Hi all,
I know all of you are curious to know how Maine has been making
out getting its Race to the Top legislation enacted, being that we are a
leading candidate for Round 2 and all, so I thought I would give you an update.
We did pass our Common Core Standards bill, which contains this
line (the emphasis is mine):
The department in consultation with the state board shall establish and implement a comprehensive, statewide system of learning results , which may include a core of standards in English language arts and mathematics for kindergarten to grade 12 established in common with the other states."
So we may adopt common standards, or we may not. Consider
that box checked.
We also passed our "innovative schools" bill, which contains
this now famous section (again, emphasis is mine):
"A school administrative unit may establish and operate an innovative, autonomous public school. The school board may approve an instruction design, a school calendar, a staff selection process and a method for assessing professional development to be used in an innovative, autonomous public school that exceed or differ from, but do not conflict with, applicable statutory and regulatory requirements."
How many points do you think that will win us?
Last but not least, we just passed our bill to eliminate the
prohibition against using state assessment data in teacher and principal
evaluations, but not before our colleagues in the Maine Education Association
had an amendment tacked on which does the following:
1. Creates
a five-member stakeholder group of which the MEA is a part.
2. Empowers
that group - not the state Department of Education - to approve
evaluation models that use student assessment data.
3. Prohibits
school districts from adopting any student performance-based evaluation
system for teachers and administrators that is NOT approved by this five-member
panel, even those using student assessment data developed locally.
I am not
making this up. It passed both houses easily with this amendment attached
and awaits the governor's signature.
But that's not all.
In the midst of the debate on this bill, the state Attorney
General's office ruled that the bill, amended in this way, put the state out of
compliance with federal law, thus endangering our eligibility to apply for an
RTT grant at all. Part of the AG's opinion:
"The proposed amendment, S-515, prohibits the Department from adopting any model for teacher evaluations that includes student assessments that has not been approved by the stakeholder group. This prohibition is a potential legal barrier to linking student achievement data to teacher/principal assessment; moreover it leaves open the possibility that the stakeholder group will not approve any such model. In either case, the Department might be prohibited from adopting a model that includes student assessments. Local school units, in turn, are prohibited from using any model that has not been adopted by the Department.
It is the AG, as I am sure you all know, which must certify that
the state does not have any such barriers. So, assuming the AG is consistent
with her own office's ruling, she will likely refuse to certify that the
student-teacher data barrier has been removed, thus making us ineligible for
RTT.
The bill passed anyway.
Not wanting to miss the opportunity to twist the dagger a bit more, the MEA sent out an "action alert" this morning telling its members not to sign the MOU for RTT (the emphasis is theirs):
"Local associations will be asked to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as part of the application process for the federal Race To The Top (RTTT) grants.
MEA's Board of Directors is urging you not to sign the MOU.
MEA believes there are too many flaws and too many
unknowns in Maine's grant application. Our best advice is not to sign
until we know exactly what is in it."
It
is important to point out that they do not know "what is in it" (and neither do
the rest of us) because the state's ill-fated RTT application has yet to be
released. They don't know what the application will say, but I guess they
figured they wouldn't take any chances, and thus issued a preemptive call to
oppose it. "Too many unknowns" in the application? You don't say! The whole
thing is an unknown!
So,
that's where we are. I know many of you look to us as a model state on this
thing, so I thought I'd keep you up to date.
Hope
RTT is faring better where you are than it is here. Could it be any worse?
