What that means, practically speaking, is that the most targeted and resource-heavy programs are poured into turning around the bottom 5% of schools in every state, including those with chronically bad graduation rates and those where certain subgroups of students languish below grade-level. 

On its face, that’s not a bad priority — though being identified as such has historically meant being targeted with drastic policy changes, including state takeovers. But in many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled the traditional school landscape: Suddenly, math and reading scores plummeted across the board for students in every school, and chronic absenteeism soared. Four years later, the U.S. education system is still trying to claw its way back to pre-pandemic achievement levels. 

It’s no longer just the bottom 5 percent of schools in each state that are in trouble — it’s the majority of them. Recognizing this, Illinois developed a universal model of continuous school improvement to ensure that every school in the state — not just those identified for support by being the very worst — benefits from evidence-based improvement strategies. The goal of extending that type of focused support to every school, unique to Illinois, was developed in partnership with administrators, school boards, superintendents and principals. 

So when the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University announced it was planning a new state collaborative aimed at helping states identify, study and share their most effective school improvement policies, Illinois knew it would have something special to share.

The state is one of nine — along with Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas — participating in “States Leading States.” The goal of the initiative is ambitious: to work alongside state leaders to evaluate policies meant to solve their most pressing challenges and make those lessons rapidly accessible via a series of rolling policy reports to lawmakers and practitioners across the country.

“We are in a crisis moment in education,” said Scott Sargrad, director of States Leading States. “Now is really the time to double down on what works. And so in order to double down on what works, we need to know what works.”

The effort comes as the most recent math and reading scores for high schoolers plummet to record lows, chronic absenteeism soars and more and more students graduate without the skills necessary to be successful in college or the workplace. And it’s all occurring against the backdrop of a significantly diminished federal role in education under the Trump administration — both in terms of funding K-12 programs and prioritizing research to elevate best practices.

Take the myriad state efforts to boost reading scores by adopting policies better aligned to the science of reading. “It’s not totally clear what the best policy levers are to pull at the state level to actually get better teaching in the classroom, instructional coaching,” said Sargrad. “Is it tutoring? Is it high-quality instructional materials? Is it all of those things combined? We’re trying to figure out what the most effective state policies are on a bunch of pressing issues.” 

In addition to its continuous improvement plan, Illinois, for example, is in the process of developing a so-called “Comprehensive Numeracy Plan.” Modelled after a literacy program by the same name, the numeracy plan will establish a roadmap for strengthening math teaching and learning across the state, which right now, most states haven’t attempted. 

Harvard’s initiative is already garnering praise from both sides of the edu-political spectrum, with Margaret Spellings, former Education Secretary under President George W. Bush, and John B. King Jr., former Education Secretary under President Barack Obama, both backing the plan.

“At a time when too many students are not reading at grade level or able to do basic math and the gaps between highest and lowest performing students are growing, we need to make student achievement a priority again and develop evidence-based strategies that help all students succeed,” said Spellings, who is now the president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center. King, who is currently the Chancellor of the State University of New York, said the initiative “sets a powerful example for the country.” 

States Leading States plans to publish research reports and practical policy solutions, sharing what works and what doesn’t. Attracting the right mix of states was important, Sargrad said, since ensuring geographic, demographic and political diversity of states participating in the initiative increases the likelihood for other state education leaders to glimpse how these policy lifts might play out in their state or district.

During this first year of collaboration, states are focusing on a variety of K-12’s biggest challenges. With social media and cell phone bans top-of-mind right now, a handful of states are focusing their initial efforts on identifying the most effective policy: Ohio is preparing to implement a statewide bell-to-bell cell phone ban, while Illinois and Delaware school districts are testing alternative cellphone policies, like requiring students to use phone pouches or keep them turned off and stored by the teacher. 

The current federal landscape puts “an urgent responsibility” on states to collaborate, try new ideas, measure their impact and share what works, said Angélica Infante-Green, commissioner of elementary and secondary education for Rhode Island. Beyond the current federal government shutdown, which has, among other things, resulted in the near total layoff of staff at the Office of Special Education Programs, the current administration’s efforts to dismantle the entire Education Department portends dire consequences for the ability to identify which state policies are working.

Some of those states are focusing on more traditional academic metrics: To improve reading proficiency in sixth through eighth grade, Indiana is piloting an outcomes-based approach for improving middle school literacy. This is a newer type of education vendor contract that holds service providers and districts accountable for student progress through language that stipulates payment upon literacy improvement on test scores. 

Alabama is requiring every district to offer summer reading and math camps for struggling students. The camps are a component of statewide efforts to improve reading and math proficiency, as mandated by the . For struggling third-grade readers, attending a summer reading camp is one option to avoid being held back and requires passing a second reading test to advance to the fourth grade. Some districts are already seeing significant improvement, including in DeKalb County, where math scores are at an all-time high. 

Meanwhile, Tennessee, Texas, and Rhode Island are taking on a host of challenges, from boosting access to career credentials, to implementing high-quality curriculum and addressing chronic absenteeism.

A key piece of the initiative involves equipping state agencies with the skills and personnel needed to conduct and use data analysis for continuous improvement — a boon for states in search of technical assistance in the wake of a 90 percent cut to the Education Department’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. Each state will host a data project fellow from Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research to help organize data, analyze implementation, and build a community of researchers ready to share insights across state lines.

“We’re not a political action committee, we’re not an advocacy group. What we know how to do is measure the efficacy of policies, and when we find things that work, we’re going to try to make sure other states are aware of it,” Sargrad said. “There are a lot of things we can’t do right now, but one thing we can do is shine a spotlight on things that work. And we can do it well.”

Maryland offers a rare enticement to Democrats in a year of ebbing popular support and forbidding electoral prospects — perhaps the party’s best chance to flip control over any state government. Popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is term-limited, spurring a parade of hopefuls to pile into the race before the primaries on July 19.

Among the 10 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination is John King, one of the most recognizable names in American education policy. A former teacher, charter school founder, and state superintendent of New York, King gained national prominence when then-President Obama named him U.S. secretary of education in 2016. After a stint in the world of , he launched his campaign last April with a heavy emphasis on his background in schools.

At the outset, King’s candidacy looked like the perfect meeting of man and moment: As governor, he could lean on decades of leadership experience to help pull Maryland schools out of the post-COVID doldrums. Even more importantly, his fluency in K-12 issues might prove especially useful now that the state has begun implementation of the , a colossal reform to education finance and accountability that has been gestating for years. It is hoped that the billions of dollars of new education funding included in the plan could set the course for systemic improvement in learning for all students.

In the year since his announcement, however, King’s candidacy hasn’t caught fire. With less than two months to go before the primary, that he lags behind competitors with greater local visibility and more to spend. A packed Democratic field has made it difficult for any favorite to emerge, and local prognosticators wide-open, but the former education secretary has struggled to brand himself in an environment where schools are off the front burner. Paradoxically, the very presence of the Blueprint reforms — which the next governor, Democrat or Republican, will be bound to enact — may be blunting what should be King’s advantage as a well-known authority on education. 

“Education is not an issue, for all practical purposes,” argued Kalman “Buzzy” Hettleman, a two-time Baltimore school board member and former Maryland Secretary of Human Resources. “The Democratic candidates are mostly all progressive…and there are no real differences of any sort among them. The Blueprint has sort of preempted education from being a significant issue.”

For his own part, King maintains that his brand of progressive leadership will win over Democratic voters and that the task of changing Maryland schools will require the expertise that he alone brings to the race.

“The Blueprint will lead to greater investment in our high-needs schools, expansion of pre-K, expansion of high-quality career and technical education, making all of our high-poverty schools community schools with wraparound services,” King said in an interview with ����Ӱ��. “There’s a ton of potential, but we need a governor who will actually follow through on that Blueprint, and that’s one of the core commitments of our campaign.”

But Kurt Schmoke, the president of the University of Baltimore and a former three-term mayor of the state’s largest city, wondered aloud whether any candidate could “make schools the focal point of the campaign.”

“Education is a governing issue, not a campaign issue,” Schmoke said. “That’s John’s problem.”

‘The Blueprint is now the agenda’

Few experts are as familiar with the needs of local schools as David Hornbeck, who served as state superintendent from 1976 to 1988 and now leads the nonprofit . The group was founded specifically to draw attention to the recommendations of the Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, which eventually became the basis of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

That panel (known locally as the Kirwan Commission after its chairman, former University of Maryland chancellor Brit Kirwan) was assembled in 2016 by the Maryland General Assembly to recommend necessary improvements to an education system that many saw as and . — that academic performance was generally unimpressive, significant achievement gaps divided students by race and class, and the state wasn’t meeting its financial obligations to poor children — were as unflattering as its proposed remedies were ambitious. 

“I consider the Blueprint to be one of the most dramatic, comprehensive, systemic pieces of education legislation ever in the United States,” said Hornbeck, who compared its significance to the advent of the first “common schools” in the early 19th century. “It has that potential, and whoever the next governor is has the challenge of making that happen and the opportunity to take Maryland not only straight to the top of performance in the United States but to compete favorably in the global context,” he added.

In legislative form, the Blueprint earmarks nearly $4 billion in state and local funding to lift the salaries of school staff, dramatically expand access to pre-kindergarten for three- and four-year-olds, improve career and technical education offerings, and provide supplemental support for schools and districts that enroll disproportionate numbers of students from low-income families. It also established a new regulatory body, the seven-member Accountability and Implementation Board, to evaluate schools’ progress and enforce new performance requirements, overruling the state department of education when necessary.

But it faced a rocky path to enactment. Gov. Hogan, who has pushed for tax cuts and waged several high-profile budget battles with the overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly, when asked during his 2018 reelection campaign how he would raise the necessary revenue to fund the Kirwan initiatives. He controversially vetoed the Blueprint when it was passed in 2020, and even after the veto was overridden, critics complained that he in his 2022 budget; while its members have begun their work, they have resorted to drawing funds from newly-legalized sports betting revenues.

Hornbeck said that even after a half-decade of deliberation and legislating around the work of the Kirwan Commission, implementation would be “far harder than passing the bill itself.” The next governor, no matter their own positions or prior qualifications, will need to devote his administration to the tough challenge of holding districts’ feet to the fire and keeping the spotlight pointed on school improvement.  

“The worst thing that can happen, in my view, is for people to dust off their hands, say, ‘Well, we’ve handled that,’ and move on to something else,” Hornbeck said. “Yes, the Blueprint is now the agenda, it has hopefully taken the education policy question off the table, but it has not neutralized it by any means. If anything, it has defined the opportunity of leadership in this area.”

With opportunity comes political cost: specifically, the candidates’ ability to gain attention with their own policy proposals. Arguably no candidate is affected more than King, who might have otherwise staked out a niche as the education candidate. 

Schools form a thread running through King’s biography, the site of two generations of service to community and a proofpoint of what an energetic public sector can achieve. The son of a guidance counselor and a school principal, the former cabinet secretary was orphaned by the age of 12. He has that he might have ended up “dead or in prison” but for the influence of great teachers.

“Both my parents passed away when I was a kid, and schools saved my life,” King said. “I share that story in the context of making the case that government can be a transformative, positive force: We can have a pragmatic, progressive vision that moves the state forward, with government being that force for good in people’s lives.” 

But with the Blueprint flattening the distinctions between candidates in an already crowded field, it’s an open question whether Democratic voters are looking for a nominee with K-12 experience. A found that 17 percent of Maryland residents said they wanted the state government to prioritize education; but amid in Baltimore and the Washington, D.C., suburbs, an even greater number said they wanted more focus on public safety.

“There are many well-known, established candidates who have been on the political scene in Maryland for a very long time,” said Matt Gallagher, president of the Baltimore-focused , a local philanthropy. “And while public education is always one of the dominant issues of any campaign, particularly in Maryland, I would say that for a very significant part of this campaign…it probably hasn’t received the same level of attention as it has in prior cycles.”

A crowded field

Roughly 6 weeks remain in a campaign that has seen little polling during the course of the primary. And while several candidates, including King, have their statewide advertising purchases, most of the existing public opinion data indicates that the former education secretary has significant ground to make up.

The  found Comptroller Peter Franchot — a relative moderate who some believe would give the Democrats their best chance in a cycle that favors Republicans — leading all candidates with just 20 percent. He was followed by Wes Moore, a bestselling author who also founded a nonprofit to help high school graduates transition to college. Tom Perez, a former U.S. Labor Secretary and Democratic National Committee chair, held third place, and King was even further behind, winning over just 4 percent of the remaining respondents. A significant plurality of respondents to the survey, which was conducted jointly by the Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore, were undecided.

Those figures, from one of the only independent polls conducted thus far, generally reflect the candidates’ relative positioning in other surveys. But they do clash somewhat with the contents of an internal King polling memo , which found King tied with Moore at 16 percent and behind only Franchot. That memo was produced by the Democratic polling firm , and has been  as a sign of growing momentum behind their cause

Party support is divided as starkly as Democratic voters. Perez, a longtime resident of heavily populated Montgomery County, has swept the endorsements of many of its Democratic leaders. Rushern Baker — the fourth-place candidate in the Sun poll and a well-known veteran of the 2018 gubernatorial campaign — is predictably popular in Prince George’s County, where he once served as county executive. Moore has the backing of the Maryland State Educators’ Association, 2018 nominee Benjamin Jealous, and even U.S. House Majority Leader (and Maryland native) Steny Hoyer; he is also a powerhouse fundraiser.

Gallagher, who previously served as chief of staff to Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, noted that candidates who can boast long-running relationships with Democratic voters are likely favored.

“When you think about the voting block that Prince George’s and Montgomery County represent — and the fact that they’re going to be divided up by some pretty known quantities — it makes it tough to break through as a first-time candidate,” Gallagher said. “Lateral entry in statewide politics is very difficult, particularly when you’re trying to overcome other candidates whom hundreds of thousands of people have voted for before.”

Schmoke, who mulled several statewide runs after his tenure as Baltimore mayor, said that the time remaining before Democrats choose a nominee would be sufficient for King to make up ground — but only if he had an advertising budget to match.

“If he doesn’t have the resources, having a very low name recognition…is truly a problem,” warned Schmoke, who has yet to endorse any candidate but employed Moore as a mayoral intern in the late 1990s. “But if he can raise the money to do the media buys, he can become competitive.”

There is reason to think that the primary electorate is still substantially up for grabs. According to an April poll conducted on behalf of For the People MD, a political action committee supporting King, said they’d given the nomination battle little or no thought thus far. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds who said they preferred any candidate indicated that they were open to voting for someone else.

King said that he was the only candidate who had stumped in every Maryland county and that his field operation represented “the strongest grassroots campaign in this race.” He added that he patterned his own run after the successful candidacy of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who campaigned as an outsider in 2006 and became only the second African American ever elected governor of a U.S. state.

“If you look at that Patrick campaign, what he did was meet-and-greets, every day, to build that grassroots movement,” King said. “He’d been a federal official before, hadn’t been involved in Massachusetts state politics, but he built a grassroots movement around a set of ideas for how to move the state forward. That’s what we’re doing in Maryland.”

But Hettleman warned that Baker, Moore, and Perez were all dynamic, non-white candidates who brought their own political skills and organizational advantages to the table. 

“Each of those guys is formidable, and each comes with something of a constituency. John King is known only to education folks like me. He has no real, on-the-ground experience in Maryland, and I doubt if all the money in the world would change the dynamics. But he doesn’t have that either.”

]]> /article/bipartisan-coalitions-new-k-12-climate-action-plan-says-net-zero-schools-infrastructure-changes-are-key-to-mitigating-climate-change/ Tue, 28 Sep 2021 18:43:57 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=578311 A new bipartisan coalition with some high-profile education leaders has released an action plan outlining how the sector can model climate change solutions.

Recommendations include ways schools can reduce carbon emissions, utilize infrastructure as a teaching tool, support communities of color disproportionately affected by weather crises and create pathways for students to pursue green jobs.

“Ultimately, there are a lot of technical fixes that we need in addressing climate change. But we will need people to actually advance a sustainable society,” said Laura Schifter, senior fellow with the Aspen Institute and founder of the new initiative, .

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Synthesizing a year of listening tours and research, the connects one of the country’s most sizable public sectors to actionable climate solutions — like warming effects by replacing the nation’s largest diesel fleet with electric school buses and swapping the common asphalt plots that surround schools with green spaces.

Organized by federal, state and local impact, all recommendations detail what partnerships can and do look like with business, philanthropy, media and advocacy organizations across the country.

In comparison with private homes, public safety offices and businesses, , according to the New Buildings Institute, a nonprofit that tracks and helps to redesign commercial spaces’ energy performance. Annually, K-12 schools in the U.S. produce emissions equivalent to or roughly 15 million cars. Energy is the second most costly expense for school districts on average.

The K12 Climate Action of students, teachers, education administrators and environmental leaders includes incoming Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, researcher and president of the Learning Policy Institute and the presidents of the country’s two largest teachers unions, representing roughly 4 million educators combined. The group is co-led by Republican Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, and Democrat John King, former U.S. secretary of education under President Obama who is now running for Maryland governor.

With the action plan now live, the commission is coalition building with districts and businesses nationwide. Their focus is educating more leaders about how small and large school infrastructure changes or partnerships can support a cleaner environment, so that they’re able to follow through on recommendations.

“All the things that we’re calling for are achievable. There’s someplace somewhere that is doing each of the things we recommend,” King told ����Ӱ��.

Some suggested changes, like improving air quality for students, are highly anticipated by parents and already underway in efforts to ameliorate pandemic health concerns. Beginning next year, more than 500 schools across New York state will further improve air quality, reduce emissions and add energy career and tech opportunities under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s just-announced $59 million . New York officials are partnering with the New Buildings Institute on the effort.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers who sometimes clashed with King in her role as a labor leader, told ����Ӱ�� that the union “leaped” at the opportunity to be involved in K12 Climate Action, seeing it as part of the AFT’s broader goal to make schools safe and healthy spaces for learning.

“The way you teach people is by not telling them, but having them see, feel, touch, use whatever senses they have to really envision a future,” she said.

Weingarten and other commission leaders toured Alice West Fleet Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia Sept. 21 to learn how a small school has become a model of sustainability for the affluent, D.C. area county. The school’s geothermal heating system and solar panels save roughly $100,000 in energy costs each year, enough to fund two teachers’ starting salaries, according to the Aspen Institute’s Laura Schifter.

In the center of Alice West Fleet, the red and blue lights of a “solar pole” show students how much energy is being produced and used at any given moment. Any surplus goes to greater Arlington County, and upper grade students use data collected to make comparisons and predictions about how much energy will be produced at different points in the year.

On the first floor is the yet-to-be-named “Power Pole,” showing students the amount of power the school has generated. The blue is from the solar panels, the red is the power being used. Extra power goes back to the county.

— AFT (@AFTunion)

Weingarten, whose enthusiasm was evident during the tour when she slid down a slide that connects Fleet’s third and second floors, added that the AFT recently established a climate task force, including members from states heavily dependent on the fossil fuel industry, like Texas, West Virginia and Alaska. The growing urgency to address climate needs across political parties and geography gives her hope that what unites us is greater than what divides us.

“Just like our responsibility to educate kids, there’s a responsibility to keep a climate that’s going to be there,” Weingarten said.

Commission member Nikki Pitre, executive director for the told ����Ӱ�� that there’s also a responsibility to keep Indigenous people and values at the forefront of climate solutions, given that Native peoples have always stewarded the land and acted as environmentalists.

The action plan emphasizes that Indigenous communities’ knowledge systems — their local culture and ecological practices — must be included in climate solutions.

Pitre said she walked away from the tour of Alice Fleet questioning, “What do we need to advocate for in our policies to ensure that these schools are not the exception? That we’re providing equal access across the country — including tribal reservations, including urban spaces?”

School leaders on the commission say that equity considerations play a key part in deciding which sustainable infrastructure improvements are prioritized because solutions cannot be one-size-fit-all. For some districts, climate issues are just as urgent as addressing unfinished learning and mental health concerns related to the pandemic as families face unprecedented flooding in the South and upper Atlantic.

As Los Angeles County’s superintendent of schools, Debra Duardo leads the that constitute the nation’s largest K-12 consolidated school system. She told ����Ӱ�� she hesitated when first approached by the commission, given all the urgent challenges facing students during the pandemic.

“I hadn’t really placed as much of an emphasis on my own time and knowledge on understanding the impact that the education sector has on the environment. For me it was like, we’re super busy right now, but one thing this pandemic has taught us is that schools have to be ready to step up — that people look to schools as the hub of support and resources and communities,” Duardo said.

In Los Angeles, where families increasingly face poor air quality from smog and fire smoke, she said, it’s historically been student and environmental activists leading the charge for climate solutions. However busy leaders might be, she said, they cannot ignore the dread young people feel when confronting climate change and the strains it may place on their learning.

“There’s so much evidence and research that tells us that children thrive when they’re in an environment where it’s safe, beautiful and accommodating to meet their needs …Children aren’t going to learn and thrive in an environment if they don’t feel like anybody is listening, or they’re concerned that their futures, their safety are in danger.”

Advocates and teachers say presents a way to confront some eco-anxiety with positive actions and possibilities for future careers in engineering, green infrastructure and clean energy. K12 Climate Action commissioners contend that infrastructure changes are reducing emissions while preparing the next generation of stewards.

Sustainable changes also open the door for deeper civic and family engagement at a time when the pandemic has strained relationships to schools. As a part of a larger research assignment on the Chesapeake Bay, Ashley Snyder’s fourth-grade students at Alice West Fleet started brainstorming ways to share with the community how best to enhance rain gardens and filtration systems to protect the watershed area.

“I definitely see the students bringing home a lot more of what they’re learning to their families,” she said.

]]> /article/maryland-governor-john-king-education-secretary-announcement/ Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:48:16 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=571092 Highlighting his experience as a former teacher and school founder, former U.S. Secretary of Education John King unveiled his 2022 campaign for governor of Maryland on Tuesday in an announcement steeped in talk of education, opportunity and inequality.

A cabinet appointee of former President Barack Obama, King could become both the state’s first African American governor and the rare candidate to win office from a perch in federal education politics. In an introductory video posted to Twitter, the first-time candidate, who most recently served as the president and CEO of the nonprofit Education Trust, strongly emphasized his ties to public schools.

I’m running for governor of Maryland because I see the vision of a prosperous future for our state, built on economic, racial, climate, and educational justice. We as Marylanders have a common destiny, and we can realize that future together. Join us:

— Dr. John B. King, Jr. (@JohnBKing)

“The great thing about the idea of a teacher as governor is that teachers know we have to start with listening to our students, seeing each of our students as whole people,” King said. “That’s how a governor should think.”

The former cabinet secretary’s identification with educators could help swing a Democratic primary in which their support will be vital — but prior friction with teachers’ unions may also complicate his run.

King’s bid makes him one of a slew of Democrats seeking the inside track in a party primary that won’t be settled until next June. Peter Franchot, the state’s long-serving comptroller, is considered an and name recognition, and former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 2018, has also the race.

With Republican Gov. Larry Hogan unable to seek a third term, the field will likely grow in the coming months: Popular author and Baltimore native Wes Moore, founder of the education-related tech platform BridgeEdU, is , and former Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez (like King, an Obama administration alumnus) is as well. National forecasters are , one of the bluest states in the country, a plum target for Democratic takeover next year.

If his rollout is any indication, King will rely on a few personal assets to negate his lack of campaign experience or deep ties to Maryland politics. One is his inspirational biography: Orphaned at the age of 12 and later expelled from high school, he said career educators “saved his life” by pushing him to overcome emotional turmoil and earn three Ivy League degrees.

“The thing that saved me was [that] I was blessed to have phenomenal public school teachers who made school a place that was safe and compelling and engaging,” he declared in his campaign video.

While King spent much of his career in New York and Massachusetts, he can also lay claim to a powerful connection to Maryland: His great-grandfather was just 25 miles from where he now lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

David Steiner, the executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Education Policy and King’s predecessor as New York State commissioner of education, said in an email to ����Ӱ�� that he was delighted to see King run, praising his “courage and passion for progress.”

“He has been through so much as a human being that he has learned to bracket out what isn’t essential to his work. And what is essential for John is finding the strongest pathways to create equity of opportunity for all those who lack it. My simple suggestion to my fellow Marylanders: just listen and judge.”

Reform background

But King’s long experience in the K-12 arena could prove a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, the state might be well-served with an experienced education bureaucrat at the helm. Just last year, legislators voted for of state education financing, allocating over $4 billion over the next decade to expand public pre-K, send more aid to high-poverty schools, and raise teacher pay. Though the new outlays were by last year’s COVID-related drop in local revenues, Democrats in Annapolis used new federal funding to — known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future — in the state budget earlier this month.

King that he regards the recently enacted Blueprint “as the floor, not the ceiling,” and that he would favor an even more ambitious education agenda including universal preschool across the state.

At the same time, the fledgling candidate’s prior experience as an education reformer, including his leadership of a in Boston, could play against him while courting Democratic votes next spring. Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, King for his tenure as New York schools’ chief, and King’s relationships with the unions were while he served as deputy education secretary under Arne Duncan.

The Maryland State Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the state, will likely play a huge role in selecting the nominee. Four years ago, they defeat Baker in his primary fight against eventual nominee Ben Jealous, the former head of the NAACP.

Gail Sunderman, a research scientist at the University of Maryland and the founder of the Maryland Equity Project, told ����Ӱ�� in an email that it was “encouraging to have someone running for governor of Maryland who is putting education and equity so prominently at the center of his campaign.”

“He has a compelling story that links him to Maryland,” she wrote. “While he has an impressive resume, it will be interesting to see how his relative newness to Maryland politics plays out.”

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