MSDE outlines draft strategic‑plan targets, proposes 8 priorities and three‑year goals

Maryland State Department of Education staff on the Education Transformation and Accountability Committee presented draft strategic‑plan baselines and three‑year targets and recommended turning previously labeled “enablers” into eight explicit priorities to make goals more transparent to the public.

“We're sharing our draft strategic plan, goal baselines, and targets,” said Dr. Matt Duque of MSDE as he opened the presentation, noting the agency used the 2022–23 school year as the baseline for most measures and several methods — historical trends, highest pre‑pandemic rates and ESSA methodology — to set targets.

MSDE proposed specific targets across several priorities. The department said it set a kindergarten‑readiness baseline at 41 percent and a three‑year target of 55 percent; grade‑3 ELA proficiency was presented with a 48 percent baseline and a target near 55 percent; and a middle‑school measure that counts students meeting at least one ABC indicator (attendance, behavior or course failure) was cited as just under 47 percent baseline with a target of about 32 percent in three years. MSDE also proposed increasing the share of new teachers of color from a 43 percent baseline to nearly 48 percent, raising three‑year teacher retention from 76.5 percent to 78 percent, and expanding eligibility for teacher‑leadership pathways from 2.5 percent to 5.8 percent.

Duque said in several cases MSDE relied on the state’s ESSA plan methodology to set more ambitious targets than simple trend projection would yield. He acknowledged limited data in some areas — for example, the Maryland School Survey has only a few years of comparable pre‑ and post‑pandemic results for middle and high school climates — and said MSDE sometimes set an “ambitious yet feasible” target where trend data were insufficient.

Committee members asked whether the targets themselves would be disaggregated by race, income and special‑education status rather than presented only as aggregate targets. “We’re certainly looking at those and running those and planning to break out those disaggregation on the website when they get posted,” Duque said; he added that subgroup targets exist behind the slides for brevity and will be publicly available.

The presentation also covered measures tied to low‑performing schools (CSI designation) and chronic absenteeism, with MSDE reporting it will post annual progress, disaggregate data by LEA and school and work to align these targets with the Accountability Implementation Board’s outcomes and the governor’s indicators for success.

MSDE said next steps include posting targets and progress on the agency website, continuing stakeholder engagement and reviewing alignment with the AIB and gubernatorial KPIs at the full State Board meeting later in the month.

The committee did not take a formal vote on the strategic‑plan targets during this session; MSDE said it will return with final materials after continued alignment and stakeholder input.