How Speak Agent Aligns with Maryland Policies and Grants

Governor Wes Moore has proposed a $10.2 billion allocation for Maryland Public Schools in the FY 2027 budget. This represents a $373.8 million increase over FY 2026. At the same time, this funding increase comes with heightened expectations, many of which are spelled out in state legislation.

This article describes several recent State of Maryland policy statements and LEA grant awards, along with an explanation of how Speak Agent aligns with each policy or grant. (Speak Agent is headquartered in Maryland.)

Blueprint for Maryland’s Future
PreK-12 Mathematics Policy
Maryland State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG)
Public School Opportunities Enhancement (PSOE) Grant Program

Blueprint for Maryland’s Future

What Is the Blueprint?

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2021 to transform public education in the state into a world-class education system. The Blueprint increases state funding for education over a 10-year period in order to enrich student experiences and accelerate student outcomes, as well as to improve the quality of education for all children in Maryland, especially those who have been historically underserved. MSDE publishes a strategic plan setting forth goals and expected outcomes against baseline data.

How Speak Agent Aligns to the Blueprint

Speak Agent aligns by providing the academic rigor, research-based materials, and multilingual support meeting the Blueprint’s pillars 3 and 4.

Pillar 3: College and Career Readiness (CRR). The goal is for all students to meet the CCR standard by the end of 10th grade, developing CCR-Support pathways to support students in meeting the standard and ensuring that pre-K through 12th grade curriculum, standards, and assessments are all aligned with the new CCR standard. To meet the standard, students must achieve a proficient score on the MCAP for an advanced mathematics course such as Algebra.

• Speak Agent has been shown to directly improve math performance throughout the middle grades, which is crucial to developing the pipeline of students who can achieve proficiency in advanced mathematics. 
• In addition, Speak Agent is offering new MCCRS Integrated Algebra 1 and 2 courses for Maryland, beginning in SY26-27. 

Pillar 4: More Resources for Student Success. The goal is to strengthen services and targeted supports for students with special needs, multilingual learners, and struggling learners, as well as for Community Schools in areas of concentrated poverty. Meeting this goal demand a focus on equity and closing deeply entrenched historical opportunity and achievement gaps.

• Speak Agent’s ability to bridge the gap between social and academic language in math and science directly supports Pillar 4.
• Thanks to an array of specialized learning scaffolds, multilingual learners experienced the same gains in math proficiency using Speak Agent as monolingual learners. Furthermore, MLs made significant gains on the WIDA ACCESS for ELs assessment.
• For students with special needs, Speak Agent not only complies with the AA Level of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards, but it also provides a full Accessibility Guide and toolkit for students and teachers to take advantage of built-in UDL platform features and settings.

PreK-12 Mathematics Policy

What Is the Policy?

The PreK-12 Maryland Mathematics Policy is designed to significantly improve teaching, learning, and achievement in mathematics, from early childhood through secondary grades, across the State of Maryland. It ensures that every student receives equitable math instruction and necessary support as they develop strong numeracy skills, fostering joyful mathematical experiences and paving the way for college and career success.

How Speak Agent Aligns to the Policy

To support student development of mathematical literacy, Speak Agent delivers supplemental Tier 1 instruction aligned to the classroom curriculum:

• Explicit and systematic instruction that prioritizes the use of mathematical language. Speak Agent aligns by providing research-based supports that integrate academic language mastery with core math content.
• Use of visual representations as a learning support. Representing is one of three modes of expressive language. It is a way for students to communicate their ideas, thought process, solution steps—and for teachers to gain insights into their content knowledge. A visual representation is an accurate depiction of a math problem’s quantities and relationships. Students who use accurate visual representations are six times more likely to correctly solve math problems than are students who do not (Boonen et al, 2014).
• Additionally, Speak Agent ensures equitable access for diverse learners through their various supports to promote student proficiency.

Maryland State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG)

What Is the SPDG?

The SPDG grant builds capacity to provide specially designed math instruction and embedded social-emotional supports to improve outcomes for elementary learners with disabilities. Maryland is investing $5.5 million in federal grant funds to support Local Education Agencies (LEAs) in the design and implementation of evidence-based mathematics instruction and social-emotional supports to narrow opportunity and achievement gaps for learners with disabilities. The SPDG will partner with national and state experts in specially designed mathematics instruction, social-emotional supports, and professional learning/coaching strategies to support a school-wide model to build the capacity of educators to collaborate and deliver evidence-based practices.

How Speak Agent Aligns to SPDG

• Speak Agent offers elementary mathematics courses with AA-level accessibility compliance and built-in multimodal supports for grades 3, 4, and 5.
• A requirement of the grant is for the math curriculum to be evidence-based, practical to implement, and replicable. Speak Agent’s Math + Language framework, built on learning sciences research, supplements your MCCRS-aligned curriculum to support all three of those objectives.
• The SPDG requires the embedding of SEL strategies within math instruction. Speak Agent aligns through fostering student identity, agency, and self regulation. The scaffolded learning supports that Speak Agent provides encourage students to build communication skills, self-efficacy, and self confidence in mathematics. Additionally, the digital lessons in Speak Agent provide ample opportunities for metacognition (self-reflection) and self-pacing.

Public School Opportunities Enhancement (PSOE) Grant Program

What Is the PSOE?

The Public School Opportunities Enhancement Grant Program (PSOE) was enacted under Article II, Section 17(b) of the Maryland Constitution in order to support extended-day and summer enhancement programs at LEAs where at least 50% of public school students qualify for free lunch.

How Speak Agent Aligns to PSOE

• Expand or create an extended day and summer enhancement program. Speak Agent provides digital lessons in math and science that can be integrated with your current MCCRS-aligned curriculum for grades 3-12. This can ensure enrichment time is high dosage and directly supports what students learn during the day.
• Expand or create a summer enhancement program. Speak Agent can be used for summer learning modules or as a supplemental option in both in-person and remote learning settings.