Carroll school board seeks feedback on plan to align Blueprint with … – Baltimore Sun

The Carroll County Board of Education is working to create a strategic plan that better aligns the county public school system with new initiatives prescribed by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation.

Carroll County Public Schools will prioritize increasing the number of internships and apprenticeships available to students, hiring more teachers to allow for greater professional learning time for educators, maintaining class sizes under 30, and boosting student success in math and English, according to a draft of the strategic plan for 2023-26.

“These are big-picture goals,” Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Nicholas Shockney told board members at a meeting on Nov. 8, “and we want them to be big-picture goals because that helps our departments, that helps our schools, that helps our teams, and helps our teachers break down and align their work to our plan.”

The school board is seeing feedback on the proposed plan. Anyone who wishes to comment may do so online at https://bit.ly/3RJEYFv

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is a multibillion-dollar public school reform effort entering the second year of its decade-long rollout. It is designed to make Maryland’s schools among the highest performing in the country by redesigning the public education funding formula, providing more time for teachers to plan lessons and develop skills outside the classroom, and offering universal prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, among other initiatives.

The Carroll County Public Schools strategic plan has four pillars that categorize the ways in which the system seeks to improve: pathways for student success, family and community partnerships, developing and supporting the school system workforce, and establishing positive learning environments.

The school system will seek new community partnerships to grow the number of apprenticeships available to students from two to 25, and increase the number of student internships from 385 to 424 over the course of the next three years, according to the plan. The system aims to create six new apprenticeships and 13 new internships during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the document.

While 70% of county public schools currently participate in Community Advisory Council meetings, the plan indicates a goal of full participation across every school in the system by 2026.

In accordance with a Blueprint initiative in which students’ college and career readiness is evaluated at the end of 10th grade based on their understanding of English and math, the system will endeavor to increase the number of Carroll students deemed college and career ready from 21% to 35% by 2026. A student who scores proficient in 10th-grade English and Algebra 1 is considered to be college and career ready, which will allow students to access academic and workforce readiness programs under Blueprint.

Students deemed college and career ready by the end of their 10th-grade year will have a choice from among three pathways: career and technical education, dual enrollment, or Advanced Placement, according to the Blueprint’s College and Career Readiness pillar. Students may choose an International Baccalaureate program instead of AP.

Students who do not qualify for a pathway are considered to be on the “support” pathway so they can receive the resources necessary to become college and career ready.

The State Board of Education may update standards for college and career readiness next month. While students who pass both English 10 and Algebra 1 exams will continue to be considered college and career ready, new standards would allow students with a grade-point average of 3.0 and above to also be considered college and career ready, provided they also demonstrate competence in mathematics by achieving a score of proficient or higher in Maryland’s Algebra 1 comprehensive assessment or achieving at least a C in their Algebra 1 class.

The system aims to increase the percentage of students proficient in Algebra 1, as measured by the Maryland Comprehensive Exam, from 21% to 35%. The county public school system also has selected the third-grade English MCAP as a benchmark test and will endeavor to raise student proficiency in the subject from 62.8% to 75% within the next three years.

The Blueprint also requires that teachers spend a maximum of 60% of their work time teaching, with the other 40% reserved for planning and attending professional learning programs. To accommodate Blueprint’s phased rollout, which will require teachers to spend less time in the classroom, the public school system will seek to hire 30 additional full-time teachers or their equivalent in hours worked by the end of this school year, and a total of 60 full-time equivalent roles by the end of 2026.

Carroll County Public Schools hopes to keep average class sizes below 30, according to the plan, which indicates that the system will try to maintain fewer than 225 high school classes and fewer than 200 middle school classes with more than 30 students

Shockney said 184 middle school classrooms and 147 high school classrooms have more than 30 students, but no elementary school classroom does. He said a 30-student class is considered standard, and school staff closely monitors any class with 25 students or more.

School board President Marsha Herbert predicted that class size numbers will increase in several years due to her expectation that county resources will be strained by implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

The system also plans to boost teacher credentials by increasing the number of National Board Certified Teachers by 25% each year, from 70 to 124 by 2026, and by increasing the percentage of teachers eligible for state licensure or certificate by 1% each year for the next three years, from 94.39% to 97.39%.