NOW YOU KNOW: School Choice Will Help Students, Families, and Teachers

The following is an education update from Delegates Kathy Szeliga and Ryan Nawrocki.

With the 2023-2024 school year coming to a close, it’s essential to talk about the education crisis in Maryland and how to address it. The Blueprint for Maryland Schools was passed several years ago in Annapolis to address declining student achievement in science, math, and literacy skills. The Blueprint has created a massive unfunded mandate on state and county budgets. In the meantime, classroom teachers are working harder to teach an ever-changing curriculum and deal with behavioral problems from students with little support from administrators or parents. We appreciate our classroom teachers and know how hard they work and how much they care.

What gets lost in many of these challenges are our kids and families in chronically failing schools with no hope for success. The teachers union has trapped kids in underperforming schools by vehemently opposing any school choice programs. The teachers union is the most powerful special interest group in Annapolis.

Under Governor Larry Hogan’s leadership, a school choice program was instituted. The BOOST (Maryland’s Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today) program offers kids and families in low-income areas with a failing school the opportunity to attend a non-public school, including some excellent parochial schools in our area. Since day one, the teachers union has been trying to defund and destroy this program.

The Maryland BOOST Scholarship is accepting applications for the 2024-2025 school year. Applications are due Friday, May 3.

You can find more information online by clicking here.

To help ensure your application is successfully submitted, please email all application questions to boost.msde@maryland.gov or call Allison Sanborn, MSDE program manager, at 410-767-3575.

This successful school choice program should be expanded to include middle-class and working families. Other states are passing and expanding school choice programs. Thirty-four states have some type of school choice program. In 2023, 17 states enacted school choice legislation, and eight have near-universal or universal programs offered to all students and families.

In September 2023, Fox Baltimore reported that 13 Baltimore City Public High Schools did not have one child who tested proficient on the 2023 state math exam. Not a single student! Project Baltimore found that 40% of Baltimore City high schools had no students who tested proficient on the state math exam. If zero students in a given school can’t test proficient on an exam, then there is a serious problem with that school and how they teach students.

The top 5 best public schools in Baltimore only had 11.4% of students who scored proficient in the state math exam. The failure of our public schools to educate our students, especially in urban areas, is one of the most significant civil rights issues of our time. Government schools have failed our young people in Baltimore and all across Maryland.

This crisis is not particular to Baltimore City, either. Fox Baltimore also reported in 2023 that more than 200 public schools across Maryland had 5% or fewer students who scored proficient in math.

School choice is the solution to help kids learn and achieve. We know that education is the key to a bright future. If the public school system can’t provide an adequate education to the youth of our state, then the private sector, school vouchers, charter schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, and open enrollment are all choices students should have. A zip code should NEVER decide a child’s future or the education they are allowed to receive.

School choice benefits students and school systems because students can find the education they need rather than being locked into one school in their neighborhood. A more free-market approach would make schools do better, or they would lose students and lose funding to continue to operate. This system would allow the market and the people to reward good schools by enrolling their children in them. It would also let bad schools fail by stripping away the special government protections that allow them to continue to fail to educate students.

We can see how school choice works today with some magnet schools in Baltimore County, like Eastern Technical, which has two to three times as many applicants for every student they accept. If you had a choice, would you send your child to a failing school, or would you want your child to have a better opportunity? Governor Wes Moore credits his nonpublic school education for his success and thanks his family for their sacrifices to get him out of his failing neighborhood school and into a better school.

We will continue to support school choice legislation that allows all Maryland students to learn where they can get the best education. We will do all we can to ensure that in Maryland, a zip code will not decide a child’s future.