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correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly said that former Maryland State Department of Education staff member Robert Eccles was disinvited by his former colleagues from a Baltimore Orioles game after he testified at a state board meeting. He was disinvited before he testified. The article has been corrected.
For two years, Mohammed Choudhury has been hard at work as Maryland’s schools superintendent, revamping what he says was “not a functional” department and implementing a historic $3.8 billion program to transform the state’s public education system into a national model of educational excellence and equity. The leaders of the board that hired him say he’s doing a great job — but as they debate extending his contract this summer, they are also defending him against accusations that his fiery management style has jeopardized the state’s agenda for its 900,000 students.
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Choudhury’s critics — many who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation after seeing colleagues harshly dealt with — have said that his leadership style and his bureaucratic overhaul have created problems that threaten the work of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which aims to provide more resources to improve early-childhood education, raise teacher quality and diversity, focus on students from marginalized communities and lift student achievement.
A number of former and current employees say he has created a “toxic” environment that has driven out some of his own handpicked lieutenants and dozens of veterans. They point to heated exchanges in which Choudhury’s employees are seen in tears after meeting with him. In a letter to state officials, former staffer Robert Eccles described a “pattern of verbal bashing and diminishing others in the presence of staff members.” Critics also say that Choudhury micromanages, sometimes causing a delay in work, and that he fosters an atmosphere of distrust. And they say his overhaul of the department has left some critical offices understaffed.
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The Washington Post conducted more than 50 interviews with current and former education department employees, elected officials, school district administrators, early-childhood service providers and others in Maryland’s education world. Amid praise and support for Choudhury’s work were claims that Choudhury’s leadership led to late payments to school districts and partner agencies; the return of more than $800,000 of unused funds for vocational instruction to the federal government; late reports to Maryland’s legislature, after which annoyed lawmakers conditioned $1.5 million in future funds on a timely delivery of information; and frayed relations with Maryland’s Accountability and Implementation Board, the agency in charge of the Blueprint.
“Obviously having all these stories swirl around is not helping the matter at all,” said Senate Budget Chairman Guy Guzzone (D-Howard) when asked if Choudhury could implement the state’s equity plan. “I think he has a lot of strengths. The question is, ‘Can he inspire others to do the things that are not his forte?’”
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In an interview and in detailed written responses to questions over several weeks, Choudhury and top aides rejected many of the criticisms, including that he had fostered a toxic work environment. But in a June 30 letter to the governor and top legislative leaders, the superintendent acknowledged and apologized for “missteps in proactively communicating changes.” “If there has ever been a moment where my passion in any way offended, confused, frustrated, or caused you pause — I am sorry, that was not and is not my intent,” Choudhury wrote. But he added that “broad, blanket assertions about our work remain untrue.”
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Choudhury said in an interview with The Post that he inherited a dysfunctional department with a workforce accustomed to inefficiency — and that his detractors are unwilling to embrace the change he is determined to bring to Maryland. He and his aides said he has promoted employees and diversified the agency’s leadership, allowing it to represent the community it serves; leveraged federal grants to improve literacy, increase tutoring and address learning loss due to the pandemic; and invited wider input for the department’s strategic plan, called “Maryland Transforms,” which aims to improve kindergarten readiness and lift third-grade test scores, among other things.
Choudhury said during the interview at the Department of Education in Baltimore that giving opportunity to historically marginalized communities is personal to him as a Bangladeshi American who grew up in poverty and went to segregated and poor schools in Los Angeles. “This is tough work,” he said. “Kids’ lives are at stake. We’ve got to get this right. Does that mean I’m going to rub up against some adult conveniences to pull that off? Absolutely.” He said he hoped to implement the Blueprint overhaul “with dignity as much as possible,” but “even after I do that, will people not like my views or my take? ... Yes.”
He said he is focused on “Black and Brown students” and will not tolerate the complaints of people who don’t take equity seriously: “You can’t hide behind the segregation that is literally blocks from here. … I’m using words like segregation. I’m putting that on blast.”
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As the state’s top education official, Choudhury will be responsible for implementing the Blueprint — one of the biggest overhauls of state education policies in the country in recent years. Lawmakers and educators spent about four years developing the costly policy aimed at fixing generations of inequity in Maryland’s public schools, where, in 2018, fewer than 40 percent of kindergarten students entered school ready to learn and only about 40 percent graduated prepared for college or career.
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State Board of Education President Clarence Crawford and Vice President Susan Getty said Choudhury is doing excellent work but they take the complaints about Choudhury “very seriously.” They said they looked into it and rejected claims of a toxic work environment made by at least nine current and former employees who wrote detailed letters to the board and Gov. Wes Moore (D).
The letters said Choudhury and his executive leadership team belittled and mocked employees. “He has screamed at staff, torn up memos and thrown them at people, told staff that they are ‘stupid,’ ” said one testimony by Bruce A. Lesh, a former seven-year employee. “Top level staff are reticent to share with the superintendent the information that he needs to hear to make informed decisions.” As a result, Lesh said, the agency is unable “to meet its current statutory requirements.”
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Personnel evaluations are normally done in private, but the debate over whether Choudhury should stay or go has become public. In May, Eccles condemned Choudhury at a state board meeting, rejecting the superintendent’s contention that people who left did not want to work hard: “That is a callous comment to many who like me would have preferred to lead innovation and implement reform in a nontoxic work environment.” Eccles told The Post that before he testified, his former department colleagues stopped talking to him and disinvited him to a Baltimore Orioles game out of fear their bosses might see them with Eccles.
Now the state Board of Education will decide Choudhury’s fate. If it decides to retain him, it will negotiate a new contract and approve it at its September meeting. Choudhury earned $310,000 in his first year, with cost of living increases each year after, according to his contract.
Asked about Choudhury’s future during a recent radio interview on WYPR’s “Midday,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) described the superintendent as a “smart, talented and capable leader” who works under a “complicated structure” that makes his job “inherently difficult.” He stopped short of saying he supports Choudhury’s contract renewal. “The structure that he has to exist in — where you have a state superintendent who does not report to the governor [and] reports to not just one board but two boards [including the AIB] but only one of the boards has hiring authority — is a very complex structure,” Moore said.
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The governor is not directly involved in selecting the state’s superintendent, but he can influence the selection through his appointments to the state education board. He has appointed six of the 14 voting members, including the student representative.
Gail Bates, who stepped off the board at the end of June and had been a member of the committee that picked Choudhury, said she supports him. “Anytime you try to get some kind of outcomes, you’re going to ruffle some feathers,” she said.
A tumultuous takeover
Even Choudhury agrees he was an unconventional choice to become Maryland’s superintendent. He had never run a school district, much less a state agency. But he pushed the San Antonio School District, where he was an associate superintendent in the nearly 50,000-student system, to integrate and expand school choice, which led to a sharp rise in student performance.
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So when Maryland sought a new leader to finish the term of a superintendent who left early and to implement a massive overhaul of its public schools, members of the state Board of Education were intrigued by Choudhury’s achievements. They listened to Choudhury’s admirers talk about his intellect, passion for equity and relentless focus. Fifty-five people applied for the job, and in 2021 the board took a chance on Choudhury.
Choudhury said he was inspired to have a career in education by his grandfather, who started the first school in his Bangladeshi village. Choudhury worked as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and then in the office of transformation and innovation in Dallas before joining the San Antonio school district in 2017 as its first chief innovation officer. Today, he says his eventual goal is to integrate school systems across the United States — where, nearly 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, deep segregation persists — though he said he hopes to stay in Maryland for a decade to see through the Blueprint. Asked to name the biggest obstacle to his success in Maryland, where public school districts enjoy considerable autonomy, Choudhury said, “local control.”
Choudhury said that when he arrived in 2021, the state education department was sclerotic. It was still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, and state auditors said it failed to ensure local districts were spending money in accordance with state law, mishandled federal grants and leaked data. Before the pandemic, more than half of Maryland’s public school students failed the state’s annual standardized tests.
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Choudhury promised to shift the culture to meet the needs of the Blueprint by, in part, consolidating functions to achieve greater efficiency and oversight of work. According to Crawford, Choudhury oriented the department away from “largely doing compliance” and toward taking charge of Blueprint work and pursuing best practices.
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But in making that shift, Choudhury earned a reputation for being what former employees called a “micromanager.” Some work and funding stalled when he required his approval on routine matters such as using federal Perkins grants that fund vocational teaching. “I look at what I need to look at because nothing was being looked at all prior to me,” he said in defense of his revised processes. The department’s leaders “did not have set guidelines for reports. They did not have branding guidelines. Typos galore. … Offices just did what they wanted to do.”
Choudhury also found himself at odds with the AIB, which was created by the legislature in November 2021 to oversee local reforms the education department is meant to implement. Tensions erupted in fall 2022 when the department posted a template that districts would use to create first-year Blueprint programs. It had not sought AIB input, and the template had to be corrected, according to two people who worked on the revisions. In May, Isiah Leggett, who heads the AIB, publicly accused Choudhury’s administration of acting unilaterally and ignoring plans agreed to by the department and the AIB to collaborate in giving districts feedback on their Blueprint plans. The result, Leggett and others said, was confusion for local school districts and a month-long delay for the Blueprint schedule.
Choudhury’s public response accused the legislature of creating organizations “with overlapping responsibilities” that made it “inevitable” for “missteps of this nature” to occur. In a private April email to an AIB employee obtained by The Post, Choudhury was more direct. He criticized “this constant want by the AIB to hover over the department (and even control its work) which I find troubling and concerning.”
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Choudhury told The Post he is “fine with the AIB.” But he suggested he didn’t need its oversight — because of his own abilities. The AIB was created under an “assumption that the department would not be of the caliber that it can be,” he said. “No one expected me to become state superintendent.”
Late reports, frayed relationships
Critics of Choudhury allege a work climate where staff are disparaged and questions are seen as insubordination. They say it has driven out dozens of employees, including people who share Choudhury’s vision and goals around equity, hampering the agency’s work. “Some left because they wanted to telework,” the superintendent said, “and some left because they don’t like the new direction that’s going in. And that’s okay.”
The critics also said Choudhury personally intimidates employees. Employees and former employees told The Post they saw at least five colleagues crying after emerging from meetings with Choudhury. In an email, Justin Dayhoff, assistant state superintendent, denied that Choudhury mistreated staff — calling such accusations “malicious lies” — and countered that Choudhury had sought raises and incentives for department staff. Choudhury did not respond to a query about the accusations.
According to people with knowledge of departures, Choudhury’s chief of staff, director of government affairs, and senior executive director of strategic planning are among those in high-profile positions who left the department because their relationship with the superintendent became contentious. The former employees declined to comment for this article.
A January Legislative Department report on vacancies showed that the Department of Education had a vacancy rate of 11.1 percent in 2021 and 17.4 percent in October 2022 — the highest of any major state agency. The department now says it has fewer than 100 vacancies in a department with 1,179 permanent positions.
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But more than a dozen people, including former and current employees as well as people who work at agencies that partner with the department to provide services to Maryland residents — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared retaliation — said they believe that the loss of key personnel delayed payments to some of those agencies and affected the work that they do. They pointed out that the department has lost expertise in Title I and Title II, which, respectively, are aimed at helping students from low-income families and providing all students with greater access to effective educators.
For example, former employees who worked in the Title I and Title II offices said that the office for Title 1 programs (which dispenses grants of up to $66 million to the state’s 24 school systems) used to have between 12 and 15 specialists to help local school districts. Now there are about six, according to four people with knowledge of the workings of the department, but not all of them have sufficient experience with the grant programs. As a result, those people said, Title I grants were late by several months for school districts in 2023.
Choudhury said that the Title I and II offices did have enough experience and staff to administer the large federal grants.
Heather Sauers, who had worked in the Title II office for five years and was paid with federal dollars, alleged that it “was common for members of the executive leadership team to openly laugh at me” and that she was “mocked” and “called names.” She said she quit last year because the Choudhury administration tried to force her to work on the Blueprint, which she believed would have violated federal work rules. (A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education said he could not say if she was right.) She filed a formal grievance in fall with the Maryland Office of Legislative Affairs but has not heard a response. An official with the office said the grievance could not be released to the media. MSDE spokeswoman Jena Frick said she could not discuss the work of Sauers because it is a personnel matter.
Sauers opened her own consulting company after leaving the department. She said she advises districts with information they used to get from the department before Choudhury’s overhaul.
Nina Roa, a 25-year veteran who had been director of grants and legislation for career programs when she quit in 2022, said Choudhury’s alleged micromanaging led to delays in Perkins grant payments to educational institutions, and the return to the federal government of more than $800,000 of unused funds for vocational instruction — the first time funds had been returned in her decades there. She said all work had to be reviewed by Choudhury. She quit, she said, after what she called a pattern of bullying from members of Choudhury’s administration.
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Events as routine as school visits became contentious when Choudhury said he would not meet with administrators but instead would only shadow students — sitting in class, doing the same assignments. “I don’t like dog-and-pony shows, which was hard for the superintendents and local boards to take in,” he said in the Post interview.
The Post contacted all 24 school districts in Maryland to discuss their relationship with the state department under Choudhury. Only two schools leaders commented — newly retired Prince George’s schools CEO Monica Goldson, who was recently appointed by Moore to the state education board, and Caroline County Superintendent Derek Simmons.
Simmons said Choudhury has been very supportive of his small, 5,600-student district on the Eastern Shore, offering an “interesting perspective and eye in looking at rural poverty in a way that we have not quite noticed from those outside of our county.” Goldson said the department has been “definitely responsive” under Choudhury’s leadership. “There’s nothing we’ve asked for that we haven’t gotten back.”
One official in Montgomery County discussed some confusion early this year when school districts received 2024 state funding allotments, and it turned out that some of them were wrong. According to Richard Madaleno, Montgomery County’s chief administrative officer, a draft count of the number of students eligible for free-and-reduced price meals — a critical component of the local funding formula — was not accurate. Madaleno said the cause was an internal document that didn’t get updated in time at the state Education Department, where there had been a “large turnover in people.”
“There was a snafu in preparing the numbers,” he said. Montgomery County was initially getting an increase of $91 million over last year’s state aid, but the new numbers cut that by $15 million. Baltimore County also received substantially less in the updated figures than administrators had initially been told; Baltimore County schools officials would not discuss the funding.
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At a March 28 Board of Education meeting, Choudhury said concerns about miscalculations of state aid were unfounded, even though the department later revised the numbers. Dayhoff said in an email that initial estimates did not include all information.
State lawmakers have also noticed overdue reports from the Education Department. The Maryland General Assembly mandates regular updates on a range of matters. Of the 78 reports due between July 1, 2022, and Jan. 15, the Education Department turned in 63 percent on time or within 30 days after the deadline; 21 percent between 30 to 90 days late; and 17 percent over 90 days late, according to a state budget report.
Frustrated lawmakers took action with hopes of avoiding a similar scenario this year: The 2024 state operating budget says that $1.5 million in appropriations to the Office of the State Superintendent may be not spent until reports are submitted.
Sen. Nancy King (D-Montgomery), who chairs a subcommittee of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee, was prepared earlier this year to hear testimony from nonprofit groups and department officials, including Choudhury, who said they weren’t receiving promised grant money from the department. Some had been waiting as long as eight months.
One of the agencies was the Maryland Family Network, a nonprofit that disburses government subsidies for day care. King, a former Montgomery County school board member, said she was concerned that the delay might hurt working parents’ ability to find child care.
Choudhury’s office said the nonprofit hadn’t submitted invoices properly. Laura Weeldreyer, executive director of the nonprofit, acknowledged some issues with its financial management and said she asked the Education Department repeatedly for help over months — receiving no response. Only by moving around resources was it able to avoid a stoppage in service. The accounting issues were eventually straightened out.
Kevin Maxwell, who once led the school districts in Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties and is now the chair of the board of directors of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education, said late payments from the department were “really hurting our ability to help teachers and help students.”
The public legislative hearing was canceled, Senate Budget Chairman Guy Guzzone said, after top lawmakers had private talks with the department, after which the organizations received their money. “They didn’t do anything until we made a big fight,” King said, adding that her concerns about the direction of the department were not allayed by the eventual payments.
King said she remains worried about the implementation of the Blueprint, with “so many good people” leaving the agency. “We need the best people to implement this thing,” she said.
In his recent letter to top elected officials, Choudhury sought to assure them that the state’s education system is in good hands and that he will continue to challenge the status quo.
“We know that better and more equitable outcomes are necessary; we cannot keep doing the same things and expect a different result,” he wrote. “We’ve taken big steps forward these last two years and I will continue to do my best each day to earn and keep your trust.”
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