The Title of Emily Jackson's Campaign Page, Published August 30, 2026
Source: Emily Jackson Campaign Site
She set the standard. She did not meet it.
Replace Emily Jackson and Amy Dodson.
By Peter Gorman- Talbot County Parent, McDaniel
On August 29, I published my first letter on these pages as a Talbot County parent, laying out what the state's test data says about our schools. The next day, August 30, the Jackson campaign published a page of test scores under the title above. They are all correct. It is what is missing that voters should see.
To her credit, the page does not pretend the gap away. It states that Talbot trails Maryland in both reading and math, and it says so plainly. That is the argument I made, and she has accepted it.
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What the page never tells you is where Talbot stands among other districts. The word "rank" does not appear. Neither does a comparison to any other county. And there is one comparison the board President already made herself.
Talbot is in the bottom third of Maryland in Math and the bottom and the bottom half in reading, and fifth of nine on the Eastern Shore in both. Every one of those figures comes from the same state report the campaign page cites.
The third number is the one that should worry parents most. Nearly every district in Maryland has been climbing since 2022-the question is not whether Talbot improved but whether we kept up. Over four years Maryland gained 6.4 points in reading. Talbot gained 3.7. Only two of the state's twenty-four school systems improved less than we did. In math the same pattern holds more narrowly: Maryland gained 6.1 points, Talbot 5.3.
Reading is below where it stood two years ago.
The page reports that reading rose from 45.4 percent last year to 46.8 this year and calls it progress. Against last year it is. Talbot's reading proficiency was 47.3 % in 2024. We are still below where we stood two years ago.
Jackson's page shows math as a five-year trend line running across the screen. It shows
reading as a two-bar snapshot of this year only. Reading is the subject that would not look like progress on a five-year line. There was exactly one comparison year that turns this year's reading page number into good news, and that is the year Jackson's page uses.
Math: The window changes the answer
Math is the subject where the page makes its strongest claim, and it is worth testing. The campaign reports that Talbot improved 1.8 points in math this year while Maryland improved 0.6. That is accurate. It
is also the single year in which we outpaced the state. Widen it to three years and we draw level with the state. Widen it to the full four years the page otherwise uses for its own math chart, and we fall behind.
one school out of eight
The page devotes a section to Chapel District Elementary, where 69.1 percent of students are
students are proficient in reading. That number is correct, and Chapel's teachers earned it.
She also tells readers plainly that Chapel sits in her own District 4, which is the right thing to disclose. But a board president does not represent one district. She represents every school in the county, and Chapel is the best result in Talbot County. It is also the only school on the page.
Chapel tests 181 students. Easton Elementary tests 452 and reads 37 points lower. Easton
Middle tests 695 — more students than any other school in the county-and reads 30 points
lower. The two schools that educate the most children in Talbot County are the two schools furthest behind, and neither appears anywhere on a page about our scores.
Then there is math at Easton High. Of 257 math assessments taken there, 202 were Algebra 1
and fewer than 5 percent of those students reached proficiency-the state suppresses the exact figure
below that threshold. Schoolwide, 16 of 257 math tests met the standard. Those numbers are public, they are in the same file as Chapel's, and they are not on the page.
another page, another claim
A different page of the same website tells voters that under this leadership Talbot is a district "where elementary schools and reading performance rank among the strongest on the Eastern Shore."
Talbot is fifth of nine in reading and fifth of nine in math. The exact middle ofregion — and falling. Worcester beats us in reading by 23 points. Caroline— the county next door, which was behind us four years ago — now beats us by four points.
the question she asked out loud
At a board work session last fall, reviewing the previous year’s results, Talbot’s
board president said this:
Parents are asking the same thing. A year later, the answer is still not on her campaign page. Caroline is bigger than Talbot and no less disadvantaged — 48.8 percent of its students qualify as economically disadvantaged, against 51.1 percent of ours. Four years ago it trailed us in both subjects. Here is what happened next.
Talbot led Caroline in reading for three straight years. Caroline passed us in 2025 and pulled further ahead in 2026. In math they passed us a year earlier and have not looked back. Over four years Caroline gained 9.9 points in reading and 9.7 in math. Talbot gained 3.7 and 5.3
That is the answer to her question. The district next door, with a student population much like ours, improved nearly three times as fast as we did in reading, and almost twice as fast in math, under the same state standards, over the same four years, while she led this board. The page she published the day after my letter does not mention Caroline County once.
eight years is long enough to be judged on results
Not one number the campaign published is wrong. I checked all of them. Every number it left out points the same direction: a district in the bottom third of Maryland in math, in the middle of the Eastern Shore, with reading below its 2024 level, improving slower than all but two systems in the state, and now trailing the county next door in both subjects
A campaign built on speaking openly and honestly about scores should be able to answer three questions:
Where does Talbot rank, and why does that word never appear?
Why does math get a five-year trend line while reading gets only this
year's number?
And what is the answer to the question she asked herself about the
county that passed us?
I am not running for anything and I speak for no one. I am a parent who read the state's files and did the arithmetic. Anyone can download them and check every figure here in an afternoon. I would encourage it.
A board president sets the agenda, and a vice president helps set it. When two high schools began refusing to record any grade below 50 percent, without the superintendent's approval, this board took months to replace the practice. When a parent who had never written one before sent a letter about test scores, the answer came the next afternoon. Talbot's results are what those priorities have produced.
district three - vote out amy dodson district four - vote out emily jackson
Link to Peter Gorman's Original Document:
Peter Gorman lives in McDaniel. He is a Talbot County Public Schools graduate and the proud
parent of two children in the district.
SOURCES · All Talbot, Caroline and statewide figures from Maryland State Department of Education, “ELA, Mathematics, and Science Assessment Results, SY 2025–2026,” presented to the Maryland State Board of Education, July 28, 2026, and from the 2026 MCAP Administrative Data files published at reportcard.msde.maryland.gov. Rankings calculated from the same report's table of all twenty-four local
school systems; MSDE publishes the proficiency rates but not the rank order. Eastern Shore comparison covers Caroline, Cecil, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne's, Somerset, Talbot, Wicomico and Worcester counties. Quotation from Emily Jackson at a Talbot County Board of Education work session, reported in The Star Democrat, “Talbot school board dives into test score trends,” September 2025. Grading
practice timeline from The Star Democrat and Talbot Spy reporting on the 50 percent minimum grading practice, and from Talbot County Board of Education meeting records; the practice began in fall 2025 and a replacement policy did not reach a first reading until April 2026. Campaign statements quoted from emilyfortalbot.com as published. School-level results from the 2026 MCAP Administrative Data school
level file, all students, all tested grades. Statewide mathematics proficiency by year (21.0, 23.3, 24.1, 26.5 and 27.1 percent from 2021–22 through 2025–26) from MSDE annual MCAP results releases. District enrollment and student group shares from MSDE Student Group Populations data, 2026, updated June 18, 2026: Talbot County 4,420 students, 51.1 percent economically disadvantaged, 59.6 percent
FARMS; Caroline County 5,505 students, 48.8 percent economically disadvantaged, 58.3 percent FARMS.
