Education: September 2008 Archives

It's here!

Maine people now have the ability to actually see the Public Information needed to understand how the State of Maine spends tax dollars.

This new Web site is a searchable, downloadable database of Maine's Payroll, Pension and other Spending accounts for 2006 and 2007. 

Search by category to see what your Tax Dollars buy.  Do research on state vendors and the state agencies who buy their goods and services.

 -  Curious about how many Maine State employees make more than the Governor? 

 -  Want to know how much the State of Maine buys from New York companies?

 -  Ever wonder what Maine spends on airline tickets?

 

It's easy to find out at MaineOpenGov.Org 

It is probably fair to say that the Democratic party and the teacher's unions have traditionally opposed much in the way of substantive school reform other than spending more money on the system we have now.

That appears to be changing, however.  Recent news stories would seem to indicate some movement toward real reform on the part of both groups.

USA Today reports, for instance, that Senator Barack Obama recently proposed "to double funding for charter schools, pay teachers based on performance and replace those who aren't up to the job."  While no supporter of private school vouchers, Obama said that "Charter schools that are successful will get the support they need to grow. And charters that aren't will get shut down. I want experimentation, but I also want accountability."

According to the paper, "while teachers unions typically oppose the idea of performance-based merit pay, Obama is embracing the idea along with demands that teachers who don't meet standards are removed from the classroom."

Not exactly the traditional fare from Democrats.

According to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Obama's move toward the center reflects a deepening division with the party between the traditional labor wing of the party, and what the Journal calls "a new cadre of urban education leaders" such as Newark's Cory Booker and D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty.  Booker, the Journal reports, was "particularly outspoken" at a recent event about "how 'vicious' teachers' unions can be in their efforts to stymie reform," saying that "we have to understand as Democrats that we have been wrong on education; it's time to get right."

The American Federation of Teachers appears to be getting the message. On September 11th, the union announced the creation of an "innovation fund" to finance the development of "union-led" reforms, including "union-partnered charter schools" and "differentiated-pay" for teachers. The union is putting up "an initial and unprecedented investment of $1 million as seed money and is seeking additional support from private philanthropic organizations" to advance these reforms.  Not a giant step toward real reform, but it is a step.

Could it be that real changes may be coming to the nation's schools? Stay tuned...

What was for many the first full week back to school got off to a rocky start with a report in yesterday's Maine Sunday Telegram revealing that the Maine Department of Education did not report the results of last spring's 8th grade MEA writing test after deciding that the low scores they found resulted from a poor writing prompt.

Of even more concern is that the newspaper had to do a Freedom of Information Act request to get the test and related data.  The DOE made no mention of dropping the test's findings when scores were released in July.

This story raises a whole host of questions, and one hopes the Department will do a better job of answering them than the students did at answering the MEA writing prompt.

First, why didn't the Department at least explain why it was invalidating the test results when it released the MEA scores in July?  That the paper had to do a FOIA request to get this data months afterward is of some concern. I can think of no valid reason for the Department to withhold this information, and yet they did.

Second, what evidence, other than last year's results from an entirely different class, does the Department have to suggest that these scores are not accurate for this class?  Yes, a 50% drop in the number of students with a satisfactory response is a steep drop, but what other assessment data is there to indicate the extent to which these findings are inaccurate?

For that matter, if this test is invalid, how will the writing skill of this class be assessed? The next standardized assessment for them under ordinary circumstances would be the 11th grade SAT test, which does include a writing section.  Until then, are we to simply go without data on where these students are with regard to their writing ability?  Or, will they get some kind of revised MEA test this spring as ninth graders?  The MEA data is used by teachers and administrators to plan instruction and curriculum - how are they to move forward in the absence of this data otherwise?

Moving forward on improving writing instruction would be a good idea. That "only 23 percent of eighth-graders who took the test last spring met or exceeded state writing standards" is indeed shocking, but the fact that only "48 percent" did so a year ago is nothing to rave about.  Less than half of Maine 8th graders met or exceeded the state standards for writing last year.  How come that isn't news?  Looking at the test itself, which requires students to develop a well-reasoned and well-written argument using supporting data provided to them, it is hard to imagine any more important skill for these students to have.  Half of them can't do it in a good year?

What to make of the Department's explanation that students either misunderstood the writing prompt or somehow took it too personally?  I'm not buying it.  The test could not be more straightforward.  The directions, which are read out loud to students, are clear.  The prompt is far simpler than some I've seen in the past.  The supporting evidence for both sides, provided to the students for their use in the essays, is likewise clear and fully usable to support whichever side the students decided to argue.  Is really possible that students feel so passionately about TV that they took leave of their senses because of this question and could not construct an acceptable persuasive essay as a consequence?

Could a better explanation be that students simply don't care whether they do well or not? The test, in the immortal words of kids everywhere, "does not count."  It does not effect GPA, is not used to do course placement in high school, and does not make its way onto college transcripts.  It has no meaning for them, and while they generally try to do well, no doubt there are many who just blew it off.

Perhaps the time has come to look at 8th grade exit exams in place of the MEA.  A number of states and districts have ended "social promotion" by using standards-based assessments to determine whether a student is ready to move on to the next grade or not.  When Maine's learning standards were first implemented in the mid-1990's, it was promised that students would at least have to demonstrate a mastery of standards to get a high school diploma, but we're not even doing that, much less ensuring that 4th or 8th or 10th graders have the skills and knowledge to move on to the next grade level.  How about less testing for testing's sake and more accountability?  At least then we'd know whether they were taking it seriously or not.

Clearly a number of additional issues could be raised here as well. (How did the state's private schools do on the test compared to its public schools?)  One hopes, then,  that this story does not simply fade away, but generates a far more wide-ranging discussion about testing and its place in our educational system, and what these test results are telling us about about how Maine students are doing.

With everyone focussed on consolidation and reorganization, this might be a good time, with school underway and all, for more of a discussion about things that really matter - like teaching and learning.

As I described in an op-ed in yesterday's Kennebec Journal, the district consolidation effort is not moving forward quite as well as some would have us believe.

With regard to school choice that may be a good thing. As we've reported repeatedly, school choice options are under threat from consolidation efforts in many parts of the state.  In July, we identified 15 consolidation plans worthy of careful scrutiny for the effects those plans might have on school choice options.

The Department of Education just released an update of where the 75-80 consolidation plans are at this point, which gives us a chance to track how our 15 "watchlist" consolidation plans are doing.

The good news is that other than in Bath, consolidation has not meant the loss of choice anywhere yet. Choice has been preserved in Dresden, the only town with choice in the two consolidated districts approved by voters thus far.

The Department characterizes as "awaiting DOE review or RPC revisions" three of the fifteen plans we identified as having implications for choice:

• The MSAD 38/MSAD 48 plan, (at least under the provisions of an earlier version of the plan) would eliminate the choice options MSAD 38 high schoolers now have under a waiver program. No word on whether the plan now under review by DOE contains that provision. There is already a group organized to oppose the plan.
  

• The Freeport/Pownal/Durham plan would eliminate choice for Durham and Pownal. The plan barely made it out the Freeport School Committee and is opposed by an organized and vocal parent group in Freeport.

• The plan for the Wiscasset/Alna/Chelsea/Palermo area would preserve school choice, as was reported only weeks ago.

So, though choice is threatened in two of the three plans, there is some mounting opposition, especially in Freeport, which may sink those proposals when they ultimately go before voters.

The dozen other plans we listed are "in progress" according to the DOE.

So far...so good...

Though The Maine Heritage Policy Center has been supportive of alternative teacher compensation models, what the Portland school system came up with is not what we had in mind.

As the Portland Press Herald revealed in a surprisingly good piece of investigative reporting this weekend, Portland's new teacher pay model has led to dramatic increases in teacher pay - better than 50% in some instances.

What do Portland teachers have to do to earn such massive increases in pay?  Evidently, not much.  At one time, teachers had to attain an advanced degree to move up the salary scale, now they get a pay increase for simply taking college courses. Others have received pay increases for taking workshops and doing other professional development work. One teacher apparently got a raise for  writing college recommendation letters for students.  Another got a pay bump for taking students on field trips overseas.

What is clear from the Herald's report is that far too much money was offered under the new plan for doing far too little. For some reason, the system's administrators seem shocked that so many teachers jumped through the necessary hoops to win pay raises, which busted the district's budget.

The heart of the problem is not simply the poor design of this pay plan and a misguided administrative leadership that mistakenly agreed to it. The problem is the underlaying philosophy of the plan, which is that "teacher learning leads to student learning."  As the Herald reported, there is little evidence that this is indeed the case.  In fact, there is little evidence that advanced degrees for teachers mean better student outcomes, much less the questionable activities some of the Portland teachers got a raise for doing.

A far better model would have been one that allowed pay increases for professional development that led directly to measurable increases in student outcomes.  That is more in line with what we proposed months ago in our MaineView paper on teacher pay.

One hopes that the Herald's reporting will result in a more thorough review of the teacher pay plan in Portland, though that is doubtful given the questionable leadership of the system's school board.  At the very least, the Portland pay mess should serve as a warning to other districts interested in a new approach to teacher pay that whatever they come up with needs to be very carefully designed and clearly tied to improvements in student outcomes.