Groundbreaking Education Measure from Maryland Sets a Global Standard for Education Reform

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When the Kentucky Education Reform Act was passed in 1990 it was groundbreaking legislation that set the standard for the wave of education reform in the late 20th century.  This week the Maryland General Assembly's overrode Governor Larry Hogan's veto to pass an education reform and funding package that will likely set a new standard for education reform in the 21st century. 

The Blueprint for Maryland's Future is based on the recommendations of the state’s Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, paves the way for Maryland to build a public education system benchmarked to the most globally competitive education systems around the world.

The Blueprint legislation is the first in the U.S. explicitly designed to enable a state’s students to match the performance of students in the countries that lead the world in performance, equity, and efficiency. It provides Maryland with a fairer funding system and an accountability system that will assure that the policies and practices used by the world’s top performers are put in place in the state’s schools.  

The National Center on Education the Economy (NCEE) served as the lead policy consultant to the Commission on the Maryland Blueprint. 

NCEE president emeritus Marc Tucker said that drawing on the lessons learned by the countries that now far outpace both the United States and the State of Maryland in student performance, "it is no exaggeration to say that the act of the General Assembly puts the state on a course that will enable Maryland’s businesses and citizens to compete with a full deck in a globally competitive environment that increasingly punishes the poorly educated and rewards the well-educated and highly skilled." 

Over the next few weeks, we will dig into the Maryland reform.  There are key lessons-- particularly when it comes to issues such as accountability, teacher quality, and high school reform-- that states like Kentucky can learn in looking at how to take initiatives like KERA to the next level.  

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