This is true, and I’m glad they shared this. Many parents whose kids have Chromebooks sitting in their backpacks right now probably didn’t know this, including me, so I looked it up.
I found the fact-check in a 2025 Inspector General report, where I learned it’s a school-level decision whether to have 1:1 Chromebooks. So when they write “MCPS does not have one-to-one remote devices for every student” they mean “some MCPS schools have one-to-one remote device policies, but some don’t.” MCPS lets principals lead the way on lots of other instructional decisions, and doesn’t talk about how that leads to things being inequitable across schools. MCPS has to write with fewer words than I do (thanks, readers!) and probably didn’t want to get into whether the issue is things being inequitable across schools or within them.
It’s not just about the school-level policies, it’s about who actually has a remote device at home. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that even when schools have a 1:1 policy, they often don’t know where their Chromebooks are–so every student may not have one.