“Even if the feds decide that they’re not going to require statewide assessments, that is not something that I’m going to buy into,” she said. “The moment you lower standards, you do kids a disservice.”

With President Donald Trump on a path to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and revert power back to the states, Wright’s words gave urgency to a burning issue state leaders have been wrestling with for months.

While Education Secretary Linda McMahon has declared it’s “absolutely” necessary to continue the National Assessment of Educational Progress — which allows the public to compare student performance across states — she’s so far been silent on federal requirements for state testing and the need to identify low-performing schools for extra support. The lack of a plan has left some wondering if sending education “back to the states,” as Trump is fond of saying, means abandoning what has been a mainstay of education policy for more than 20 years.  

“This is one of the discussions that the department, the administration, the Senate and House need to talk through,” said Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a right leaning think tank that supports Trump’s agenda. 

A department official during the president’s first term, he argues that the Every Student Succeeds Act, the law that spells out federal requirements for testing and accountability, has had little impact on holding students to high standards. 

“States that do not want to be transparent about their testing results simply aren’t,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, just go and try and find the results for any state.”

As the president’s plan takes shape, some Republicans are trying to remove those annual testing and accountability requirements altogether. Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota reintroduced last week that would not only eliminate the education department, but also repeal ESSA. In exchange for a federal block grant, states would be required to submit student data to the Treasury Department, complete an annual audit and follow civil rights laws — but not conduct annual tests.

The rationale is clear, said Charles Barone, senior director of the Center for Innovation at the National Parents Union: Maintaining some federal authority over testing and accountability could imply there’s still a role for the department.

“Sen. Rounds’ bill simply has federal programs as money streams,” he said. “No policy attached.”

Since the pandemic, a handful of states, like Oklahoma, and , have rolled back expectations for passing state tests. The changes are likely to result in more students reaching grade-level targets even if they haven’t learned more. The trend has revived debate over the “honesty gap” — the discrepancy between NAEP’s higher standard for proficiency and the often lower bar set by states. 

Others, like and education Secretary Aimee Guidera are phasing in tougher assessment and accountability systems. To Blew, that shows the federal government should just stay out of the way. 

“At the end of the day, states are going to determine this,” he said. “Let’s give them the freedom to do that.”

Passed a decade ago, ESSA requires states to test all students in third through eighth grades in reading and math, to assess students once in high school and to ensure at least 95% of students participate in testing. States also have to break down results by race and for different student groups, including those in poverty, English learners and students with disabilities. 

The major components meet the threshold of what Barone describes as the “” for accountability. 

Testing every student allows parents to get assessment results for their own children, which can then be used to determine where students are struggling or if they need more challenging work. 

Disaggregating the results shines a light on how districts serve historically marginalized students — data that is especially important to policymakers and advocacy groups. Finally, a common test allows for apples-to-apples comparisons across schools and districts. 

“Over the years, a consensus has formed that you want certain guardrails in place,” Barone said.  

‘A federal backstop’

Observers don’t expect Rounds’ bill to get very far. But some call it a harbinger of a return to the days , the strict accountability law that preceded ESSA. In the 1990s, just a fraction of states tested students every year and many imposed no consequences for failing schools. 

“I think accountability is already at a pretty low point,” said Cory Koedel, an economics and public policy professor at the University of Missouri. “If things go back to the states even more formally, I would just expect that unwinding to complete itself.”

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the education committee, is expected to introduce another proposal to eliminate the education department and revamp the role of the federal government in education. Blew said that bill could be weeks away. 

Democrats and some state leaders warn that dumping federal testing and accountability requirements and issuing block grants would allow states to turn their backs on the neediest students.

“If you get rid of accountability, you’re just essentially giving [states] a blank check,” said Stephanie Lalle, communications director for the Democrats on the House education committee. Federal mandates, she said, are how you push them to “not discriminate and incentivize them to close the achievement gap.”

At a February conference on assessment and accountability in Dallas, Virginia ed secretary Guidera shared data showing how her state’s performance on NAEP steadily improved between 2003 and 2013 — the NCLB years. 

The landmark education law, which set strict testing and accountability requirements in exchange for Title I funds, passed in 2002. Data shows the policy led to nationally, but it quickly became highly unpopular. The law set ambitious goals for all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, but drew considerable pushback from critics who said it led schools to teach to the test. But even if states continue their own testing and accountability systems, Guidera doesn’t want Washington out of the picture.

“We need the federal backstop,” she told ����Ӱ��. “We have to have high standards, and we need to be honest with ourselves about where every child is.” 

‘A rallying cry’

Opposition to standardized testing comes from both the left and the right. Educators grumble that it eats up too much class time and that results from spring tests come back too late to help students or make adjustments for the fall. Others, , say state tests offer a narrow view of student learning. 

The question is what states would do if the federal government were no longer in the picture. In his conversation with Wright and other experts earlier this month, Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, leaned on a handy metaphor: a motorcycle cop holding a radar gun. 

“What if nobody was checking your speed?” he asked.

State leaders have been thinking about the possibilities.

Rep. Robert Behning, an Indiana state legislator, said he “would be willing to look at other options, like sampling” — giving tests to a random, representative group of students instead of everyone. can be less of a drain on teachers’ and students’ time and still give the public district and school-level results. But the tradeoff is that most parents would be left in the dark about their children’s performance.  

Other state leaders like the idea of spreading assessments rather than building up toward one big test.

“We’ve got better assessments that tell us more about our students,” Eric Mackey, Alabama state superintendent, said during a in March.  

But research shows there are with arriving at a final score for the year and the model might not reduce testing time.

Marion giving state exams every other year, which would allow more time in the intervening years to employ innovative methods like asking students to complete a project to demonstrate their learning.

Marianne Perie, an assessment expert who advises states on test design, said she wouldn’t be surprised if Oklahoma completely stopped giving statewide assessments. In March, state Superintendent Ryan Walters questioned the integrity of the 2024 results, even though they were included in for districts and schools.

But in other states like Tennessee and Mississippi, annual tests have been “a rallying cry” for parents and policymakers, said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who tracks states’ . 

Such states “have championed their gains in the last few years,” especially in English language arts, she said. 

Tennessee, for example, was among the first to bounce back from pandemic-era learning loss. At the same time, the fact that roughly 60% of third graders still scored below grade level in reading was worrisome enough to lawmakers that they passed a law requiring students to be retained or get extra help over the summer and retake the test. 

Remote learning during the pandemic and in-depth reporting on poor literacy instruction has also motivated more parents to push for improvements.

“Parents are increasingly demanding accountability from their educational system, which will make sunsetting these assessments more complex,” Oster said.

Roughly value state assessments and think they should be used to guide support for struggling schools and students, according to a National Parents Union poll.

‘Come up with something better’ 

If the federal government does hand more control over assessment and accountability to states, Barone said it’s far more likely to happen through waivers from McMahon than legislation. 

ESSA allows the secretary to excuse states from annual assessments. That’s what former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did in 2020 during the pandemic. She waived the accountability provisions for both 2020 and 2021. Barone sees no reason why McMahon wouldn’t do the same. 

A former Democratic staffer in the House, he thinks it would be hard to improve on the existing testing regimen. But even he agrees that the accountability side of the equation hasn’t led to measurable progress in how states support — and attempt to turn around — their most troubled schools. 

The law requires states to identify the lowest-performing 5% of schools, analyze why they’re struggling and adopt a proven , like coaching teachers or changing leadership. But a report found that less than half of states were complying with those requirements.

“There’s not a lot of evidence that even those that are doing it are doing it well,” Barone said. Maybe Trump’s planned overhaul of the federal role in education, he said, is an opportunity to “come up with something better.”

She ensured that all K-3 teachers were trained in the “Science of Reading” and hired literacy coaches at schools that had the highest percentage of low-achievers. 

To guide the effort, Wright turned to the , based at Florida State University, one of nationwide. Little-known even among many educators, the labs, created by Congress in 1965, work with states and school districts to implement research-based practices.​

By 2019, Wright and her colleagues had pulled off what is now known as the “Mississippi Miracle,” with students in this deep red state making greater literacy gains than in any other. Fourth-graders in Mississippi rose from 49th in the nation to 29th — adjusting for demographics, it now ranks near the top of the U.S. in both fourth-grade reading and math, behind just Florida and Texas, according to the .

“They were huge partners with us,” Wright said of the lab in an interview this week. “It’s just this amazing group of researchers and content-area specialists.” 

But that distinction wasn’t enough to save the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast — or the nine other RELs, as they’re called. On Thursday, the U.S. Education Department announced that it had $336 million in contracts with the labs, saying auditors had uncovered “wasteful and ideologically driven spending not in the interest of students and taxpayers.”

It cited one lab’s work advising schools in Ohio to undertake “equity audits,” but provided no other examples.

The move has left researchers and literacy advocates shaking their heads. A director at a top research firm with many federal contracts, who asked not to be identified to avoid retaliation, said she got the sense from the sudden, broad cuts that “no one went in and took a really careful look at where the RELs were being helpful.”

While some lab projects likely haven’t led to improvements in practices or student outcomes, she’s doubtful that department officials even pored over such data. “Someone decided that this whole program needed to go.”

An Education Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Since the centers are mandated by Congress, the department has said it will offer contracts to new bidders, but several observers said they were skeptical of this claim.

Understanding early literacy

While Mississippi’s 2013 law mandated that Wright implement research-supported teaching, as state superintendent “you can’t really be in every classroom making sure that’s happening,” said Rachel Dinkes, CEO of the , an advocacy group that pushes for evidence-based policy.

That’s where the lab came in: It developed tools that allowed Wright to gather data about what was actually happening in classrooms, tell lawmakers about its effectiveness and ask for more money to continue the work.

It focused primarily on helping teachers learn about the Science of Reading, implementing a survey that evaluated their knowledge of early literacy skills — as well as instructions for literacy coaches to observe classrooms. 

Together, these allowed Wright to track teachers’ engagement with students and identify where teachers needed improvement.

“They helped us develop resources that our teachers could use, that our leaders could use,” Wright said. “If there was something that we wanted to have evaluated programmatically, they would come in and evaluate that for us to inform our decision making. I mean, I can’t say enough about how important they were.”

Wright also implemented tough reforms that weren’t always popular, such as a policy of retaining students in third grade as a “last resort.” In 2019, third-graders, or more than one in four, failed the state’s literacy promotion test, also known as the “third-grade reading gate.”

In a 2023 op-ed in ����Ӱ��, Wright and co-author Kymyona Burk, a senior policy fellow for early literacy at , said previous research is clear that students who aren’t reading at grade level when they enter fourth grade “are not prepared for a critical transition — reading to learn — and have dramatically lower odds of succeeding in school or even graduating.”

A from the lab found that teachers’ understanding of early literacy skills rose substantially, from the 48th percentile of teachers to the 59th. In schools that Wright targeted for extra help, average teacher ratings on instructional quality also rose, from the 31st percentile to the 58th. 

The lab also connected Mississippi educators to others in the region, Wright said, offering “a chance for us to learn from each other, share what we were doing — share strategy, share resources and kind of help each other grow.”

Though Wright hesitated to credit REL Southeast for this achievement, several observers have noted of late that states in the Deep South now in improved literacy. In this year’s NAEP report, released last month, four Southern states — Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina — turned in the largest gains in fourth-grade reading from 2019 to 2024. All four are member states of REL Southeast.

In all, Wright said, she worked with lab personnel for nine years, until she left Mississippi in 2022. She called them “a group of expert partners” ready to help and beloved by her staff, who relied upon them heavily. 

“Imagine having content experts at your beck and call for no charge,” she said. “They were really, I thought, just gems of somebody’s creation.”

Losing the labs, Wright said, is “a huge disappointment” for states focused on evidence- and research-based practices. “To not have a reliable partner is a real loss for a state chief.”

The move to zero out funding for the labs may also stand in opposition to a few priorities of the Trump administration itself. In a 74 op-ed last July, Wright, along with Penny Schwinn, a former Tennessee education commissioner, praised RELs as centers that stand ready “to generate and apply evidence to improve student outcomes,” even if too few leaders take advantage of them. 

Schwinn now awaits Senate confirmation as deputy secretary of education.

Driven by community needs

Last week’s move has thrown several major research organizations into turmoil. 

In a statement, Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of the research group , which runs two RELs, said the cancellation halts a project in Alaska to support student mental health, one in Nevada that addresses chronic absenteeism, another in Oregon that works to strengthen literacy instruction and one in Utah to address early-career teacher attrition.

The research organization , which runs two RELs, said cancellation of the contracts shuts down support for “a wide range of evidence-based work” requested by state and local education leaders, including a project helping teachers in Nebraska improve differentiated math instruction, one helping teachers in New Jersey use evidence-based practices for writing instruction, and one in Maryland that helps educators prepare high school students with disabilities to transition to adult life.

Mathematica also said its labs have worked with South Dakota and Wyoming to combat teacher shortages in rural districts via apprenticeships.

Dinkes noted another instance in which a REL had a huge impact: In Michigan, state leaders turned to their regional lab to find out why so many certified teachers were no longer teaching. It undertook a survey of 60,000 teachers and that they wanted, among other things, higher salaries, better promotion opportunities and more access to full-time jobs. They also wanted smaller class sizes and student loans, as well as easier, less costly ways to renew their certification.

The state tweaked laws affecting several of these factors and expanded the number of certified teachers who opted to teach. 

Several observers noted that the RELs are, in a sense, a response to long standing GOP complaints about federal education policy’s top-down focus: They actually help local educators apply research to problems they themselves identify as crucial.

“The REL work is driven by the state’s or the community’s needs,” said Dinkes. “It is not directed by the Hill.”

Many states don’t have the research capability to undertake big projects like remaking literacy on their own, said Sara Schapiro, executive director of the , a coalition of non-profit, private and philanthropic organizations that advocate for more R&D investment. “The RELs were really set up as the infrastructure to help them do that.”

She said the labs “are a really good example of this notion of returning responsibility of different functions to the states,” where local leaders can drive a research agenda. 

Several people with knowledge of the situation also said it’s ironic that the RELs would get caught up in a battle over DEI and “woke” ideology, since much of their equity work is driven by states and school districts “seeing disparities and outcomes for their students,” said the research director who asked not to be named. “They’re trying to figure out how they can best address those disparities, and so they’ve come to the REL team with requests for help in that area.”

Dinkes, the Knowledge Alliance CEO, said the impact of the labs’ work is “not abstract — it has a direct impact on schools, communities and what parents know.” She said the way the federal contracts were severed, in the fourth year of a five-year cycle, in most cases, “derails years of work” that was having a direct impact on students. 

Wright, who now leads Maryland schools, was until last week planning to partner with the about essentially recreating the literacy and math work she did in Mississippi. 

Reached by phone after a legislative hearing in Annapolis, Wright said she had just begun developing a relationship with the Mid-Atlantic lab, led by Mathematica, when word of the cancelled contracts came down. 

“We were thinking, ‘This is great. We can establish another partnership with another REL.’ But that is not going to be the case now. It’s a real shame.”

She’s staying put.

The interim title will be removed from Carey Wright’s name after the Maryland Board of Education’s unanimous vote Wednesday to make her the permanent state superintendent of public schools.

Wright began as , replacing Mohammed Choudhury, who resigned days prior to become senior adviser for the state school board with a base salary of $310,000 until his contract expires June 30.

Wright, a Maryland native who received a $350,000 salary that was prorated for the remainder of her term until June 30, led several initiatives during her half-year leading the state school system of nearly 890,000 students.

She will begin her term as the state’s permanent leader July 1 until June 30, 2028, at an annual salary of $360,500.

Wright, who began in the education profession as a teacher in the Prince George’s County public schools in September 1972, thanked the board and said one of her goals is to listen to all stakeholders to improve public education.

“We want all of our children to be as successful as they can possibly be and it’s our job to support them to get there,” she said. “I am committed and determined to make Maryland the education destination.”

In December, the state school board retained Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA) of Illinois to help conduct a nationwide search. The firm that has conducted searches for various school systems in Maryland worked alongside the school board’s search committee to help recruit and vet qualified candidates.

At the end of the application deadline on March 1, nearly 40 people expressed interest with 26 “fully completing” applications.

The board announced a special meeting April 13, but went into an executive session. On that day, the board interviewed semi-finalists and narrowed it down to the final candidates.

On Wednesday, the board voted to retain Wright.

“We looked all across the country and you came to us as one of the top national leaders and our thorough search found that,” said board Vice President Joshua Michael, who chaired the board’s search committee. “You have both the experience and knowledge of being a Marylander and of Maryland schools and the disposition, experience and skill set to lead the reform and the improvement in public schools.”

Wright began working on statewide priorities such as incorporating the science of reading in all 24 school systems starting in the 2024-25 school year. The program, which Wright led during , focuses on teaching students based on phonics instructions sound, comprehension and vocabulary.

Wright in Annapolis, urging lawmakers to fully fund public education and to continue to support the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform.

The 10-year, multi-billion-dollar Blueprint plan is overseen by the Accountability and Implementation Board (AIB), which Wright supports.

However, the Blueprint mandates continue to vex local school officials, who have outlined in  their challenges in hiring new teachers amid a shortage in the profession, expanding prekindergarten to include 3- and 4-year-old children and incorporating college and career readiness programs into the curriculum.

Wright is leading other education initiatives such as sending literacy expert teams to visit schools and the release of a statewide literacy plan later this year. In addition, she is creating strategies to boost math test scores and has established a joint committee with representatives from the state Higher Education Commission and University System of Maryland to assess educator programs.

The state Department of Education released a in January to highlight agency strengths and challenges, which was based on 564 interviews and surveys with various state, regional and local agencies and organizations, parents and students.

Some of the strengths, according to the report, include the push for education reform, continued support of the Blueprint and collaboration between the state board, department officials and staff and other stakeholders.

The challenges include ensuring equitable experiences for all students, the challenges of the state superintendent working in collaboration with both the state board and the AIB, and state officials trying to encourage Blueprint “buy in” with some local school officials.

One challenge mentioned several times is how to improve relationships between the department, local school systems and the community.

“Transparency between the State Superintendent and all stakeholder groups was mentioned in interviews and focus groups as a significant challenge that developed under the previous administration,” according to the report. “While there has been positive momentum in recent months, the challenge to continue to provide transparent communications in order to rebuild trust with stakeholder groups is something on which the new superintendent will need to focus.”

When Wright arrived last fall, she was praised for work in Mississippi and for being a native Marylander. She received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Maryland, College Park.

“Dr. Carey Wright’s distinguished career as an educator, administrator, and leader in public education has uniquely prepared her to meet this moment as Maryland’s State Superintendent,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) said in a statement. “She is a champion for students, and I’m confident that she is the leader we need to fulfill the promise of creating a world-class public education system for Maryland.”

Cheryl Bost, president of the Maryland State Education Association, said in a statement she’s appreciated the working relationship with Wright during her tenure as interim superintendent.

“As superintendent, we hope that she will prioritize ensuring that educator voices are at the table in helping to make decisions that impact our schools, students, and critical issues like ending the educator shortage and implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future,” Bost said.

This was originally published in Maryland Matters.

But even that prediction rests on optimistic assumptions about continued improvement in the coming years. For some states, it could take longer. In Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina, for example, the percentage of students chronically absent for at least 10% of the school year went up in 2022-23, from the American Enterprise Institute. 

The report, based on available data from 39 states, calls chronic absenteeism “schools’ greatest post-pandemic challenge.” 

“We need to make a hard pivot moving forward,” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank. Minor decreases in chronic absenteeism rates are not enough to stave off “a disaster for the long term” he said, especially in low-performing and high-poverty districts that had serious absenteeism problems before the pandemic.

Malkus, a former middle school teacher, called for districts to make attendance a high priority, especially among elementary educators. Parents, he said, are more likely to respond to messages from children’s teachers than from “a stranger from the school district.” 

The report, one of two separate studies of chronic absenteeism released Wednesday, further underscores the enormity of a national crisis that is hindering students’ ability to recover academically from the pandemic. The second analysis shows a substantial increase in the share of districts where at least 30% of students missed 18 or more days of school. 

The review of federal data breaks down the rates into five levels of chronic absenteeism, with extreme being the highest. 

“We came up with these categories before the pandemic,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works. At that point, nearly 11% of districts nationally had extreme levels. “Then the pandemic hit, and it was like ‘Oh my God.’ ”

By 2021-22, the rate had more than tripled to almost 39%, , the final installment in a three-part from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. The data “compels action from state education agencies and policymakers,” researchers wrote. 

‘It’s alarming’

Some state lawmakers share that sense of urgency. So far, eight bills in seven states aim to reestablish good attendance habits among the nation’s students. 

Earlier this month, a Maryland called interim state chief Carey Wright to testify about whether news reports of shockingly high rates — with over half of students repeatedly missing school — were true.  

“It’s alarming,” she told the members, after sharing district and state-level data. “We have a lot of children who are chronically absent at very young grades, and that’s a real concern, particularly when you’re thinking that they’re starting their educational career.”

In Maryland, 274 schools out of 1,388 had an extreme chronic absenteeism rate in 2017-18. By 2021-22, that number had reached 700.

Lori Phelps, principal of Woodbridge Elementary in Catonsville, joined Wright to explain how her staff reduced its rate from 28% in 2021-22 to just over 9% in 2022-23.

Identifying patterns that increase absences is part of the answer, she added. For example, students were more likely to miss school on early-release days, so the staff worked with parent leaders to offer an afternoon program on those days. The PTA charged $10, but waived the fee for students with the most absences.

“We all want to prioritize those very important state scores,” Phelps said, “but we made a decision two years ago to prioritize attendance.”

No buses

But even parents determined to get their children to school face significant obstacles if they don’t have transportation. In Colorado, every district has to save money or because of driver shortages, said Michelle Exstrom, education director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. She serves on a expected to propose transportation solutions by the end of the year.  

“In rural areas all over the country, where kids don’t have a ride to school, it’s like, duh, they’re not going to be at school,” she said. A lot of parents can’t leave work at 2:30 to pick up their children, she said, and even high school students with cars often can’t drive to school because there’s not enough parking, she said.

In Ohio, two lawmakers think some might reduce chronic absenteeism in kindergarten and ninth grade, two grade levels with rates around 30%. 

The bill, from Democrat Rep. Dani Isaacsohn and Republican Rep. Bill Seitz, would offer $500 annually to families in low-income districts to boost attendance rates in those grades and ideally save money on dropout recovery services in the long run. If passes, it would start as a pilot this fall .

Seitz told ����Ӱ�� he expects “significant supportive testimony,” based on the success of a similar program led by a .

Another proposal in , which had a 30% chronic absenteeism rate last year, would provide for home visits and tutoring to keep frequently absent high school students on track for graduation. And a would update the definition of “educational neglect” to include a parent’s failure to comply with attendance requirements.

‘Studied in real time’

But both Malkus and Chang expressed skepticism of state solutions that fail to factor in the highly localized nature of the problem. , for example, one reason chronic absenteeism levels haven’t dropped is because “there are whole communities still feeling the effects of wildfires,” said Marc Siegel, spokesman for the state education department. In general, Malkus said it’s unlikely state legislation would be “a rapid-enough response.” And Chang worried that legislators could be “too prescriptive.”

“I think folks have to have local flexibility to unpack the issues,” she said. 

But she does think states are helping in at least one critical area: producing more accurate and timely data. 

In the past, it was often June before states released chronic absenteeism data from the year before — a fact that delayed efforts to help students. In Rhode Island, the public can the percentage of students at each school on track to be chronically absent by the end of the year. Malkus would like to see more leaders take that approach.

 “If we want to address it with eyes wide open,” he wrote, “chronic absenteeism needs to be studied in real time.”

When Maryland hired a new state superintendent of schools in October, the reaction among education observers was one of excitement — mixed with a sense of relief.

Carey Wright, who has been to complete the term of outgoing Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury, is a top-tier recruit with deep ties to Maryland. She spent decades in some of the state’s largest school districts before serving a nine-year stint as schools chief in Mississippi, where she was credited with leading a highly successful overhaul to literacy instruction.

Locals are hoping her appointment can jump-start a similar revival in Maryland, where pandemic-era learning loss has dealt a severe blow to student scores that once ranked among the best in the country. She will also be charged with steadying the Maryland State Department of Education after Choudhury’s rocky two-year tenure at its helm, which ended in September amid allegations that his leadership style created a “toxic” environment and caused friction with state authorities. 

The uncertainty around Choudhury’s departure (he will continue to collect a salary and act as an advisor to the state board going forward) led to a dilemma that was only fitfully resolved, said Kalman Hettleman, a longtime education policy observer who of the former superintendent. While lambasting the lack of progress on lost learning in recent years, he called the board’s choice of Wright as his replacement a “grand slam” selection.

”It looked like we were stuck,” Hettleman said. “We’re un-stuck now.”

Still approved to serve only through the rest of Choudhury’s term, which ends next June — the state has to lead a nationwide search for the next superintendent — Wright that she intends to seek the job on a permanent basis. In her introductory press conference, that she would pursue a dedicated literacy strategy similar to the one she followed in Mississippi, noting that children must “learn to read in order to love to read.”

Wright’s time in the South coincided with one of the most impressive turnarounds in the history of American education. Between 2013 and 2022, Mississippi fourth graders on both the reading and math sections of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. While not improving as quickly, eighth graders also saw consistent growth in both subjects, and the success was spread widely among students of differing racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

In all, elementary schoolers in Mississippi began the last decade mired among the lowest-performing students in the country and finished at or above the national average. In fact, shows that Mississippi would be one of the top-performing states in the country if NAEP scores were adjusted for demographic factors such as race, poverty level, and special needs status. 

By contrast, Maryland has experienced a over the same 10-year span, and its fourth graders at a lower level than Mississippi’s. This in spite of the fact that Mississippi is in the U.S. and Maryland one of the richest; according to by the National Education Association, Maryland spends approximately 56 percent more on each of its pupils than does Mississippi. The release of state standardized test scores this summer showed that while passed Mississippi’s exams than in 2019, Maryland pupils are behind their pre-pandemic performance. 

, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and deputy director of the university’s Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, said the “abysmal” scores caused consternation among the state’s education community.

“Everyone has recoiled a bit because Maryland is so used to being in the upper echelons of achievement for both literacy and math,” Anderson said. “Now it feels like we’re stuck in the middle.”

Battling ‘complacency’ on reading

Wright’s task will be to replicate a version of what she executed in her last stop. 

Mississippi’s rapid improvement came only after policymakers there — including, but not limited to, its superintendent — fundamentally shifted the state’s approach to instruction and accountability, with a particular focus on reading. Teachers and administrators were provided with special, evidence-based training; literacy coaches were dispatched to schools that struggled with the subject; and in many instances, kids who couldn’t pass a reading test at the end of the third grade had to repeat the year in school.

The approach reflects a focus on what educators call the “science of reading,” the wide body of psychological and neuroscientific research into how people come to understand the written word. In the last decade, have passed laws informed by that research and designed to put children on a path to reading proficiency by the end of the third grade. Maryland has . The state’s “Ready to Read” legislation, passed in 2019, mandates that incoming kindergartners be screened for reading challenges, and school districts have been offered funds in exchange for switching to higher-quality curricula, but stricter requirements around student assessment and retention haven’t been imposed.

Instead, the state has concentrated on rolling out a separate policy, called the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. Estimated to cost nearly $4 billion before it is fully implemented in the 2030s, the plan seeks to provide more resources to schools serving poor students, extend public pre-K offerings and raise teacher salaries, among other priorities. Its ambition and cost have made it one of America’s most-watched education reforms, but Hettleman said that the Blueprint’s authors didn’t sufficiently emphasize the kind of changes necessary to improve reading results.  

“The legislative leadership in Maryland thought that the Blueprint was the be-all, end-all, cure-all for everything, and it wasn’t,” Hettleman said. “That bred a kind of complacency as other states developed specific reading initiatives.”

Wright, who declined an interview request, will now have responsibility for making the plan work. In part, her duties will include mending relationships with Maryland education authorities, including the state board of education, which were frayed under Choudhury’s leadership. A number of high-ranking employees at the state Department of Education , with some complaining of the then-superintendent’s allegedly brusque manner. He also for his habit of addressing subordinates through encrypted messages on his personal phone.

The effects of the previous years’ staff departures are still to be seen. were last updated in 2022, and former senior officials have warned of “brain drain” as years of organizational experience are lost, whether due to clashes with Choudhury or more conventional turnover. This spring, it would return over $800,000 in federal funding for salaries and professional development in the area of career and technical education, a move that some former staffers attributed to inaction by leadership. (According to state documents, the Department of Education later allowed for the money to be recouped and disbursed after the original grant term had expired.)

In the final months of Choudhury’s tenure, that it had reduced its job vacancy rate by over 50 percent. But even that progress wouldn’t solve the atrophy of staff experience and relationships, Anderson said.

“People I had historically worked with at the Maryland State Department of Education — who I’d had as colleagues for years — very few of them have remained at the department,” she noted. “Whether or not the positions are filled, we have to go back to the brass tacks of getting to know who people are, and all our institutional knowledge has been swept away.”

In an October exit interview with ����Ӱ��’s Beth Hawkins, Choudhury lamented that he had not “spent more time engaging, talking to people who are power brokers, who have more political capital, who have the ability to ultimately be for or against something and can either work against you or for you.”

Supporters of Wright say that her extensive background as a former state schools chief shows that she is able to productively collaborate with the wide array of constituencies that will determine the success of her agenda: the state board, teachers’ unions and local districts, which have traditionally operated with considerable autonomy in Maryland. 

In particular, she may need to repair her department’s relationship with the Accountability and Implementation Board, the body specifically charged with overseeing the Blueprint over the next decade. Earlier this year, the board and the superintendent’s office over which entity had the authority to approve districts’ plans to enact Blueprint-related policies. 

Brit Kirwan is the former chancellor of the University System of Maryland and served as the chair of the state’s , the recommendations of which helped produce the Blueprint. Noting the difficulty of leading an academic recovery in Maryland while simultaneously working to realize generational changes in education policy, he called Wright’s appointment “a gift from the gods.”

“We’re undertaking a degree of reform that is unprecedented in the United States,” Kirwan said. “It requires enormous talent for an administrator in organization and collaboration and building broad bases of support to pull this off.”

Carey Wright will become Maryland’s interim superintendent of public schools after the state Board of Education’s unanimous vote during an online session Wednesday.

Wright is expected to start her new gig Oct. 23 to oversee a public school system with nearly 890,000 students and becoming the leading advocate for the 10-year Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan.

Wright stepped down last week as a four-year member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which helps set policies for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

While serving on the governing board, she worked as state superintendent of education in Mississippi from 2013 until she retired last year.

Wright served at that position since the state board was created in 1982.

Maryland school board President Clarence Crawford said in a brief interview that one of Wright’s strengths is her work in literacy reform in Mississippi. During her tenure in the state, she’s credited with increasing the state’s graduation rate from 75.5% to 88.4%.

“She’s also known as a consensus builder. She went to Mississippi not knowing anyone going down there, but somehow was able to develop relationships with a largely Republican legislature and governor,” Crawford said. “We’re very fortunate to have her.”

Before Wright takes over, Sylvia Lawson, deputy state superintendent for organizational services, will serve as acting superintendent beginning this upcoming weekend.

That’s because will resign Friday as the state’s current public schools leader and the next day become senior adviser for the state school board.

Choudhury will provide education guidance, advice and strategies on state priorities such as the education reform plan.

As part of an agreement between Choudhury and the school board, he will continue to receive his base salary of $310,000 on a current contract that expires June 30. He will also have the option to work remotely or at the department’s office in Baltimore.

Wright’s term as interim superintendent will also end in June.

After the board’s vote, Wright joined the Zoom session and gave brief remarks such as working with the board, department staff, state and local leaders, teachers, students and families.

“We’ve got a grand opportunity here to ensure strong equitable outcomes for all of our students. I just want you to know I intend to take advantage of that opportunity to make sure that this actually comes to happen,” Wright said. “Thank you, again, for your support. It is very much appreciated. I am looking forward to getting to know all of you much better.”

Crawford said a national search for a permanent leader will continue. He will lead a transition joint committee comprised of some board members and department leadership.

Board Vice President Joshua Michael will lead a search committee with other board members. That group will work to search for a firm to help recruit a permanent leader to begin a new four-year term starting July 1.

Meanwhile, Wright has roots in Maryland, obtaining her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Maryland in College Park. She started her teaching career in the 1970s at Prince George’s County Public Schools.

According to Wright’s LinkedIn profile, she spent more than 26 years in Howard County public schools as a teacher, principal and director of special education and student services.

In May 2003, when she left Howard County, she headed south to Montgomery County for about six years to work as an associate superintendent at the school system’s Office of Special Education and Student Services.

Between August 2009 to May 2013, she worked as a chief academic officer and then a deputy chief for D.C. public schools.

She then worked in Mississippi from November 2013 until she retired in June 2022.

Wright also manages her own company called The Wright Approach Consulting. Her LinkedIn page describes her work as including leadership development and training, special education compliance and professional development for administrators and teachers.

Cheryl Bost, president of the state’s Education Association, released a statement on Wright’s selection.

“We look forward to meeting with and learning more about Dr. Wright and her plans as interim superintendent,” she said. “To be successful in Maryland, Dr. Wright will need to have an open door for educators, support the implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future with a focus on equity, and ensure that schools are welcoming and safe places for all of our students, no matter who they are or where they’re from.”