When Montgomery County schools superintendent Thomas Taylor laid out his budget plans for this year, he brought big requests and big promises.

He wanted $3.6 billion in government funding for Maryland’s largest school district — and he was clear this money would come with a return on investment.

As a sign of his confidence, he tossed out a commitment: By 2035, the district should reimburse county public school graduates for the cost of any remedial mathematics and literacy courses they need to take at the local community college.

Taylor acknowledged it was a bold plan. “But the need is there,” he added.

The superintendent isn’t the first person to pitch a “money-back guarantee.” A handful of state legislatures and think tanks floated the concept in the 1990s and early 2000s, driven by frustration over the number of students graduating from high school unprepared for college. But momentum around the idea petered out, positioning Montgomery County as a potential leader with a fresh approach to education accountability.

With his pitch, Taylor entered into a debate that’s long vexed the nation: How do we make sure all public school graduates are ready for college or the workplace? And when they aren’t, what comes next?

Remedial classes — also referred to as developmental courses — are often tapped to answer that second question. If a student enrolls in college but is deemed unready for higher education coursework, they’ll take classes designed to fill academic gaps and strengthen foundational skills.

Approximately one-third of Montgomery College students came to campus with developmental education needs last year, according to the school’s latest accountability report.

These courses don’t count toward graduation requirements, though they cost the same per hour as credit-bearing ones.

Historically, such classes have threatened to swallow students’ scant tuition dollars and slow down their progress toward a degree — or disrupt them entirely.

A 2014 state report on Montgomery College’s developmental courses laid it bare: “Most students never advance beyond developmental coursework at the College,” it read.

Community college officials spent the last several years working on a two-pronged strategy to upend the trend. They now offer students multiple ways to demonstrate readiness for credit-bearing courses rather than relying solely on high-stakes standardized test scores.

They also utilize a “corequisite model,” in which students can take a developmental course at the same time as a credit-bearing one. The idea is to fill students’ academic gaps as the semester moves along, preparing them just in time for college-level lessons.

Still, just over half of students who started Montgomery College in fall 2019 with developmental needs completed their remedial coursework within four years, a figure that led officials to acknowledge that they may need to once again revisit their approach.

Too often, K-12 districts and community colleges operate in silos, said Elizabeth Kopko of the Community College Research Center.

“There’s a difference between being ready for high school graduation and being college-ready,” she said. “Those two things rarely are defined the same way.”

John Hamman, Montgomery College’s chief analytics and insights officer, said leaders from the public school system and college are working together to get on the same page.

“It’s best for us if students come in ready to take our credit classes,” he said.

Taylor agrees. Ideally, he said, there would be no need to test out his money-back guarantee.

“If we do our job well, this is for the low, low cost of $0,” he told the school board. “I think we can do it.”

It could be a difficult metric to hit. Back in the 1990s, a different Montgomery County superintendent was grappling with the same issue.

Roughly 43% of MCPS graduates in 1997 needed developmental mathematics instruction when they got to the county’s community college, according to district reports.

“The obvious conclusion is that students attending Montgomery College are in need of greater preparation before they leave our high schools,” said then-superintendent Jerry Weast.

It’s not entirely clear what level of progress the district made in the past two decades.

In fall 2024, more than 2,400 recent MCPS graduates enrolled at the community college. Hamman said the college doesn’t track how many students within that specific population must take developmental courses — the people who, a decade from now, could theoretically cash in on Taylor’s promise.

If it comes to fruition, a money-back guarantee would likely raise a host of questions.

“You could ask, for example, as a taxpayer, what does this really mean?” said Michael Petrilli, of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank. “What we don’t want is for this to suddenly mean that now the taxpayers are basically paying twice.”

Meanwhile, others question why it isn’t already in place.

For Jacob Escobar, it’s easy to imagine how helpful such a reimbursement would be as he works toward a kinesiology degree. The recent Clarksburg High graduate expects to take a developmental math course next semester.

Escobar balances a 12-credit course load at Montgomery College with soccer team practices and two jobs.

“Right now, it’s affordable for me, but just borderline,” Escobar said. “If we add extra courses that are worth no credit, that just makes it so much more difficult.”