By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Steve Hilton has a blunt diagnosis for why California kids can’t read. On X this week, the Republican candidate for California governor wrote that “the teacher unions OWN Sacramento” and that his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, is “just the next puppet in line.” His fix is simple to say out loud: get every kid reading by third grade, hand out report cards for every school and every teacher, and give parents the power to act on what those report cards say.
It is a California pitch. But swap Sacramento for Annapolis, and the numbers Hilton is running against are not far off from Maryland’s own.
“Swap Sacramento for Annapolis, and the numbers Hilton is running against are not far off from Maryland’s own.”
Maryland’s scorecard isn’t much to brag about
The state’s own testing office released its 2025-26 results on July 28, calling it a “five-year high.” Statewide, 51.7% of students tested proficient in English language arts, up from 50.8% the year before, according to data from the Maryland State Department of Education. Math proficiency came in at 27.1%, also an improvement, but not one that inspires confidence: roughly three out of every four Maryland students still are not meeting the state’s proficiency standard in math.
Eighth grade math is where it gets bleak. Just 9.6% of Maryland students met the proficiency standard on the eighth grade math MCAP in the 2025-26 school year, according to the state’s own data, up from 8.7% the year before, though math proficiency in that grade dipped as recently as 2023-24, when it sat at 7%, before climbing back. It still means more than nine in ten students taking Math 8 did not meet the state’s proficiency standard.
“More than nine in ten students taking Math 8 did not meet the state’s proficiency standard.”
Gov. Wes Moore’s administration points to the gains as evidence its “science of reading” mandate and coaching push are taking hold. State Superintendent Carey Wright has pointed to the fourth straight year of ELA increases, with the gains attributed in part to the shift toward phonics-based instruction she brought from Mississippi. ELA proficiency has climbed 6.4 percentage points since 2021-22, and math has climbed 6.1 points, according to state data, but both moved less than a point in the most recent year. Nobody disputes the numbers are moving in the right direction. The question conservatives are raising is whether several years of incremental gains are an acceptable pace when roughly half of Maryland students still aren’t proficient in reading and fewer than three in ten are proficient in math.
Who actually runs the building
Hilton’s “unions own the capital” argument is not just rhetoric in Maryland. It has a paper trail.
The Maryland State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union with roughly 76,000 members, endorsed Moore for reelection at its fall assembly last October, with 89% of delegates voting yes. MSEA President Paul Lemle didn’t mince words about the relationship, telling members “Wes Moore is a champion for our public schools.” Moore returned the favor in his own statement, saying MSEA “has been with me from the start.”
“The organizations representing the employees affected by education policy are also major political players in selecting, supporting and lobbying the officials who write that policy.”
That partnership isn’t new, and it isn’t cheap. MSEA financed a $130,000 television and digital ad campaign backing Moore’s first run for governor in 2022. It has also, for well over a decade, ranked among the biggest spenders in Annapolis lobbying. In 2011 the union reported roughly $950,000 in six months of lobbying activity, nearly triple the next-highest spender that cycle. In 2019 it topped the list again at $784,000, more than any other organization tracked by the Maryland State Ethics Commission that period, including BGE and Pepco.
The same dynamic plays out one rung down the ballot in Montgomery County, where Council Vice President Will Jawando won the Democratic nomination for county executive this year. The Montgomery County Education Association, the local teachers union whose “Apple Ballot” carries real weight in county primaries, endorsed Jawando back in December, months before voters went to the polls. Gov. Moore endorsed him too. So did Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and a long list of public employee unions. Jawando has been candid about what that support means to him, saying of the union, “they’ve invested in our students and we have to keep investing in them.”
A few data points worth sitting with:
- MSEA has finished at or near the top of Maryland’s lobbying spending list in multiple sessions dating back to at least 2011.
- MCEA’s endorsement is widely viewed in Montgomery County politics as one of the most valuable in local races. In November 2024, all three of its endorsed challengers defeated sitting school board members who had not won the union’s backing, a result county political analysts attributed in large part to the Apple Ballot’s reach.
- Jawando’s own labor coalition, led by MCEA, also includes SEIU Local 500, AFSCME Maryland, and the Metro DC AFL-CIO, among others.
None of that is illegal, or even unusual for how modern campaigns get funded and staffed. But it does mean the organizations representing the employees affected by education policy are also major political players in selecting, supporting, and lobbying the officials who write that policy. That is precisely the arrangement Hilton is campaigning against in California.
“That is precisely the arrangement Hilton is campaigning against in California.”
What Maryland’s Republicans are actually proposing
Maryland has its own version of a Hilton-style pitch on the ballot this fall, in two different races.
Dan Cox, the Republican nominee for governor and a rematch challenger to Moore, has built much of his campaign around the same “parents back in charge” framing Hilton uses. Cox has said he wants to change the makeup of the state Board of Education, the 14-member panel that sets statewide education standards and testing policy, so that its members are more responsive to families. He has also called for expanding educational choice for families, a position he carried into his first run against Moore in 2022 and has kept since.
In Montgomery County, Republican nominee Esther Wells is running a more granular version of the same idea. Wells, a certified public accountant who once led the Montgomery County Taxpayers League, has built a platform around what she calls “Student First” policies, meant to steer budget increases toward classrooms rather than administrative growth. Her plan also calls for an independent inspector general reporting directly to the county school board, restoring School Resource Officers to Montgomery County Public Schools, and bringing employee benefits in line with neighboring districts. Asked about her chances against Jawando in a heavily Democratic county, Wells said she’s “very grateful to the Republican Party for nominating me to represent them.”
Neither Cox nor Wells has proposed anything as specific as Hilton’s grade-retention pledge, that a Maryland third grader who can’t read would repeat the grade. But the underlying architecture, a report card for every school, an independent check on the people running the system, and a louder voice for parents, tracks closely with what Hilton is selling in California.
Maryland’s Republicans start from a tougher spot than Hilton does. As of December 2025, active registered Democrats outnumbered active registered Republicans by roughly four to one in Montgomery County, 406,847 to 100,766, according to the county Board of Elections. Moore beat Cox by more than 30 points in 2022. Whether an accountability message travels in a state this blue is an open question nobody on either side can answer yet.
“Neither Cox nor Wells has proposed anything as specific as Hilton’s grade-retention pledge.”
What to Watch
- Whether Cox makes MCAP scores and the State Board of Education a bigger part of his campaign as the fall stretches on.
- Whether Wells’s inspector general and SRO proposals gain traction with Montgomery County parents watching the county’s school budget grow faster than test scores.
- How MSEA and MCEA deploy their canvassing operations in the campaign’s final weeks, and how much they end up spending.
- Whether the first MSTAR results for grades 3-8 ELA and math, the state’s new testing system replacing MCAP with its first administration window running March 29 to May 28, 2027, show enough movement to blunt the argument that Maryland’s education system needs outside accountability.
Sources: Maryland State Department of Education press release and “ELA, Mathematics, and Science Assessment Results, SY 2025-2026” presentation to the State Board of Education (July 28, 2026), including grade-by-grade proficiency tables; Maryland Matters, The Daily Record and The Baltimore Banner coverage of the 2025-26 MCAP results, including Superintendent Carey Wright’s remarks (July 29-30, 2026); Maryland State Education Association and SMNewsNet coverage of the union’s fall 2025 endorsement of Gov. Wes Moore (October 2025); Maryland State Education Association press materials on its 2022 ad campaign for Moore; The Daily Record’s reporting on Maryland State Ethics Commission lobbying disclosures for the 2011 and 2019 legislative sessions; Bethesda Magazine and The Baltimore Banner coverage of the Montgomery County Education Association’s endorsement of Will Jawando (December 2025) and Jawando’s broader labor coalition; WillJawando.com campaign materials on endorsements; WTOP and NBC Washington coverage of the June 2026 Montgomery County Executive primary and the Jawando-Wells general election matchup; official primary returns from the Maryland State Archives; Montgomery County Board of Elections voter registration report (December 2025); GoodParty.org candidate profile of Esther Wells; Fox5 DC and Fox Baltimore reporting on Dan Cox’s 2026 gubernatorial campaign and education positions; the Maryland General Assembly’s Education Article governing the composition of the State Board of Education; NewsNation’s profile of Steve Hilton’s education platform; the Associated Press’s coverage of the California governor’s race; and Steve Hilton’s September 2026 post on X.
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