Maryland Conservatarian

I haven’t seen much about this yet but from the website of your Maryland State Teachers Association:

“MSTA delegates vote to back O'Malley in governor's raceWith Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan dropping out of the race for health reasons, Maryland 's delegation to the RA enthusiastically called all MSTA members to action in support of the candidacy of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley for Governor and expressed deep appreciation to Duncan for his strong support for public education and educators.” MSTA: Maryland State Teachers Association

This doesn’t seem to be the same as the MSTA as an organization officially endorsing Mayor O’Malley in the gubernatorial election…although I don’t think anyone doubts that that is coming. The only holdup is probably the need to carefully craft a message of why the MSTA and its members think Mayor O’Malley is going to be such a boon for education. This is, after all, the same Mayor O’Malley who managed to convince his Democratic friends in Annapolis to keep 11 woefully underperforming Baltimore city schools under the same management they’ve always had. ( Democrats run Baltimore City for years so fault must lie elsewhere for state of its schools)

While the Mayor doesn’t have the kind of direct influence on education in his city that other mayors do, what influence he does have is certainly not inspiring. And he is not shy about latching onto any improvements noted. For instance:

“The study, published by the journal Education Week last week, maintains that only 38.5 percent of Baltimore's high school students graduated four years after they began high school. Only Detroit, where the graduation rate was 21.7 percent, had a lower rate. The city school system says its graduation rate was 54 percent in 2003, the year analyzed in the study, and improved to 59 percent last year.”

“Mayor Martin O'Malley, the presumed Democratic nominee for governor, has been praising the city's improved graduation rate in his campaign, using the state figures.” Schools challenge report - baltimoresun.com

Now why anyone wants to brag about a 59% graduation rate is beyond me but apparently that’s an impressive rate to some. I think the best line about Mayor O’Malley’s commitment to education comes from Montgomery County County Executive doug Duncan:

"I am not surprised that, as a candidate for governor, Mayor O'Malley is now promising to do for Maryland's schools what he has failed to for Baltimore," Duncan said.” Metro