Education Advocates Will Push For Lawmakers To Fund Teacher Training Program

By William J. Ford, Maryland Matters

December 9, 2025

The Maryland General Assembly voted to include a statewide professional teacher development program known as “coaching” in the final version of the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act.

What lawmakers didn’t include in the act, to the dismay of education advocates, was money for the program.

So the state’s top education cheerleaders, including State Superintendent Carey Wright, will once again try to convince state legislators of the importance of coaching when the General Assembly returns next month for its 2026 session.

Wright said coaches are knowledgeable in many aspects of education such as the science of reading. In addition, they are good at working with adults and can model lessons.

“They don’t do recess duty. They don’t do bus duty. They’re not assigned to cover assessments. They’re there to work with teachers each and every day,” Wright said Monday at the Maryland READS third annual event at Maple Springs Baptist Church in Prince George’s County. More than 130 other state education officials, educators, nonprofit and community leaders and advocates turned out for the event.

The nonprofit organization’s event coincided with a report it released last month titled, “What are the Stories Behind the Scores?” that includes data from the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program., including results from tests students took this spring. While that program saw a third straight year of overall improvements in language arts scores, test results also showed that significant gaps remain between demographic groups, such as Black, Latino and students with disabilities.

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In following its mantra in READS – Reading Education Aligned to Data and Science – the group released a brief Monday that said investing in sustained coaching improves literacy.

To amplify its point, it noted how Georgia students made a 15% improvement in reading scores after the state implemented a literacy coaching program to begin the 2024-25 school year. According to that state’s Department of Education, full-time literacy coaches were placed in 60 of the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools, impacting more than 18,000 students.

The Maryland READS brief summarized the importance of coaching through six pillars: trust, content focus, active learning, coherence, sustained duration and collective participation.

“This is the legislature’s opportunity to show the Nation that Maryland is committed to making the necessary investments to realize the promise of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future” education reform plan, according to the brief. “If we make only one new investment in education, we should place our bets here.”

It could be a tough sell, as lawmakers face a potential a $1.5 billion budget deficit when they convene Jan. 14 for the 2026 legislative session.

But a few legislators did travel to Maple Springs Baptist Church in Capitol Heights, including Sen. Malcolm Augustine (D-Prince George’s) and Dels. Andrea Fletcher Harrison (D-Prince George’s), Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery), April Miller (R-Frederick) and Eric Ebersole (D-Baltimore County).

Three of the lawmakers serve on committees that review and draft education policy. Augustine serves on the Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee; Ebersole and Miller serve on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Solomon, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, which assesses the state budget, offered some advice for attendees as they try to explain to his colleagues why coaching matters.

“We need to hear from all of the folks in your network that coaching is a non-negotiable,” said Solomon, one of the legislative leaders in early childhood education. “This needs to be included in the budget. That this needs to be an investment, otherwise the Blueprint will not [work].”