Education Reform Oversight Agency Updates Statewide Implementation Plan

Last week state leadership presented the findings from public feedback regarding education reform in Maryland and voted on a number of suggestions that were brought to the table.

The Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board is required to update the Blueprint Comprehensive Plan (BCP) that is used for establishing and tracking associated education reforms. This is meant to be done by August 1 of each year. The process involves a series of meetings to receive public comment on the five major pillars of the plan.

After the feedback period concluded the AIB staff had compiled a list of more than 70 suggestions from stakeholders statewide. The suggestions can be regulatory or statutory, meaning that some of the feedback, if adopted as a recommendation by the AIB, could necessitate legislative changes from the General Assembly.

Many of the adopted recommendations were simply incorporating components from legislative changes that were made during the 2025 session. As previously covered on Conduit Street, HB 504 was the main vehicle for those changes and focused on teacher recruitment and retention.

MACo members participated in the feedback sessions and focused thoughts on pillar 5, which includes the accountability and oversight standards. These themes will continue to inform MACo advocacy during the coming 2026 legislative session. MACo suggestions for the plan included:

  • Establish communication requirements for state agencies with county governments for cost estimates and funding procedures, including changes to those processes. In multiple instances county governments have received significant surprise bills after the budget process that were not communicated.
  • Analyze challenges as well as highlight progress in the annual report required by the AIB. Local education agencies send in hundreds of reports that include progress and challenges. While the reports often say that challenges exist there is little analysis of those challenges that is comparable to the progress that is highlighted, particularly when we know common barriers exist. If the challenges that would necessitate changes to the Blueprint are not analyzed effectively in these public reports, alongside the progress, then the General Assembly will not have the information they need to decide if changes should be made, resulting in the real and potential loss of accountability. 
  • The AIB should outline a more thorough process for holding the General Assembly and Governor’s Administration accountable for their role in education reform, specifically providing a responsible share of the funding or making necessary adjustments. There is already an objective in the BCP to assess whether the funding is sufficient for what is being required operationally. If the state agencies or legislature do not have a formula that represents actual costs to schools, they will not be able to assess if the plan, as is, is possible and if it needs changes. A lack of attention on this matter will make local contributions continue to skyrocket and compromise local ability to meet the funding mandates as they increase over the next 7 years.
  • Require comprehensive analysis of findings from the technical support cohorts. Thanks to the AIB, these groups are doing very specific and nuanced work to help jurisdictions with implementation and a clear summary of those findings needs to be included in the AIB annual reports and coming interim audit.
  • Clarify more useful standards for Expert Review Team (ERT) members and work products. If assessments carry the potential penalty of withholding state funding, then the quality of the review teams and reports must be to a standard that is high enough to deliver such a penalty. Expert review team members without relevant experience and reports with limited utility for locals is inappropriate and this is unfortunately the case in some instances. 
  • MACo echoes the concerns raised by multiple school systems and the statewide superintendents’ association about the prescriptive nature of the Blueprint, that in many instances leads to a one-size-fits-all application in local jurisdictions. We know this is unintended. Creating wider guardrails in some of the more prescriptive areas of the plan will effectuate better outcomes and allow the experts to address the unique needs of their students in an urgent and transparent manner.
  • To the degree possible, make reports more accessible to residents by eliminating unnecessary acronyms and professional jargon where possible. Plain language understandings of the circumstances will help local government officials better address community concerns as they arise.

Watch the full AIB meeting about the Blueprint Comprehensive Plan.