State Conspires With Teachers' Unions To Hide The Truth About Student Achievement in Maryland
Imagine you are boarding a flight for business or vacation.
If you inquire about the pilot's qualifications, you probably want to hear certain things. For example, the FAA requires approximately 1500 hours of flight time just to begin flying a commercial airliner. Has your pilot reached that threshold? Has he/she passed all the tests required to become a commercial pilot? Does he/she have a clean safety record?
I want to know that information if it is available.
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What if the FAA decided that it really wasn't that important that the pilot meet those requirements? In fact, what if they said that flying competence, safety and expertise was only 20% of how they judged pilots? What if they decided that he should be judged more on how much people like him? Or if he had diverse, happy flight crew members on his plane?
You probably wouldn't feel very good about that.
You'd want to see achievement, competence, and expertise first. I would.
The State of Maryland, however, when judging schools, has a new test and a new system for reporting that will not only hide academic achievement but downplay it.
changing the statewide assessment
There is a saying in Maryland education, "When you don't like your test scores, change the test." Another saying is "When you don't like your test scores, hide them."
The Maryland State Department of Education is already changing the state comprehensive skills test next year after recent scores on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program tests were mediocre to poor in the state. The new test is called the MSTAR Test, State Test of Academic Readiness. Not achievement. Not progress. READINESS.
Maryland’s new statewide testing system is the Maryland System of Testing Academic Readiness (MSTAR), and it is being phased in during the 2026–27 school year. It replaces the current MCAP structure and is part of MSDE’s multi‑year redesign of assessments and accountability. The vendor will be that multi-billion juggernaut test company, Pearson. Pearson makes $4.5 - $4.7 billion dollars a year off of testing.
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The new testing in Maryland will cost $95.3 million dollars over the next five years. If there are extensions or additions to the contract, it could be as much as $154 million. Imagine if that money could go to providing additional classroom teachers or actually making school instruction more focused and targeted on student achievement.
From MSDE:
MSDE is seeking to move to a new state assessment program to accomplish the following goals: (Bold added for emphasis)
- Improve technical quality and validity by adopting assessments that meet current psychometric standards, including the transition to multi-stage adaptive testing to better measure student performance across the full range of achievement.
- Increase equity and accessibility through enhanced accommodation delivery, ensuring more consistent, timely, and appropriate access for students with disabilities and multilingual learners.
- Enhance instructional usefulness by incorporating an optional interim assessment program that provides educators with actionable data to inform instruction throughout the school year.
- Expand and strengthen assessment content by augmenting the existing MSDE item bank to ensure an adequate number of questions at all difficulty levels, allowing for greater flexibility and an increased number of released items.
- Improve efficiency and coherence by consolidating multiple vendors into an integrated assessment platform, reducing complexity and improving system alignment.
SOURCE: MSDE Selects New Statewide Assessment Vendor – Maryland State Department of Education
Sounds like an educational word salad at the elite level.
That's not all.
compass: hiding the truth from the public?
They are changing how school scores and ratings are reported to the public. And, if you wonder whether the "fix" is in on this, the state is working with the MSEA (Maryland State Education Association); the teachers' union, to do it. It's called the "COMPASS" Act or House Bill 1582.
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In a state where counties are adopting grading practices that don't hold anyone accountable for student learning, they are now going to make sure that parents don't know whether their child's public school has strong academics or not. The teachers' union, the proverbial fox in the hen house, is part of the design of that reporting.
Here are some articles on the new "grading" theories:
Creating Lazy, Unaccountable Adults Through Bad Grading Policy - The Easton Gazette
The Next Big Education Con: "Equity Grading" - The Easton Gazette
Currently, the state has a complicated system of measuring school success. They post different areas that add up to give a school a "star rating" of 1-5, 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.
Schools get "points" for each area with some areas weighted more than others. On this chart for Easton Elementary School in Talbot County, one can see the weight of the category and then the number of points the school got in that category:
By almost any measure, Easton Elementary had a failing grade. Notice that "Academic Achievement" is worth 20 points out of 100. Easton Elementary got a total of 7.3 points. "Academic Progress" is worth 35 points out of 100 and Easton earned 16.9 points. If you put both categories together, that equals 24 points total. The picture is an ugly one.
Also, we are not completely sure what "Academic Progress" means, but it has nothing to do with actual achievement.
According to Maryland House Bill 1582 passed in the Maryland General Assembly in 2026 and requested by the Maryland State Department of Education, changes were made in the reporting on schools "For the purpose of altering the school quality indicators authorized for an educational accountability program in public schools, prohibiting the use of certain indicators in an educational accountability system, and generally relating to accountability in public schools."
In other words, they want to change how the state shows parents and communities whether or not their child's school is a good school. Do you wonder what the "certain indicators" are that are prohibited?
You might be shocked.
The law shifts Maryland’s school rating system toward more holistic, non‑test‑based measures while preserving guardrails that limit overreliance on standardized testing. That last area would be the "certain indicators" such as national standardized testing or other objective academic measures. Replace the idea of "overreliance" and you will see the State doesn't want reliance on standardized testing at all.
It's like not rating a pilot on his flying ability.
Teachers' Union Favors Less Focus On Academics In State Reporting
The teacher's union, a huge donor to the State Delegates and Senators, helped the general assembly create the very reporting system that will allow the public to judge the schools where teacher's union members work. Seems unethical. Here is MSEA's description of their opinion on the reporting and their role in creating it. They sent this in an email to members. (Their comments are in italics)
MSEA Advocates for Better Report Card School Accountability System
This week featured the introduction of House Bill 1582, legislation that would alter the star rating school accountability system that produces the Maryland’s annual school report cards. The legislation was introduced by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), in consultation with MSEA. As introduced, House Bill 1582—the Comprehensive Outcomes and Measures of Progress for Supporting Schools, or COMPASS Act, is consistent with important guardrails around accountability measures that were established by the Protect Our Schools Act (POSA) that MSEA fought to pass in 2017.
If you don't know what the Protect Our Schools Act was, it was law that limited the role of standardized testing in school ratings and required the inclusion of non-academic areas such as school quality and student engagement. These are the guardrails the union loves because they can hide behind vague, ever-changing "standards".
We highlight the buzzword "guardrails" as this is a new term that must be interpreted for the rest of us. The union uses "guardrails" anytime they want to make sure that performance is not honestly evaluated, or they want to diminish the effectiveness of an objective standard, rule or law they don't like.
The word shows up again in another part of the MSEA opinion regarding HB 1582.
POSA put reasonable guardrails on the amount of standardized testing that could factor into the school rating system. According to POSA, no more than 65% of a school’s star rating could be based on standardized test scores. The remainder of the score is based on School Quality and Student Success (SQSS) indicators—holistic, non-academic measures of school environment and opportunity. POSA responded to overwhelming feedback from educators, parents, and students that far too much time and focus was being spent on standardized testing completion and preparation, narrowing the curriculum and crowding out time for more dynamic and engaging teaching and learning.
In 2017, standardized test scores were 65% of a school's score. Now, they are reducing that to 20%.
Notice again that the word "guardrails" is used to prevent standardized testing from being the main component of the school rating system. While many of us think that schools should be judged on how well they are educating students by building student content proficiency in math, reading, writing, history, etc., the unions, not the teachers they represent, prefer that we worry about how "holistic," "non-academic" measures define a school. In other words, if the kids are happy, who cares if they are dumb.
Think about how school climate is measured. It's measured through student and staff surveys which are conducted each year. It's a bit like the survey you get at some stores when you check out. You get to rate how "good your experience was" in the store.
I don't know about you, but I rarely give a store anything less than a 9 or 10 unless I experience terribly rude staff, unusually high prices, and very limited product selection. I'm checking out and in a hurry to get somewhere else. So, even a mediocre store can get a 9 from me. I have no investment in how that store is rated. Students feel the same about these school climate surveys.
So, they fill them out randomly or fill out the little bubbles to make a pattern that has nothing to do with what is being measured. Not an accurate measure. More on that later.
And what, exactly, is the point of "dynamic and engaging teaching" if it doesn't boost student achievement on objective assessments?
discounting actual student achievement
This next provision in the COMPASS Act is the one that shows you how objective academic assessments will be weighted. From the bill:
NO ACADEMIC INDICATOR OF PROFICIENCY MAY BE WEIGHTED AS MORE THAN 20% OF THE COMPOSITE SCORE.
Let that sink in. While standardized test scores aren't the ultimate measure of academic success, they are the one objective measure that is not influenced by human biases or local politics. More from MSEA:
The COMPASS Act would be the first update to POSA since its passage. HB1582 retains many of POSA’s important principles and also promotes academic growth and would add the option to measure staffing indicators as part of the SQSS component. MSEA advocates for the report card to utilize a descriptive model that prioritizes transparency, context, equity, and continuous improvement over labeling and scores that overly reduce and simplify the strengths and areas of improvement for individual schools.
The last sentence here tells us all we need to know. The union wants a "descriptive model" that prioritizes such things as "context" (i.e. excuses) and "equity" (i.e. inequality). They ask for "continuous improvement over labeling." Altogether, this means that if a school's scores are bad, they can blame one or a combination of these: the socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, or immigration status of their students.
In other words, the union doesn't really believe that all students can achieve academic competence and/or excellence. Seems racist AND elitist.
As for "continuous improvement" those buzzwords mean that the school in question might need more money because improvement takes time. In Maryland, improvement has YET to happen, even after a decade of throwing billions of dollars at the schools.
The legislation also stipulates that schools must be compared against schools of similar demographic measures, including the proportion of economically disadvantaged students as defined by the State in accordance with the Federal Government.
So, if you are a school with a higher proportion of economically disadvantaged students, you only get compared to other schools of a similar population.
We see what is going on here. Economic elitism. Shouldn't we be working on bringing our economically disadvantaged students UP to the same standards of those in other economic groups? Why is Maryland basically giving up on those students?
Apparently, MSDE believes that schools with higher proportions of economically disadvantaged students can't compete and shouldn't compete against other schools with different demographics. Do they have a similar rule for schools with higher minority populations? Higher populations of ELL students? It sounds like an admission that these schools can't achieve.
Again, it sounds racist and elitist.
So, what will this new reporting look like compared to the old reporting?
old reporting versus new reporting
Before COMPASS, Maryland’s School Report Card was dominated by academic indicators. After COMPASS, Maryland must report more non‑test‑based indicators and exclude national assessment measures (Such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP.)
So, if you as a parent want to see how a school system stacks up against national assessment standards, you won't be able to. Why? Because Maryland doesn't usually do so well in that comparison.
Instead, the systems are required to report on three of the following school quality indicators:
- School climate surveys (mandatory; must include a question on instructional feedback)
- Class size
- Case load
- Access to advanced programs
- Chronic absenteeism
- Discipline & restorative practices
- Staffing measures (APC/NBCT access)
- Well‑rounded curriculum completion (newly added)
All categories are under the control of the systems themselves and therefore open to manipulation and interpretation by district administration and, yes, even unions.
Except for curriculum completion, none of these categories may be based on student testing. The testing involved in curriculum completion is under the control of the district as well since most curricular testing is teacher or system created.
The Maryland State Department of Education will give:
- Each school a percentile‑based composite score out of 100
- A score where every individual indicator score will be used to calculate the composite
- Academic "indicators" (not test scores) capped at 70% (these indicators are poorly defined but could include student academic progress, graduation rates, academic "readiness" measures for high school students, English Language Proficiency, and growth in ELA and Math proficiency. They do NOT include objective test data)
- A single academic proficiency indicator (such as objective test scores) capped at 20% out of 100.
There it is again. Only 20% of the final score can be based on an objective test score. In other words, 80% of the final score will be based on "soft data" which can be manipulated by the schools. For example, schools control which students and how many graduate. It's why school systems with test scores of only 18% of students proficient in math have graduation rates at 90% or above. They make sure those students graduate, whether they have learned needed skills and content or not. *
The illusion of school climate surveys
School climate surveys, one required measurement tool in the state's list, are inherently unreliable as a true measure of school success. While they have proven mostly accurate in measuring student feelings of belonging and safety, they are unreliable in many ways. Students often make responses based a single recent event, peer influence, a desire to please or upset teachers, or even distrust of anonymity. Different groups interpret questions differently and this will influence responses.
There is also "survey fatigue." Students and staff are tired of filling out these climate surveys and will tend to rush through them to get them completed. Maryland students take multiple surveys (climate, SEL, safety). Fatigue reduces reliability. As a classroom teacher, I watched students fill in answer bubbles to create pictures, make patterns or just select one answer all the way to the end on the survey. Students don't take these surveys seriously.
Climate surveys are not stable or objective enough to serve as primary measures of school success.
But that's okay with MSDE and the Maryland State Education Association because the bottom line is that they don't really want schools objectively rated by academic achievement. They bank on the fact that the worse schools are academically, the more they can claim that they need more money and can demand it from the taxpayers.
The General Assembly doesn't care either since many of them send their children to private schools. So does Governor Moore, who also attended private school when he was a child. Here is his campaign ad inside Calvert Hall school, a $33,000 a year school (per child) where his children attend:
How Many Politicians Send their Kids to Public Schools?
The unions and MSDE also hope that by gaslighting parents and taxpayers, they will quell the current increase in homeschooling, private and charter school attendance and decrease in students in public schools. Since 2024-2025, public school enrollment dropped by 1.1% or 9,385–9,803. Montgomery, Baltimore, and Prince George's County accounted for 61.6% of those losses. (Locally, Talbot County had a 4.7% or 200 student decrease during that time.)
So, get ready parents and members of the public! If you want a realistic and accurate picture of the academic achievement of students in public schools, the teachers' unions in Maryland have bought and paid to make sure you don't see the truth.
The educational future of Maryland's children has been bought, sold, and stolen.
extra information:
* Two and four-year colleges are finding they need to provide more remedial classes for incoming students than ever before. This reporting system will increase that need beyond what is already alarming.
Colleges don't call them remedial classes anymore because of the possible "stigma" for students. They are replacing them with what they call "corequisite support models" for underprepared students.
Public two‑year colleges offering corequisite remediation in math jumped from 28% to 77% over seven years. English jumped from 56% to 78%. At least 29 states now require or allow corequisite support. This means students who would have been placed in non‑credit remedial classes are now placed directly into college‑level courses with extra support attached. Source: How University Leaders Are Helping Every College Student Rebuild Essential Math Skills
Four-year schools are in a similar situation, even universities which are considered in the top echelon academically.
