If you put ten of the best classroom teachers in Talbot County in a room together and told them to create a program that would truly educate children, they would create a program that would be much more successful than the Blueprint or any other artificial educational initiative.
The Talbot County Board of Education will present scores publicly at their next public meeting, November 19, 2025.
