Maryland State Department of Education
Maryland State Department of Education is a division of the state government of Maryland in the United States. The agency oversees public school districts, which are 24 local school systems — one for each of Maryland's 23 counties plus one for Baltimore City. Maryland has more than 1,400 public schools in 24 public school systems, with 2019 enrollment of approximately 900,000. Of the student body, 42% are on FARMS and 22% are Title 1.
The agency is headquartered in downtown Baltimore at 200 West Baltimore Street in the Nancy Grasmick Building.
School districts
The largest school districts in Maryland are:| District | Students | Graduation Rate | Ref |
| Montgomery County | 163,000 | 89% | |
| Prince George's County | 133,000 | 79% | |
| Baltimore County | 114,000 | 88% | |
| Anne Arundel County | 83,000 | 88% | |
| Baltimore City | 79,000 | 70% |
Leadership
MSDE is led by the State Superintendent of Schools, and receives guidance from the Maryland State Board of Education.Nancy Grasmick served as state superintendent of schools from 1991 to 2011.
Lillian M. Lowery served as Superintendent of the Department from 2012 until 2015.
Following Lowery's resignation, Jack R. Smith served as interim Superintendent of the Department until June 2016.
History
1800s
The first superintendent of schools for the State of Maryland was authorized in the 1865, by the GeneralGeneral Assembly of Maryland under the third and revolutionary/radical Maryland Constitution of 1864 ratified briefly under the Unionist / Radical Republican Party then in power in the state and nationally during the American Civil War and continuing into the post-war Reconstruction era of the late 1860s and into the 1870s. The new appointive office continued to be supplemented later with the creation of a State Board of Education to supervise the various levels of activity in public education among the various then 22 counties of Maryland which all had widely different situations from the Appalachian Mountains and the Blue Ridge in the Western panhandle to the Chesapeake Bay and adjacent rural counties of the southern portion of the "Free State" to the Potomac River and the Eastern Shore to the short North Atlantic Ocean coast. Several different funding levels and growing opportunities for the elementary/grammar schools, intermediate/junior high/middle schools and high schools/secondary education, with Baltimore City. In 1839, a high school opened for boys only, known first as "The High School"; it is the third oldest public high school in the United States, and the oldest in state. The high school later became known as the Male High School in 1844 with the opening then of two public high schools for girls, Eastern and Western, then known as the "Central High School of Baltimore" since 1850 for near 20 years and finally renamed B.C.C. in 1868.Then rural sparsely populated Baltimore County instituted small one-room schools in wood-frame buildings beginning in the 1850s, supplementing the original colonial era "free schools" nominally established with only one in each of the counties. Baltimore County was second in the state with the first and only public high school in the newly purchased old Franklin Academy in Reisterstown becoming as Franklin High School in the 1850s. Followed by secondary schools in the county seat of Towson as Towson High School in 1873.
A "Negro" / "Colored" elementary schools were authorized 1867, after a long controversy and public demand by the free black population of the, supplemented in 1883 by a "Colored High School" - second oldest in the nation next to Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C.. Baltimore 's new secondary school for its large free blacks population grew to be a crowning academic/cultural and social achievement for the former slaves over the next decades. The "Colored High" was later renamed Frederick Douglass High School in 1925, recalling its earliest beginnings as the independent private Douglass Institute founded in 1865, immediately after the Civil War on the 400 block of East Lexington Street, by Davis Street alley, on the north side around the corner from the Battle Monument from the War of 1812. It was located between North Calvert and North Streets in the former Newton University adjacent townhouse buildings. Founded in the 1840s, Newton's buildings served as a hospital for Union Army wounded in the recent strife. Former Baltimorean and escaped slave Frederick Douglass himself presided over the dedication ceremonies in September 1865, and later frequently lectured at the Institute. The Institute endured 18 years until the establishment by the City Schools system with a small struggling high school after continuous pressure and campaign for African-American schooling opportunities.
Then "polytechnical" / schools for "manual training" founded that same year of 1883, with the "Baltimore Manual Training School".
1900s
A second high school for Negroes was established in 1910 and in the next decade was renamed the Paul Laurence High School for East Baltimore. A new nationally popular lower form of secondary education with junior high schools for lower grades 7, 8 and 9, were instituted in 1920. Supplementing the four academic citywide single sex schools, then were neighborhood comprehensive "co-educational" high schools opened-1922, beginning with of whom he was a long-time leader in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Rankings
In 2009, the Maryland state public schools system was ranked #1 in the nation, overall, as a result of three separate, independent studies conducted by publications Education Week, Newsweek, and MGT of America. "Education Week" has ranked Maryland public education #1 in the nation for two years in a row, since 2008. "Education Week", the nation’s leading education newspaper, looked at data in six critical categories over the past two years, and placed Maryland’s state education system at the very top of national rankings. Maryland placed at the top of the list in "Education Week"’s annual “Quality Counts” tally, with the nation’s only B+ average. The new report found that no other state has a more consistent record of excellence than Maryland. Results for the State were above average in all six of the broad grade categories, and ranked in the top seven in five of the six categories. According to "Newsweek" magazine, Maryland public schools rank first in the nation in the percentage of high schools offering—and students taking—college-level courses. The College Board ranked Maryland's public schools system, first in the nation amongst students earning a score of three or higher on national AP exams.The state budget for education was $5.5 billion in 2009.