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ROCKVILLE, MD (April 27, 2022) -- One month after WBFF-TV’s Project Baltimore reported that, according to state test score data, 23 Baltimore City Schools with zero students who scored proficient in math, the Maryland Department of Education posted a new version of the test data. The new data eliminates evidence of the poor performance in many schools. The Maryland Public Policy Institute is now calling on the Maryland Inspector General for Education Richard Henry to investigate the education department’s actions.
 

[READ THE FULL LETTER HERE]
 

In April 2021, MPPI sent a similar letter to the Inspector General regarding “ghost students” and falsified enrollment in Baltimore City Schools. Henry replied to MPPI’s letter and initiated an audit, which detailed the scale and scope of enrollment discrepancies in schools – nearly 3,000 ghost students and over $24 million in waste.

“Both the circumstances surrounding the decision to change the data and the way in which the data was changed to hide poor performance in Baltimore schools from the public warrant investigation. We hope the Inspector General takes this issue as seriously as he did ‘ghost students’ fraud,” said MPPI President and CEO Christopher Summers.

State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury defended its decision to alter the data in a statement, saying that it was merely taking steps to secure student privacy according to U.S. Department of Education requirements. It also claimed that the original data, which WBFF used to publish its February report on the dismal test results, was mistakenly published by a contractor hired to help manage the state website. The Institute’s letter to Inspector General for Education Richard Henry requesting the investigation, however, points out that Choudhury’s arguments are fallacious.

“No such U.S. Department of Education requirement exists” said MPPI Visiting Fellow Sean Kennedy. “In fact, the federal guidance that Choudhury uses to justify concealing the data specifically notes there is no such mandate and Maryland’s previous methods were in line with most states and recommended best practices.” However, the enhancements are wholly of the Maryland Department of Education’s making. The U.S. Department of Education that “The Department does not mandate a particular method.”

In the statement issued after WBFF’s initial report, Choudhury implied that “federally mandated disclosure avoidance methods” had “enhancements” that “applied to the post-pandemic release of data.”

Kennedy continued, “If Choudhury’s conveniently timed – and false – claims of a mandate were true, he would be implying that MSDE had previously been in violation of federal student privacy laws since prior years data releases did not conform to this newly discovered standard. Choudhury can’t have it both ways – MSDE was either breaching student privacy or he’s just making stuff up to cover-up the abysmal failure of Maryland schools.”

“Choudhury’s department is also retroactively hiding data using its new data suppression methods going back to 2019, making the ‘post-pandemic’ argument nonsensical,” Summers said.

The Maryland Department of Education’s newly published test data also does not comply with its new, self-created disclosure avoidance standards. As is pointed out in MPPI’s letter, “the currently available results list at least three (3) BCPSS schools and five (5) grades matching that criteria that are not suppressed.”

“The only conclusions we are left able to make are either that the department manufactured new disclosure requirements in such a way that far too conveniently suppress damning data on student performance, or that the department is so inept at following what it believes to be federal privacy standards that it violated those standards by disclosing the data to a contractor and then violated them again by posting new data that still did not comply,” Summers said. “Either way, an investigation is more than necessary.”

The Maryland Public Policy Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research and education organization that focuses on state policy issues. The Institute’s mission is to formulate and promote public policies at all levels of government based on principles of free enterprise, limited government, and civil society. Learn more at mdpolicy.org.