Liberals missed the boat on school spending accountability; Maryland aims to get on board

Baltimore City pre-K instructor Berol Dewdney, the 2022-2023 Maryland teacher of the year, works with her students. (Photo by Shannon Clark/Capital News Service)
We liberals have failed to learn the lesson that more money isn't enough for schoolchildren to succeed. We must pay equal attention to accountability for how efficiently and effectively the money is spent.
Liberals' failure goes back about 50 years when federal funds started to flow, particularly to assist low-income students and students with disabilities. The money came but the expected results didn't. Students made little progress, which is what happens when accountability is absent from school.
Nationally, the message has still not sunk in. A milestone in the retreat from accountability was Congress's revocation of the tough requirements in the landmark No Child Left Behind law. Instead of good faith efforts to raise their standards, state and local districts lobbied the Congress, fiercely and successfully, to let them off the hook.
In NCLB's place, Congress, with liberal backing, passed the Every Student Succeeds Act that is widely considered 'the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.' Student progress has declined. And to make things worse, Trump wants to eliminate the federal role altogether.
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Which brings us back to the reason for NCLB in the first place: State and local school systems were defaulting on their duty to ensure accountability then, and they're still doing it now.
Summarizing the problem, eminent policy analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr. writes that, 'The country's multi-decade commitment to results-based accountability has badly eroded and may not be recoverable.' Finn was an influential member of the Kirwan Commission which was boldly determined to buck the tide.
The commission drafted the Blueprint for Maryland's Future accountability scheme. It's anchored in the Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board, a national model for holding state and local educators responsible for how well funds are spent and how well students are achieving.
The Blueprint includes intricate accountability measures, among them specific outcomes to be achieved, data collection, frequent reports, and evaluation. It's a giant leap forward. Still, it has a distance to go.
For starters, accountability is undermined if state standards aren't genuinely high. Yet, many states are doing the opposite and lowering the bar instead of raising it. In contrast, the Blueprint calls for career and college standards to be raised, and that's in progress.
Fortunately, our state schools superintendent is doing all she can: A national article reported that 'Maryland's new education chief, Carey Wright, an old-school champion of rigorous standards, is pushing back against efforts in other states to boost test scores by essentially lowering their expectations of students.'
Also, accountability suffers when test scores are inflated by easier questions and grading policies. The result of lower standards and easier tests is the national scandal of grade inflation. Parents are deceived into thinking their children are succeeding when, in what's known as 'social promotion,' many are passed from grade to grade despite being far below meeting grade-level standards.
One further note. Though the connection is not readily visible, the inadequate funding of the Blueprint (which is now well recognized) makes it hard to hold state and local educators completely responsible for student outcomes. When students don't succeed, how much is attributable to poor funding and how much to poor management? In any event, school systems must not be allowed to evade accountability. They must be held completely responsible for whether there are maximum returns on available resources.
The Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board is supposed to be the primary guardian of rigorous accountability. However, while the AIB has done much excellent work, it's way overworked and has neglected what should be its core function: evaluation that is the ultimate measure of accountability.
Unless the AIB steps up on evaluation, the Blueprint's promise of accountability probably will be broken. And Maryland will lose the chance to be a national model and steer the boat of accountability in the right direction.
Our schoolchildren will suffer. Let's not let that happen.

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