The governor’s education press release cherry-picked a single metric while burying a teacher shortage crisis, a $2.5 billion rollback attempt, and data showing most Black students are still below grade level.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Governor Wes Moore’s communications team knows what it’s doing.
On Thursday, the governor’s office released a press release announcing that Maryland ranks 3rd in the nation for student growth in reading and 5th in math — citing a new report from researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth. The release used the word “historic” three times. It called Maryland a “national leader.” It attached a $10.1 billion investment figure. It quoted the governor calling the results proof that Maryland is “leading the national comeback in public education.”
None of that is technically false. All of it is misleading.
What the Ranking Actually Measures
The 2025 Education Recovery Scorecard — the report Moore’s office celebrated — measures recovery growth pace: how quickly states closed the academic gap created by the pandemic between 2022 and 2025, relative to where they stood in 2019. That’s it.
It does not measure whether Maryland students are proficient. It does not measure whether they’ve returned to pre-pandemic baselines. It measures the speed of recovery — and Maryland ranked 3rd out of 35 states in reading and 5th out of 38 in math on that single dimension.
To understand why that matters, consider what the scorecard does not say: more than 80 percent of Black fourth and eighth graders in Maryland still perform below grade-level proficiency benchmarks. National Assessment of Educational Progress data shows Black eighth-grade students in Maryland score 27 to 40 points lower in math and reading than their white peers. In Montgomery County specifically — the state’s largest and wealthiest school district — Black students remain roughly half a grade level behind their own 2019 pre-pandemic baselines.
Moore’s press release mentions none of this.
The Baltimore City Problem
The press release specifically called out Baltimore City as a “Districts on the Rise” success story — one of several Maryland districts showing “extraordinary progress” in math and reading.
Maryland State Department of Education data covering 2017 to 2025 tells a different story about Baltimore City Public Schools:
- Student attendance fell from 87.6% to 86.2%.
- Average SAT scores dropped from 910 to 856.
- The dropout rate climbed from 15.9% to 20.8%.
- Chronic absenteeism nearly doubled — from 30% to 46.4%.
Nearly half of Baltimore City students are now chronically absent. One in five is dropping out. The graduation rate improved by one percentage point over eight years.
This is the district Moore’s team highlighted as a comeback story.
The $10.1 Billion Number
The “historic $10.1 billion investment” figure in the press release requires context Moore’s team chose not to provide.
Earlier this year, Moore proposed $143 million in education cuts for fiscal year 2026 — cuts that would have grown to $817 million by FY2030, totaling $2.5 billion in reduced state education funding over five years. The centerpiece was rolling back Blueprint for Maryland’s Future funding: freezing annual increases to Concentration of Poverty School Grants, cutting per-pupil foundation funding, slashing behavioral health partnership funding by 69 percent, and delaying collaborative planning time for teachers by four years.
The General Assembly — including Moore’s own Democratic supermajority — rejected most of it.
Del. Vanessa Atterbeary, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, was direct: “I don’t like to say pause, it’s a cut. When you cut the funding you are leaving a gap where some kids are quite frankly going to be caught out there and left behind.”
Riya Gupta of Strong Schools Maryland put it plainly: “This is a cut to everyone, but it’s a specific cut to students living in poverty, Black and brown students, multilingual students.”
Moore’s press release this week touts $572 million for the same community schools he tried to freeze. The legislature — not the governor — is responsible for most of that protection.
The Governor’s Own Admission
In May 2025, signing his Blueprint reform bill, Moore called the teacher shortage “the single greatest barrier to achievement in our schools.” At the time, roughly 4 percent of classroom positions were unfilled statewide and thousands of educators were teaching under provisional certification, meaning they lacked full training or licensure.
One year later, Moore’s press release declares Maryland is “leading the national comeback in public education.”
The teacher shortage did not resolve in twelve months. Half of Maryland’s school districts still haven’t hit the $60,000 teacher salary threshold the Blueprint promised. The number of schools earning top ratings increased by modest fractions. The metric Moore cited — recovery growth pace — is a relative measure calculated against the depth of a pandemic hole that Maryland dug deeper than most.
The Pattern
Moore’s education communications follow a consistent formula. Select a favorable metric. Attach a large dollar figure as evidence of cause. Omit everything that complicates the narrative. Issue a press release with the word “historic” in it.
The honest version of Thursday’s press release would read: Maryland is closing its pandemic gap faster than most states, but most Black students remain below grade level, Baltimore City’s core indicators have deteriorated over eight years, the governor tried and failed to roll back $2.5 billion in education commitments earlier this year, and chronic absenteeism still affects one in four Maryland students statewide.
That version didn’t require a Harvard citation. It just required honesty.
Sources: 2025 Education Recovery Scorecard, Harvard University / Stanford University / Dartmouth College. Office of Governor Wes Moore press release, May 15, 2026. Maryland State Department of Education data, Baltimore City Public Schools 2017–2025, via @chrispapst / WBAL-TV. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Black student achievement data, Maryland, 2024–2025. Education Recovery Scorecard, Montgomery County district-level data. Maryland Center on Economic Policy, “State Budget Update: Supporting Maryland’s Public Schools,” July 2025. CNS Maryland, “Gov. Moore’s cuts to Blueprint plan face major pushback,” February 2025. Maryland Matters, “Blueprint bill that avoids some of the most severe education cuts is signed into law,” May 2025. The Daily Record, “Moore enacts first major Blueprint update but says ‘we did not go far enough,'” May 2025. Baltimore Sun, “Stakes are high with school cuts,” 2025. Strong Schools Maryland public statements, legislative session 2025. Maryland House of Delegates floor vote record, Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act, March 2025.
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