Talbot County Public Schools remain well below the state in English and math after five MCAP cycles. The district is climbing. Neighbors are climbing faster in math, and the English rebound has not erased a one-year drop no other Maryland district matched.

English language arts proficiency, year by year: 43.1% (2022), 44.4% (2023), 47.3% (2024), then a 1.9-point fall to 45.4% in 2025 — the largest year-to-year decline in the state — and a partial recovery to 46.8% in 2026. Net four-year gain: 3.7 points. Caroline County gained 9.9 points over the same stretch and now sits at 50.8%. Queen Anne's remains in the high 50s. Maryland overall is 51.7% in ELA this year. Talbot's ELA gap versus the state is 4.9 points.

Math, year by year: 15.4%, 17.0%, 18.3%, 18.9%, then 20.7%. Four in five students still miss the standard. The state is at 27.1% this year. Caroline passed Talbot in 2024 and is now at 23.7%. Queen Anne's holds 31.7%. The math gap versus the state is 6.4 points — wider than the ELA gap. Neighbors are pulling away in math; Talbot is climbing, but not at their pace.

Budget and enrollment context: the board has spent the recovery years on calendars, a $10.4 million FY27 gap, and weapons detection — the district asked for $800,000, the county funded $400,000, and a cheaper alternative is being piloted at fall athletics. Enrollment was 4,485 in FY2025, the last published headcount, not an FY27 census, and has been falling. Unrestricted FY27 revenue is about $84.6 million; divided by that FY2025 count, spending is on the order of $19,000 per student — a Patriot calculation using last year's enrollment, not a figure MSDE published. The scores have not followed the money. Full charts and neighbor comparisons are in the MCAP briefing.