Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Taylor sent a lengthy message to employees Thursday outlining ongoing and upcoming changes across the school system, including declining enrollment, potential changes to grading practices, new state requirements and efforts to reduce some demands on teachers.
Taylor also apologized for a recent comment that he said upset some educators. In discussing efforts to bring greater consistency to the school system, Taylor had said, “The biggest shift is not everybody gets to do whatever the hell they want to do.” In Thursday’s message, Taylor said his intended message was about improving instructional support and consistency rather than criticizing educators. “Regardless of my intent or the context in which the comment was made, I am responsible for my words and their impact,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor said MCPS is working to create greater consistency across schools, arguing that the experiences of students, families and staff currently vary significantly depending on location.
Among the most notable topics addressed was MCPS’ ongoing closure, consolidation and boundary study. Taylor said declining birthrates are having a significant impact on enrollment and that the decline is expected to continue.
According to Taylor, MCPS currently has excess capacity of approximately 1,000 high school seats, more than 4,700 middle school seats and more than 11,000 elementary school seats. Those numbers are expected to grow significantly over the next six years. “The last time something like this happened in MCPS was 45 years ago,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor said his inclination is not to “overreact/overadjust,” referencing lessons learned when MCPS faced similar circumstances approximately four decades ago. He acknowledged that decisions surrounding school utilization will have major budget implications and generate significant community concern.
Taylor also discussed potential changes to MCPS grading and reporting practices. “I think that we have evolved some of our grading practices to be too soft,” Taylor wrote.
While no changes have been announced, Taylor said he believes teachers should have greater discretion over assignments while the school system should provide better communication and closer adherence to grading feedback timelines for students and families.
MCPS plans to establish a work group to examine grading and reporting, with Taylor saying he hopes the district can develop an approach that remains in place for at least two or three years.
The superintendent also addressed several upcoming state requirements. Taylor said Maryland has established a new third-grade retention requirement related to English Language Arts that is scheduled to take effect next school year. According to Taylor, the requirement would retain third-grade students who do not demonstrate proficiency on state assessments. He said additional information will be provided in the spring.
A separate state requirement calling for at least 60 minutes of daily mathematics instruction for students in grades K-8 has been delayed until the 2028-2029 school year. Taylor said MCPS already meets the requirement at the elementary level but not in middle schools.
MCPS had begun preparing for the change but has placed that work on hold following the state’s revised implementation timeline. Taylor said the district will wait for additional state guidance before moving forward.
Taylor also announced some relief for teachers related to language objectives. Beginning with the second marking period, Central Services will develop language objectives for ELA, math, science and social studies rather than requiring teachers to write them. Teachers will still be able to modify and differentiate the objectives based on the needs of their students.
The superintendent also clarified that teachers and instructional leadership teams have some flexibility regarding pacing guides and assessment calendars. Teachers may adjust pacing guides, while instructional leadership teams can modify assessment calendars when circumstances warrant changes.
Taylor said MCPS is also evaluating district-administered assessments to determine whether some can be eliminated. The message addressed the district’s use of “Kick Up,” a digital platform being used for standardized classroom walkthroughs. Taylor emphasized that the walkthroughs are intended to collect districtwide information about instructional practices and are not formal teacher evaluations or observations.
Other areas Taylor said employees should expect to hear more about include updates to MCPS’ Professional Growth System, Maryland’s transition from MCAP to MSTAR assessments and additional efforts addressing hate-bias incidents.
Taylor also previewed what he described as positive news regarding MCPS’ performance on the Maryland state report card. “Later this month, we’ll announce some really great news about our progress on the Maryland state report card,” Taylor wrote. “Needless to say, it will be raining stars in Montgomery County!”
The announcement comes as MCPS prepares for what Taylor described as potentially “one of the hardest upcoming budget years in MCPS history.” Despite the financial and enrollment challenges, Taylor said he remains optimistic about the direction of the school system and acknowledged that the number of simultaneous changes has placed additional pressure on educators.
The full letter can be seen below:
Good afternoon Colleagues,
It is hard to believe we are already approaching the middle of Fall and the end of the first marking period. By this point, the excitement of a new school year has settled into the daily demands of teaching and learning. This is when the “real work” takes shape, and when the pressures of the profession can feel especially heavy.
I am writing to share some thoughts and information with you directly. Too often, and a lot recently, my perspective comes to you filtered through various sources (who aren’t me), misinterpreted, or through rumors. Educators (you) are the school system’s most direct and most important connection with our students and families, and you deserve to know firsthand the vision and direction we are heading. Apologies in advance – this is a really long message, but I think it is an important one and I have been holding it for a time when there was a little less stress than normal, going into a Friday with professional learning scheduled. There are some worthy tidbits at the end that are also worth your review.
I want to begin by thanking you. Thank you! Our students have had a strong start to the school year because of your commitment and hard work. Their success and the success of MCPS is due to your commitment and effort, and your work to implement the structural and systemic changes that we are making. I recognize that student progress often comes with added demands on educators, and that system changes often add to your stress. One small change may not necessarily feel like a heavy lift, but many changes at once can feel overwhelming and often have a cumulative effect.
Adding to your stress is the last thing that I would ever want to do…yet, a couple of weeks ago The Banner did a story about our start to the school year. Aside from the overly simplified headline, I thought the story did a nice job of capturing some of the effort school leaders were working on to make improvements in schools. I am proud of them and you! Unfortunately, the key takeaway from the article for many was not the substance behind the need for us to be better organized and more intentional about how we use our time, but rather a quote from me. And yes, I said it. I also heard from some folks who were concerned and some who were upset. I understand why it upset some of you, and I am sorry for that. Regardless of my intent or the context in which the comment was made, I am responsible for my words and their impact.
That said, I also know how hard you are working – I see it every day. I see your commitment to students and I see the results of that commitment as the student performance data are starting to turn in the right direction, too. I have tremendous respect for our profession and the folks who grind day-in and day-out to make great things happen for students. I loved being a teacher, and I still teach whenever I can. As you know, teaching has never been more demanding, and you deserve leadership that recognizes your contributions and communicates with greater care. Still, I do want you to understand that the message I intended to convey was about our responsibility as leaders to improve instructional support and consistency, not a criticism of educators. I should have been far clearer in that message.
Our focus with school leaders this past year has been squarely on developing instructional leadership through intentional action. So much so that I asked school leaders to make “intentional” their word of the year. We even produced the now-infamous “Leading with Intention” guide, which is really no more than guiding questions for school leaders, along with ELA and Math pacing guides and the assessment calendar in a week-to-week outline. This is not a secret, and these documents are not new – here is an electronic copy for your review (ES, MS, HS). The part that was new: we merged pre-existing documents into one place and held the expectation that school leaders use this tool to guide their work. The goal of this effort is simple: give school leaders a tool to better understand what is happening in some of our classrooms. For those who teach ELA or Math in grades K–10, I hope this guide helps you too!
Switching gears a little, but still on topic: I want to share why we are implementing updated systems and structures districtwide and where I think these changes will take us together (this last bit I think is pretty good).
Being intentional is not only about what we do, it is also about acknowledging what we are facing. If we expect to see positive changes in the outcomes for our students (and the MCPS adult community) we must acknowledge that the student, family, and staff experience in MCPS varies wildly based on location. It is hard, but we need to own this – and it’s not great. We have serious issues to address regarding the quality and continuity of service we provide across the county. To address this adequately will take a level of focus and discipline we are not accustomed to in MCPS, across every level of the organization (this includes everyone from the superintendent and those in Central Services to every hand that serves our students in schools).
To be clear, this is not a reflection on you or anyone of our dedicated teammates as professionals, but it is a reflection on us as an organization (collectively). And each one of us has an obligation to help make this better. Candidly, changes in outcomes are typically accompanied by proportionally larger changes in process. We will not realize a change in outcomes without changes to process. And yes, we need to do a better job of managing those necessary changes with you. This is the core of my charge to leadership, which is to intentionally tackle these challenging issues head-on. And I am confident that when we come together as a district around not only a common purpose but also common strategies and common methods, our students will succeed and we will be stronger as educators and as a public education system. Establishing standard practices and approaches does not mean that everyone does everything the exact same way. What fun would that be?
I also know that not every success is measured in test scores. At the same time, our state assessments (specifically) are an important measure the outside world uses to judge the value of MCPS. Whether we like it or not, if we are going to continue to expect that our community to invest in us and rally to our cause when we ask for overdue and much-needed resources, we need to deliver value, and we need to demonstrate that we are establishing higher standards better aligned to the community’s expectation of our performance. Some of the changes that folks have said felt like micromanagement—new curriculum, closer adherence to pacing guides, language objectives, tighter assessment calendar—are a part of the normal course of change from year-to-year. There is a difficult balancing act that needs to happen, weighing district objectives with individual professionalism and autonomy – we will keep tweaking this until we get it right. In the meantime, I ask that you use these as tools in your approach to working with students, knowing that we depend on your professional judgement to match the instructional objectives at hand with the individual needs of the students in your classrooms.
Here’s the good news!
Despite what will likely be one of the hardest upcoming budget years in MCPS history, and despite the need to tighten up in some critical areas…I remain really optimistic about our future. Every day, there is evidence that we are making progress toward our strategic plan goals. YOU are getting it done. This work requires incremental progress, and it won’t happen overnight, but the arrows are pointing in the right direction. Later this month, we’ll announce some really great news about our progress on the Maryland state report card. Needless to say, it will be raining stars in Montgomery County! You will be so proud. And you deserve the credit. Bravo!
To help assuage some of the challenges that many of you experience each day, following this message is a list of additional topics to discuss including some goals, guidance, and relief in some areas. You have a lot on your plate, and I hope this direct information helps ease some of your stress. We will never be in a place where everything stops changing, and I wouldn’t mislead you by promising something like that (how else would we see improvement?). My hope for our very bright future together is that we do a much better job managing the rate of change that you are experiencing, knowing that change (and growth) is an inevitable and core part of our work.
In addition to some intentional effortful thinking, I hope that tomorrow also provides you with some time to intentionally refocus and plan for the last couple weeks of the quarter. …and get a jump start on the weekend with a little less stress than usual. Happy Friday eve!
If you’ve made it this far, thank you! Have a great PD day and a restful weekend.
All my best,
Thomas
A Few Additional Topics Worth Talking About
Planning time: Hopefully by now you have figured out that I am a huge fan of teacher-led collaborative planning time. Teacher-directed professional learning communities work. That doesn’t mean that specialists and principals don’t have a role (they do), but this time is critical and every second counts. I am also not a fan of erroneous additional paperwork tied to planning documentation unless absolutely necessary. The bottom line is that planning needs to make sense to you before it makes sense to anyone else. Here is a link to the FAQs/guidance that we provided principals last year after making changes to improve autonomy around planning time. No secrets, full transparency – I just thought you might want a copy.Long Term: My goal is for us to look for opportunities to expand planning time, specifically at the elementary level. The main challenge with this is financial and logistical (but not insurmountable).
Pacing Guides & Assessment CalendarAutonomy: Candidly, changes to our assessment calendar and stronger guidance around following pacing guides is in response to some really bad central leadership planning in the past, where not all students had equitable access to the content standards. Pacing guides and assessment calendars are not new. ILTs can make adjustments to assessment calendars, and teachers can make adjustments to pacing guides. Stuff happens. Snow days happen. People get sick. My only ask: exercise good judgment and be crystal clear about the rationale behind changes BEFORE making a change. We have an obligation to teach the on-grade-level standards and to get through the curriculum – this part hasn’t always been a priority for us…Here is a link to the guidance that we provided principals earlier this year. No secrets, full transparency – I just thought you might want a copy.Long Term: My goal is to look for opportunities to find the right balance of accountability and flexibility without creating a ton of layers to decision-making. Additionally, we are in the process of evaluating the value of many of our district administered assessments to see what we can also dump.
Language Objectives: This is actually a good idea and these are not really new, and it does make sense for us to have some idea of what we want our EML students to achieve in terms of language attainment in addition to content standards. What’s new is the expectation around using them. However, this is also one of those “cumulative changes” that feels worse than it really would be in isolation. To help with this, Central Services is going to take writing language objectives off your plate starting in the 2nd marking period for ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies (specific language objectives already exist for Math and ELA). We will share more specific Science and Social Studies language objectives through content specialists in a few weeks. My best recommendation is to review these language objectives to double-check that they are relevant to the kids in your classroom, then modify and differentiate as you deem most appropriate in collaboration with your grade level team or department. If you are interested in learning more about how language objectives should be constructed, check out this guide.
Skillful Teacher: You may have heard something about this. Let’s just say this: I hope you have heard about this…We have rekindled our district romance with Skillful Teacher as the foundation for our Tier One Instructional Framework. Not gonna lie, it’s a lot. But it’s also pretty great. If this is something that you are interested in, there are many optional opportunities to learn more. These Studying Skillful Teacher courses are offered both centrally and in many schools. Please look in PDO or talk with your staff development teacher about opportunities. This is a fantastic way to level up your pedagogical game.
Kick Up: For many years, schools determined what the key instructional strategies were that would support student achievement and developed their own walkthrough or informal observational tools with minimal guidance or coherence. Some were pretty great. Many weren’t. This led to wide variance across the system and lack of coherence with district wide professional learning, our professional growth system which is based on Skillful Teacher, and how we define effective teaching and learning in MCPS. To measure the implementation of our Tier I instructional framework, we adopted a digital platform called “kick up” which allows for a standard walkthrough tool that collects systemwide data and aggregates this information at a district level. The purpose of using the walk-through tool is to see our districtwide professional learning in action and to provide actionable feedback that strengthens instruction to support accelerating student achievement. The purpose is not to evaluate, nor is this a formal observation tool. It is also not designed to assess whether every classroom looks the same or to replace evaluations. No formal pre-conferences, no formal post-conferences – this is about getting a district read on what’s working and what needs tightening. You actually don’t need to do anything with this, but it is good to know what’s going on.
Hate Bias: I hate that we still have to talk about Hate Bias. We do. This is a real issue in MCPS – students and adults are suffering, and the numbers are high. Granted, I think we do a better job of reporting with transparency than other localities; however, we still account for the lion’s share of hate bias incidents in the state. We recently released updated hate bias reporting data that showed not just “RED” tier hate bias events but also “ORANGE” and “YELLOW” tier events. I think this kind of transparency matters because it is important that we own when there are significant issues that need to be addressed. This year, we will need to update a few things in our PGS as well as mandatory trainings to better reflect how we can use our collective efficacy to address issues impacting our kids, whether that be federal immigration enforcement, anti-Black hate, Antisemitism, anti-muslim hate, anti-LGBTQIA+ hate (those are our top four hate bias incident categories), and other forms of hate bias that manifest in schools. In short, one way that we can help with this issue is to be more culturally proficient and better trained as a school system – something better than an online module at the beginning of the year. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure you knew about the optional courses we are offering this Fall 2026.
Coming Soon / Things for us to watch (not an exhaustive list):
-
Updates to the PGS: Though this should not impact anyone’s day-to-day life, it has been more than 20 years since we have made substantive improvements to the professional growth system. The framework that our PGS is based on (Skillful Teacher) is in its 8th edition, and there are some changes we should incorporate. More on this in the Spring – stay tuned.
-
MCAP to MSTAR: Technically, the state has already made this switch (with the exception of some high school math courses). The state is also building this plane while they are flying it. This should be fun (sarcasm). More on this from me in the Spring – stay tuned.
-
Elementary 3rd Grade Retention State Requirement: The state has made this a new requirement for ELA, set to take effect next year. This requirement would retain any 3rd grade student who did not demonstrate proficiency on state assessments. More on this from me in the Spring – stay tuned.
-
60 Minute Math State Requirement: The state has made this a new requirement for K–8 mathematics, set to take effect next year (which has now been punted a year to the following year 2028–2029). This requirement would compel us to schedule a minimum of 60 minutes in mathematics daily for all students in grades K–8. We already meet this requirement in elementary schools but not in middle schools. Long story short, we were gearing up to respond to this, but we have since put all of that on hold. I think it would be more prudent for us to wait because the state changed its implementation timeline and because we just need more guidance from the state on implementation requirements. More on this from me in the spring – stay tuned.
-
Closure, Consolidation, and Boundary Discussion: This is a biggie and may even be its own separate message later. We are experiencing significant changes to the birthrate (national issue; we are not alone), and it is hitting us hard. Our enrollment decline will likely continue for some time. Currently, we are sitting on an excess capacity of approximately 1,000 high school seats, over 4,700 middle school seats, and over 11,000 elementary seats. In the next six years, these numbers are expected to grow significantly. The last time something like this happened in MCPS was 45 years ago. Bottom line: We need to carefully consider how best to utilize our resources. Learning from mistakes made 40 years ago, my inclination is not to overreact/overadjust. As I am sure you can imagine, this will also be a huge budget issue and undoubtedly be fraught with a ton of emotion (understandably). You can learn more about this and provide feedback at upcoming in-person staff engagement sessions
-
Grading and Reporting: Though this is largely a secondary issue, this is also an elementary issue. Though well-intentioned at the time, I think that we have evolved some of our grading practices to be too soft. And we can’t even blame the pandemic for this because some of this pre-dates the pandemic. We need to settle on something that we can live with for at least the next two or three years. I think that there needs to be a wider allowance for teacher discretion in terms of what is assigned without as much rigidity – and I also think there needs to be better communication and closer adherence to grading feedback timelines for kids and families. Though there is nothing to announce at the moment, there is a lot we are still thinking through. I think there is an opportunity for us to finally land the plane here and come up with something that will substantially improve MCPS on a number of fronts (possibly including student attendance). We will have a work group on this topic and I would love to know your thoughts on this topic among others.
