Jeb Bush's org behind the new MSDE MS math minutes increase (which will likely cut MS electives)

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12/09/2025 13:47

Subject: Jeb Bush's org behind the new MSDE MS math minutes increase (which will likely cut MS electives)

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Anonymous

For folks who don't know, MSDE passed a new policy and will be requiring 300 minutes of math a week in grades K-8 starting in 2027, which is way more than middle schools offer currently, and so will require big changes which will probably mean cuts to electives (possibly down to just one elective per year for middle schoolers), the end of block schedules, etc.

I was trying to figure out where this came from, and it looks like it's being pushed by ExcelinEd, the education group founded by Jeb Bush (he's chairman of the board and puts out press releases under the ExcelinEd name regularly, and other Republicans like Eric Cantor, Bruce Rauner, Susana Martinez, etc are on the board as well.) I don't see any notable advocacy on this from anywhere else. No other state has required this for middle schoolers (Alabama does for K-5) so and they are very excited that Maryland will be the first one. This is their fact sheet on it and if you search the web for mentions of this minimum math requirement, you'll see articles on a variety of websites but they all seem to be written by ExcelinEd staff and they all only ever link to this website when they assert that evidence supports this change.

I'm also skeptical that the data they're pushing on this is even real. They say "Students in countries who consistently perform well on international math assessments have an average of 60 minutes per day (300 minutes per week) for math instruction" which, even if true, feels like a "correlation does not equal causation" issue... but they only ever link to this website, which is just a a listing of how many hours per year of math instruction 4th and 8th graders get around the world, and shows only two countries with middle schoolers averaging more than 180 hours a year/5 hours a week of math (more elementary schoolers are, so maybe this is true at the ES level.) In fact, the one article I found where they gave a little more detail ("But in Singapore, Japan, and Finland, students have a better understanding of foundational mathematical concepts as they enter young adulthood. All three of these high-performing countries have one thing in common: They mandate that schools dedicate at least an hour every day to math instruction") mentions 3 countries that, according to the TIMSS data they link, have far fewer annual math hours than the US for 8th graders-- for Finland and Japan just 105 and 111 hours per year! Unless there are other sources they are relying on but not sharing, it feels sloppy bordering on misleading.

But even if it is indeed true that middle schoolers do better in math with more minutes per week (which is logical albeit maybe unproven), the question is still "At what cost?" It is hard to see how MCPS middle schools will add an extra 60-100 minutes of math a week without cutting back on electives, which may mean that middle schoolers will only have one elective period and would have to choose between foreign language and instrumental music, both of which are valuable in their own right (and other electives will probably shrink too if they're only an option for kids who want neither foreign language nor music.) Middle school immersion and magnets may be in trouble too, if participating kids would no longer be able to take any extra electives.

I am personally very frustrated by this. (And annoyed that it doesn't look to me like it got much or any debate when it passed, probably because it was buried in the same math policy that changed the algebra/HS math pathways and made a bunch of other math changes.) Does anyone know if there are any efforts to lobby MSDE to reverse this requirement for middle school? And does anyone know if MCPS has taken a position on this change, or if we could lobby them to oppose it?