MSDE Releases Annual Maryland School Report Card

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT:
Raven Hill, 410-767-0486
raven.hill@maryland.gov

MSDE Releases Annual Maryland School Report Card 

More schools earned 4 or 5 stars in the 2023-2024 academic year compared to the prior year.

BALTIMORE (December 3, 2024) – Today, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) released state, district, and school-level results for the 2024 Maryland School Report Card.

Maryland report card data indicates school performance under the Maryland Accountability System for the 2023-24 academic year. School ratings increased overall compared to the 2022-23 academic year. This year’s results showed that 41 percent of schools earned the top two ratings of four or five stars, and 83 percent received three or more stars. During the 2022-23 academic year, 38 percent of schools earned the top two ratings and 80 percent received three or more stars.

In February, Dr. Carey M. Wright, State Superintendent of Schools announced the formation of an Assessment and Accountability Task Force to examine the state’s assessment and accountability systems to strengthen connections between school ratings and student achievement.

“Over the last five years, the Maryland School Report Card has provided insight into factors that influence school success and student achievement,” said Dr. Wright. “However, as we move forward, we will be exploring ways to ensure that our accountability system evaluates schools in clear, streamlined ways that educators, administrators and families can easily understand.”

“We are encouraged to see growth and an increase in schools demonstrating four- and five-star ratings and the number on the Maryland Report Card indicating progress in school quality and student achievement in public schools,” said Dr. Joshua Michael, State Board President. “The Board is committed to improving transparency and accountability through the Maryland Report Card to better answer the question, ‘How are our public schools doing?’”

School star ratings are based on multiple indicators, including non-academic measures. Elementary and middle school indicators are: Academic Achievement, Academic Progress, Progress in Achieving English Language Proficiency, and School Quality and Student Success.

High school indicators are: Academic Achievement, Graduation Rate, Progress in Achieving English Language Proficiency, Readiness for Postsecondary Success, and School Quality and Student Success. Schools earn between one and five stars based on the percentage of points earned across indicators.

Assessment and Accountability Task Force Recommendations

Recommendations from the 30-member task force — composed of key Maryland education stakeholders and led by the nonprofit National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment — were shared during Tuesday’s meeting:

• Create a single coherent system that meets federal requirements and reflects state priorities.​
• Explore ways to streamline and simplify the system without diminishing quality or comprehensiveness. ​
• Support meaningful comparisons of school performance but explore ways to offer limited flexibility. ​
• Prioritize implementing changes to the system but provide longitudinal comparability where possible​.

The accountability system recommendations include basing the Academic Achievement indicator exclusively on English language arts and mathematics proficiency; adopting a student growth measure; continuing to include only the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate and five-year extended graduation rate; and developing a framework that builds on the current definition of College and Career Readiness while incentivizing additional post-high school opportunities. The task force also recommended establishing common performance levels for indicators, such as a scale of one to four.

As Maryland moves towards implementing a new assessment system by the 2026-27 school year, the task force recommended prioritizing clarity and coherence in reporting results, and helping schools and districts leverage assessment results through comprehensive communications.

Maryland School Report Card Resources

The Maryland School Report Card includes a downloadable report for each school and disaggregated data for each student group. Disaggregated results show that multilingual learners, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities perform lower as compared to the overall student population.

Informational resources are available on the Maryland Report Card website to help families, educators, and community members understand and analyze the school report cards. The tools include a user guide and one-page documents that summarize calculations for elementary, middle, and high schools.

In addition to star ratings, the Maryland Report Card website provides information on a wide variety of data including enrollment, attendance, performance on state assessments, performance on college readiness assessments, graduation rates, and postsecondary enrollment in colleges.