[Former @MCPS Administrator]Carey Wright will lead Maryland schools after superintendent’s departure @MdPublicSchools

The Maryland State Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously appointed Carey Wright, a former schools chief in Mississippi who began her career in Maryland, to serve as interim state superintendent while a national search is conducted to replace the departing Mohammed Choudhury.

Wright is known in the education world as the Mississippi superintendent who raised student reading and math performance in a state that for decades had abysmal results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test sometimes called the “gold standard” of student assessment because it is seen as the most consistent nationally representative measure of U.S. student achievement since the 1990s. She retired from the post in June 2022 and now lives in Baltimore County, according to an interview she gave to Maryland Matters...

 https://wapo.st/3ZLnRH7

Outgoing Maryland Schools Superintendent pens op-ed. Here's what he left out.

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — Embattled Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury’s resignation takes effect October 6.

Choudhury is stepping down after just two years as the state superintendent of schools, marking the end of a tumultuous term. He made the announcement following a series of Project Baltimore investigations that raised serious questions over transparency within the Maryland State Department of Education and potential violations of state law.

In a final goodbye this week, Choudhury penned an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun, touting what he calls “important progress.” But Project Baltimore took a closer look at his performance...

Outgoing Maryland Schools Superintendent pens op-ed. Here's what he left out. | WBFF (foxbaltimore.com)

Maryland State Superintendent Choudhury to resign Oct. 6, become senior adviser to Board of Education the next day

Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury will resign as the state’s public schools leader Oct. 6, but the next day become a full-time senior adviser for the State Board of Education.

A joint statement released Friday from the board and Choudhury explains that he will provide “expert-level advice, guidance and recommendations” on education policies, strategies and priorities, such as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan.

Sylvia Lawson, deputy state superintendent for organizational effectiveness, will serve as acting superintendent upon Choudhury’s resignation until an interim superintendent is appointed.

According to a transition agreement between the board and Choudhury, he will “maintain current knowledge of contemporary trends and development to ensure the State Board maintains an understanding of issues in a rapidly evolving environment.”

A main job requirement in the agreement: he must report “directly to the President [Clarence Crawford] and Vice President [Joshua Michael] of the State Board of Education.”

If Choudhury wants to meet with legislators and other public officials, he needs to obtain approval with board leadership...

Choudhury to resign Oct. 6, become senior adviser to Board of Education the next day - Maryland Matters

Mohammed Choudhury earns $310,000 a year as the Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, and he’s currently fighting for his job. Dr. Sonja Santelises, last year, earned $445,000 in total compensation as the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools.

 Two of Maryland's highest-ranking education leaders under fire in wake of Project Baltimore investigations

Two of Maryland's highest-ranking education leaders under fire in wake of Project Baltimor | WBFF (foxbaltimore.com)

BREAKING: Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury has withdrawn his request for a second contract. This follows a nine month long Project Baltimore investigation into his actions at ⁦ @MdPublicSchools ⁩.

BREAKING: Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury has withdrawn his request for a second contract. This follows a nine month long Project Baltimore investigation into his actions at ⁦@MdPublicSchools⁩. pic.twitter.com/wLw4tfPk2L

— Chris Papst (@chrispapst) September 15, 2023

‘He needs to go’ | Taxpayer advocate says Maryland School Board needs to act now on Superintendent

(WBFF) — Some are calling for Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury to resign, saying he’s betrayed the public trust.

A recent Project Baltimore investigation exposed how Choudhury used an encrypted messaging app to conduct state business, even though he initially denied using the app for his job...

Taxpayer advocate says Maryland School Board needs to act now on Superintendent | WBFF (foxbaltimore.com)

Maryland lawmaker calls for special hearing to investigate issues at State Department of Education

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WBFF) — For many local public school students, this week marked the return to school. And while students are back in the classroom, problems continue to mount at the Maryland State Department of Education.

Now, some lawmakers are calling for a special hearing in Annapolis to learn more about what Fox45 News has exposed.

“It's potentially a crime that has been committed for willfully deleting public records,” said Ryan Nawrocki, a Republican state delegate representing Baltimore County. “I'm extremely concerned. Some of my other colleagues are also very concerned.”

The Baltimore County representative, over the past few months, has been watching Project Baltimore’s investigation into Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury. Project Baltimore discovered that text messages on the superintendent’s state-issued cell phone were deleted, even after we filed a public record request to see them, which could be a violation of state law...

Maryland lawmaker calls for special hearing to investigate issues at State Department of E | WBFF (foxbaltimore.com)

Questions over deleted texts remain unanswered as State School Board weighs Superintendent's future

(WBFF) — The Maryland State School Board is running out of time to make a decision on whether the current superintendent will receive a new contract.

Right now, State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury earns more than $300,000 a year to oversee the operation of Maryland public schools, which involves billions of tax dollars. But his future as superintendent is in doubt...

Questions over deleted texts remain unanswered as State School Board weighs Superintendent | WBFF (foxbaltimore.com)

Maryland School Board delays vote on offering embattled State Superintendent new contract [Choudhoury absent from meeting, on vacation]

Baltimore (WBFF) — The Maryland State Board of Education has decided to delay a decision on whether to offer the State Superintendent of Schools another contract. The school board could have voted Tuesday evening to offer Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury a four-year contract but chose to continue deliberating.

The Maryland State Department of Education has come under fire recently. In the last year, there have been reports of a toxic work culture, transparency questions related to the department changing how test scores are reported to the public and concerns over how tax dollars are spent.

Choudhury was absent from Tuesday’s State Board of Education meeting.

“He’s on vacation,” Board President Clarence Crawford told Project Baltimore.

Even though, on that day, the board was scheduled to vote on renewing Choudhury’s contract. That is largely why former Maryland State Department of Education employee Robert Eccles was at the meeting. Because he had a lot to say about MSDE’s leadership under Choudhury.

“Who's taking responsibility for all these glaring leadership failings, and I respectfully ask the board to rethink its working definition of brilliant and transformational leadership,” said Eccles while speaking during public comment. “Transformational leaders actually lead people and don't disparage them. They invite feedback and can take criticism without retaliation. Brilliant leaders prioritize delivering on time. They care more about collaboration than control, and they don't repeatedly trash partners in private and sabotage their access to valuable federal or state resources because of personal grudges.”..

...Project Baltimore, in April, broke the news that the Maryland State Department of Education, without informing the public, changed how it reports test scores. As a result, MSDE hid much of the data behind asterisks. Parents and taxpayers can no longer see how many schools are performing on state tests. When Project Baltimore first tried to speak with Choudhury about it, he locked himself behind a door...

Maryland School Board delays vote on offering embattled State Superintendent new contract | WBFF (foxbaltimore.com)

New MD State Superintendent of Schools Appoints 4 Administrators, 2 from Montgomery County Public Schools

 September 13, 2021

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                                     

CONTACT:  Lora Rakowski, 410-767-0486

lora.rakowski@maryland.gov

Maryland State Department of Education Builds New Leadership Team 

Superintendent Choudhury Appoints New Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning; Deputy Superintendent of Operations; Assistant Superintendent of Financial Planning, Operations, and Strategy; and Senior Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Continuous Improvement

BALTIMORE, MD (September 13, 2021) – Reimagining the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future era, Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury has appointed four new members to his leadership team: Dr. Deann Collins, Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning; Krishnanda (Krishna) Tallur, Deputy Superintendent of Operations; Justin Dayhoff, Assistant Superintendent of Financial Planning, Operations, and Strategy; and Mike Herschenfeld, Senior Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Continuous Improvement.

Approved by the Maryland State Board of Education in a special meeting last Wednesday, the new educator-leaders will join MSDE in the coming weeks.

“As we emerge from the pandemic, we are assessing and expanding our capacity and growing the team needed to implement the once-in-a-generation opportunity presented by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future,” said State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury. “I am excited to bring the talents of these four dynamic, experienced, and highly effective educators to MSDE. They are proven game-changers in their fields of expertise, and will help steer the future of Maryland education.”

Dr. Deann M. Collins will lead MSDE’s charge to accelerate student achievement as Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning. Currently serving as Director of the Division of Early Childhood and Title I Programs, and Recovery Funds for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), Dr. Collins has worked in the field of education for more than two decades. She previously served as Executive Director to the Deputy Superintendent for MCPS, classroom teacher, staff development teacher, Pre-K–12 school improvement specialist, assistant principal, and principal. Dr. Collins earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Bowie State University.

Krishnanda (Krishna) Tallur joins MSDE as Deputy Superintendent of Operations and will oversee the divisions of Human Resources, Information Technology, Procurement and Contract Management, and Facilities. With more than 18 years of service with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), he has most recently served as the Director of Employee Retiree Services administering payroll, benefit, retirement, and other personnel services to over 24,000 employees and 14,000 retirees. Krishna graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Physics/Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Hood College.

Justin Dayhoff joins the MSDE team as Assistant Superintendent of Financial Planning, Operations, and Strategy. In this role, he will support the annual budget planning processes and operations, oversee a new Office of Grants Administration and Compliance, and launch a new professional development work stream for local school systems dedicated to financial planning, equity and strategy. His focus in school finance emphasizes school, district, and state budgets and funding models that help advance fiscal equity for students. After working for a local school district where he designed and implemented funding formulas, Justin founded the company Equiday to help scale strategic resource allocation to districts across the United States. Following Equiday’s acquisition by Baltimore-based Allovue, Justin has helped lead, counsel, and implement strategic allocation, budget initiatives, and resource management in many of the country’s largest schools districts. He is currently working on his Doctorate in Education Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Mike Herschenfeld joins MSDE as the Senior Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Continuous Improvement, who will oversee our new Office of Strategic Planning and Continuous Improvement, which will manage MSDE’s multiyear strategic plan and Blueprint for Maryland’s Future initiatives. Mike has served as the CEO of BlueScope Group, an education consulting firm, for the past three years and prior to that the Manager of District Strategy and Innovation at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). At the TEA, he led the design and continuous improvement of the System of Great Schools Network, the Transformation Zone program, and supported school district leadership across Texas through innovative change management. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT.

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Mohammed Choudhury, new Maryland state schools superintendent, to earn significantly more than predecessor

 

Maryland’s newly chosen state school superintendent will earn $310,000 a year, significantly more than the current superintendent...

https://www.baltimoresun.com/education/bs-md-state-superintendent-salary-20210601-6doswij2ufdndcs47oiezdxnbi-story.html?fbclid=IwAR16HH1lqih9rpOvwe7fVtWfZu4gSLlrmmvoC57Aex7MYzT1eOHeGOzEics

2018 Article on Mohammed Choudhury (Next MD State Superintendent) Mohammed Choudhury: In America’s most economically divided city, a ‘diverse-by-design’ prophet is weeding out segregation, one equity audit at a time

By Beth Hawkins

September 25, 2018

San Antonio, Texas

Mohammed Choudhury grew up in Los Angeles, “a minority amongst minorities.” His parents emigrated from Bangladesh in the 1980s, a moment he sees in retrospect as an easier time for immigrants to establish themselves. His parents saved up, opened a restaurant in West Hollywood, and worked their way into the middle class.

They sent their kids to the neighborhood school, which had students from all over the world, something Choudhury loved. He knows now, as a rising star in education leadership, that it was academically lackluster. But from his parents’ perspective, the school was the gateway to the self-determination they came to the U.S. seeking...

...Fast-forward not so many years, and Choudhury, 34, is leading a closely watched effort by the San Antonio Independent School District to open dozens of innovative new, diverse-by-design schools. Because virtually all of the district’s 50,000 students are impoverished, to create that diversity he must both attract affluent families from outside the district and ensure that children from the most isolated, destitute families within it are represented in these exciting new schools...

...“One of the things that we told ourselves is we’re not going to do school choice … in a way that exacerbates segregation,” he says. “We’re not going to create a system [that has] our hands and fingerprints on it that allows a few winners and lots of losers.”..

...Three elements are indispensable in creating a system of schools that’s equitable and sustainable, in Choudhury’s view. The first is schools with attractive themes or instructional models, such as Montessori or dual language, in accessible locations. Then there’s transportation; without busing, the most desirable schools will fill up with families that can transport their own kids.

Finally, districts should create one unified enrollment system and use it to weight enrollment at each school for diversity. Families that don’t get their first choice in a computerized lottery should get help finding the next-best fit for their child, and the admissions process should include equity audits to ensure that the most isolated students are adequately represented...

...All of this means Choudhury will need not just to conduct an admissions lottery for each school where there are more applicants than seats, but also to control for other student socioeconomic factors, depending on each school’s desired makeup. Like other districts with centralized admissions systems, his office uses a computer algorithm to run lotteries...

https://www.the74million.org/article/the-architect-how-one-texas-innovation-officer-is-rethinking-school-integration/

MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION APPOINTS NEW STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS Mohammed Choudhury from San Antonio, Texas

 

MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION APPOINTS NEW STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS 

Mr. Mohammed Choudhury Appointed Following National, Multi-Phased Search Process Guided by Community and Stakeholder Input

BALTIMORE, MD (May 27, 2021) – In a unanimous vote today, the Maryland State Board of Education (State Board) has appointed Mr. Mohammed Choudhury as the next Maryland State Superintendent of Schools. Mr. Choudhury’s selection follows a rigorous and multi-phased national search, closely guided by community and stakeholder input.

Currently serving as Associate Superintendent and Chief Strategy, Talent and Innovation Officer for the San Antonio Independent School District, Mr. Choudhury is nationally recognized for his visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to equity, innovation, and excellence in public education. Understanding needs, spearheading initiatives and delivering results, Mr. Choudhury has integrated transformative policies and groundbreaking practices that have shattered expectations and raised the bar for staff and students across the country.

“When we set out on our search for Maryland’s next superintendent, our goal was to identify and hire the highest caliber candidate to build the future of education for all Maryland children. Considering Mr. Choudhury’s outstanding transformative accomplishments, we are completely confident that we have hired the right person, one who deeply cares about children,” said Board President Clarence Crawford. “Mr. Choudhury distinguished himself by providing a fresh perspective, and his engaging high-energy approach brings the best out of the people he serves. He is a bold pioneer in the educational community, and we are fortunate to have secured his leadership as Maryland’s chief education officer as we continue to recover from the devastating impacts of COVID-19 and seek to implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. Mr. Choudhury is an empathetic and collaborative leader and hard-working person who values input and diverse perspectives.”

Relentlessly committed to narrowing historical opportunity and achievement gaps and improving student achievement and outcomes, Choudhury is credited for helping to lead a transformation of San Antonio’s large school system, where 90% of students are economically-disadvantaged. Before he arrived in San Antonio, the district had an F-rating. Today, it is the fastest-improving large district in all of Texas.

Choudhury cites the following initiatives as the driving forces for this success: implementing an innovative poverty tracker to assess and address student needs in the district’s poorest communities; expanding options for families by launching innovative, high-performing school models that serve all students; and recruiting and retaining master teachers at chronically underperforming schools. San Antonio’s success has helped transform the way Texas examines poverty and funds public schools with Choudhury’s work scaled to benefit more than 5.4 million students across the state.

“For years, Maryland Public Schools have been a model for other states and there is an incredibly strong foundation to build upon to ensure that every Maryland student has the opportunity to build a great future. But being one of the top states for education doesn’t mean there aren’t gaps in the system, and it certainly doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement,” said Mohammed Choudhury. “With the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future as a guide for MSDE and every district in the state, the state’s leaders have shown a remarkable commitment to the hard work that’s necessary to bridge gaps and ensure every student has the tools and supports needed to be successful. I am honored by the board’s selection and look forward to hitting the ground running as Maryland’s next State Superintendent of Schools.”

Prior to his appointment in San Antonio, Choudhury led transformation and innovation efforts for the Dallas Independent School District which has been recognized as a national model for launching and scaling transformation initiatives. He started his career as a classroom teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District where he earned accolades for his innovative work to partner with non-profit organizations to provide students with additional support in middle school. Beyond the classroom, Mr. Choudhury also built extensive experience and expertise in program and policy development as a senior leader with the Future is Now Schools Network.

In 2018, Education Week profiled Choudhury as a “Leader to Learn From,” one of 12 exceptional school system leaders recognized nationally for impacting student and teacher success. Mr. Choudhury is a member of the Chiefs for Change Future Chief program, a highly selective, nationally-based leadership development program that prepares the next generation of state and district education leaders. Mr. Choudhury completed his undergraduate work at California State University in Northridge and earned an M.Ed. from UCLA.           

Mr. Choudhury will replace Dr. Karen B. Salmon who will retire on June 30 after an education career spanning more than 45 years, including five years leading the Maryland State Department of Education.

“We are thankful for Dr. Salmon’s leadership, deep knowledge of Maryland’s education system and her unparalleled commitment to all Maryland children as part of her dedication to equity and excellence,” said President Crawford. “As a result of her guidance, we are well-poised to deliver the future of Maryland education.”

Last fall, the Maryland State Board of Education announced that it had retained Greenwood/Asher & Associates to lead the global search for the next Maryland State Superintendent of Schools. The extensive, multi-phased search process included planning, community outreach, and a national recruitment strategy. The firm conducted multiple stakeholder meetings, three public Town Hall meetings, and a survey to solicit public input to inform the Superintendent recruitment profile.

Led by the superintendent selection team, all Board members screened and narrowed 55 applicants to 11.  Eleven candidates were researched and interviewed, with four exceptional finalists.

Mr. Choudhury will begin his term as Maryland State Superintendent of Schools effective July 1, 2021.

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