Maryland is among a small group of states that defined the essential components of a high-level education and began to measure whether students were meeting these higher standards. The report of the Governor's Commission on School Performance presented a blueprint for constructing a statewide school improvement framework with accountability as the cornerstone. The report of the Governor's Commission on School Performance presented a blueprint for constructing a statewide school improvement framework with accountability as the cornerstone. The Commission said that responsibility for improving schools, and for ensuring that all children are engaged in the learning process, resides within each school, each local school system, and the State. The Commission's recommendations, anticipated by educators for two years, began a new era in Maryland public education.
All children have the right to attend schools in which they can progress and learn.
All children shall have a real opportunity to learn equally rigorous content. Not only were schools to share responsibility for student learning with the students themselves, but that responsibility now extended to all students, reversing a tradition that accepted a certain percentage of students as not being capable of challenging academic work. The premises represented a new direction and philosophy for Maryland's schools, resulting in fundamental, systemic change in how education is organized, how schools teach, and how students learn.