Education: November 2009 Archives

4:30 pm

Quitting time.

So, what did we learn? That there is a lot of work ahead for this committee. The chair, Sen Alfond, suggested that the committee will have to meet five days a week once the session begins to get all this work done.

Some promising signs today, I have to say, some good questions from the committee and some good skepticism about, but a lot of work ahead...

4 pm

Speaking of accountability, the requirements for federal Race To the Top funds (RTT) hit the committee like a brick this afternoon. The commissioner presented the committee with but one page of the 100 page federal RTT application, the page outlining how the U.S. Department of Education will grade state applications for funding under the massive federal grant program.

That page can be seen here:

Race to the Top points schedule.pdf

3:30pm

The second latest, greatest idea from Augusta -EPIC!

(DOE is getting to be like the Pentagon with the acronyms!)

Education Policy Improvement Center, a consulting organization "from away," as Rep. Sutherland put it, has a $750,000 contract with the state to make itself available to review the "syllabi from each course in a school" to ensure that the course will instruct to and be able to demonstrate mastery of the Learning Results.

As with RISC a half-hour ago, the commissioner is getting some push back about hiring yet another consultant to implement some reform initiative related to improving student achievement.

I have a better idea. How about we implement universal school choice, allow parents to choose the school their children attend, and then, I suspect, schools will suddenly become very, very serious about improving student outcomes. Good schools will succeed, bad schools will close, and, best of all, nobody has to hire some consulting firm from out of state to tell schools how to do their jobs.

The word that has yet to be used today is "accountability." RISC, EPIC, RTI (Response to Intervention, which is being discussed as I write this) - it is one costly new program or initiative after another - yet no talk of closing bad schools or firing bad teachers.

When, if ever, will we discuss holding the people in the education business accountable for their work?

3pm

The latest, greatest ed reform idea from Augusta? RISC!

The Re-Inventing Schools Coalition is the commissioner's chosen model for more fully implementing Maine's Learning result, which, even though they have been on the books for years, still have yet to implemented in Maine's schools to the extent that students must master them to graduate.

Interestingly, the commissioner is getting some push-back from the committee on this - they want to know implementation costs and so forth and are apparently hearing from school officials back home that there is little interest in the approach. There is some reluctance among the committee to embrace this.

In fact, the commissioner is on the defensive a little - "this is a model, not a mandate," she says.  Given the extensive debate on diploma requirements last session, one wonders whether the commissioner will be able to get this past the committee. She doesn't seem to have a lot of takers here.

Rep. Casavant wants to know whether a program like this even makes much of a difference at the end of the day, given all the other factors influencing student outcomes.

At last, an interesting discussion about education policy...

2 pm

District consolidation good or bad?

The committee has been treated to both sides of the issue this afternoon, with one panel of officials saying it has been a struggle, and a second group, comprised of superintendents from four RSU's that have been created, saying that is has worked fine. 

The committee will no doubt enact some kind of bill on district consolidation this spring, so it remains to be seen which side of the argument prevailed.

1 pm

Budget talks have been set aside following lunch, and the committee is now hearing from various superintendents and others about the school district consolidation law, which was not repealed at the polls on Election Day as its opponents had hoped.

Instead, those opponents are here today advocating for various changes to the law, most of which have been debated before - eliminating penalties, changing minimum size requirements, etc.

The committee appears unmoved...

11:40 am

The Commissioner has just announced that Governor Baldacci will release a budget curtailment order this Friday, which will include cuts to General Purpose Aid for local schools.  The law allows the governor the authority to order a certain level of budget cuts without legislative approval, and he evidently will release such a curtailment on Friday.

Debate is currently underway with regard to how the cuts will be divided among local school districts, something that caused some controversy when it was done last fall.

11 am

The committee continues to go through the proposals to solve the FIRST budget shortfall, the $30 million hole that was included in the 'balanced" budget passed last spring. No work yet on the $400 million shortfall ahead.

Debate has covered everything from streamlining job training programs (an excellent idea) to finding savings at the Baxter School for the Deaf and the state-run schools in the unorganized territories. The committee is talking over incentives to encourage retirements by 1,100 or so retirement-eligible teachers, mirroring a retirement incentive for state employees passed by the legislature last session.

Coming soon, a discussion of regional and, maybe, statewide teacher contracts.

According to Commissioner Gendron, there will be no charter school bill from the state Department of Education this year.

Her reading of the federal "Race to the Top" regulations suggest to her, she said, that Maine's failure to adopt charter schools will have little effect on the state's chances of winning federal RTT funding. In the long list of things the U.S. Department of Education is looking for, she said, charter schools is, in her mind, at the "bottom of the list" of things Maine needs to work on.

Since the charter school bill was killed last year and no new charter school bill will be taken up this coming legislative session, the Baldacci administration's refusal to put forward charter school legislation itself means there is no chance whatsoever for charter schools to even be considered by the legislature this spring, much less enacted.

So, until we have a new governor and a new legislature, Maine will remain one of the few states in the nation that refuses to adopt what has to be one of the most promising and innovative education reform approaches being used in the United States today.

Our state motto is what again? "I Lead?"

Hardly.

9:30

Commissioner Gendron suggested in testimony this morning that while student test scores in Maine had been "flat" for a number of years prior to 2006, they are currently on the rise.

Really?

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Education suggests that Maine is among the states that have seen scores increase on state tests because standards have been lowered, not because performance has increased.

Using data from the report, Education Week produced the following map showing the states that appear to have lowered their standards:


Data from state and national sources would seem to support the Department's conclusion:

Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, show the kind of flat scores the Commissioner mentioned:

Percent "At or Above Proficient" in 8th grade math:
2005 - 30%
2007 - 35%
2009 - 35%

Scores on Maine's own MEA test, though, show score gains:

Percent that "Meets or Exceeds Standards" for 8th grade math:
2005 - 28%
2007 - 51%
2009 - 53%

The same is going on in 8th grade reading:

Percent "At or Above Proficient" in 8th grade reading on the U.S. NAEP test:
2003 - 37%
2005 - 38%
2007 - 37%

Percent that "Meets or Exceeds Standards" for 8th grade reading on the Maine MEA test:
2003 - 45%
2005 - 56%
2007 - 65%

So, scores on the Maine test are going up, but scores on the national test remain flat.

What is the real story here, one wonders...

9:15 am

Though all the talk this fall has been about the looming budget shortfall, now estimated to be as much as $400 million, the Education Committee began this morning talking about "Part QQQ" of the state budget passed last spring. Part QQQ was the the section of the budget in which the Appropriations Committee tasked itself with finding $30 million in savings.

The legislature, in other words, passed a "balanced" budget last spring with a $30 million hole in it which they are still working to fill. That $30 million is in addition to the $300-$400 million gap that has opened, as a result of plunging revenues, since the passage of that budget many months ago.

With regard to "Part QQQ," the Education Committee and Department sent the Appropriations Committee a list of proposed cuts, none of which Appropriations has yet adopted.  What Appropriations has done or will do with that list of cuts will impact what the Education Committee comes up with for cuts to address the $400 million shortfall still ahead.

So, not one budget shortfall on the agenda today, but two!

Lots of work on the agenda for the Education Committee today...

Education & Cultural Affairs Committee
Tuesday, November 17, 2009@ 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Cross State Office Building, Room #202

9:00 a.m.       CHAIR'S "CALL TO ORDER":  Introductions and Preview Agenda

9:15 a.m.       BRIEFING:  Commissioner Gendron, Maine Department of Education
                Review and update Department of Education proposals for FY 2010-11
                budget savings related to the "Initiative to Streamline State Government"
                (pursuant to PL 2009, c. 213, Pt. QQQ)

10:15 a.m.      WORK SESSION:  Education & Cultural Affairs Committee Recommendations
                to Appropriations & Financial Affairs Committee in Response to their Request for
                Feedback on FY 2010-11 budget savings Related to the "Initiative to Streamline
                State Government" (pursuant to PL 2009, c. 213, Pt. QQQ)

11:00 a.m.      BRIEFING:  Commissioner Gendron, Maine Department of Education
                Review and update Department of Education proposals to meet FY 2009-10
                and FY 2010-11 budget reduction targets, including implications for General
                Purpose Aid for Local Schools program and the process and timeline for
                potential curtailments as part of Governor's supplemental budget bill

11:45 a.m.      LUNCH

12:30 p.m.      BRIEFING:  Panel Discussion on Improving the Laws Governing
                School District Reorganization: 
                The Honorable Lawrence "Skip" Greenlaw, Chair, Maine Coalition to Save Schools
                Superintendent Roger Shaw, MSAD 42 (Mars Hill)
                Superintendent Quenten Clark, MSAD 58 (Kingfield)

1:15 p.m.       BRIEFING:  Panel Discussion on Improving the Laws Governing
                School District Reorganization: 
                Commissioner Gendron, Maine Department of Education
                Ray Poulin, Consultant to Maine Department of Education (INVITED)
                Norm Higgins, Consultant to Maine Department of Education (INVITED)

2:00 p.m.       BRIEFING:  Improving the Laws Governing School District Reorganization: 
                The Honorable Richard Spencer, Attorney, Drummond, Woodsum, McMahon

2:20 p.m.       BREAK

2:30 p.m.       BRIEFING:  Commissioner Gendron, Maine Department of Education
                Update on the following initiatives, including implications for the annual costs to State and the annual costs to local school units:
•    High School Graduation Requirements and Standards-based Reform, including Reinventing Schools Coalition Pilots
•    Oregon Curriculum Project to Review High School Curriculum Compared to National Standards
•    Response to Intervention
•    Maine Learning Technology Initiative

3:15 p.m.       WORK SESSION:  Education & Cultural Affairs Committee and Staff
                Preview of the committee workload, including anticipated bills, oversight
                duties and other initiatives on the docket for the 2nd Session in January 2010

4:00 p.m.       ADJOURNMENT:  Announcements and Wrap-up

One of the many, many gubernatorial hopefuls has jumped into the debate over charter schools. Eliot Cutler, who came to the notice of many Mainers with a well-received January speech on higher education and who is running for governor as an independent, posted the following on his campaign blog last Friday:

"Dwindling state revenues are forcing state officials to make massive cuts -- millions of dollars -- in the state's share of funding for K-12 education in Maine's public schools. At the same time, the federal Department of Education is getting ready to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to states in the Race to the Top program. 

But not to Maine. MPBN reports that Maine will be standing in the corner, likely ineligible to receive our share. Why? Because we are one of the few states left in America where charter schools are not allowed."

In an October 20 interview with blogger Derek Viger, Cutler that he supported charter schools and "regretted" that the legislature had failed to pass the charter school bill. "When I am governor," he said, "I will pass it." He continued on, saying that the bill "had the support of educators and parents from around the state, but another good idea was lost because the same old tired politics kept us from innovating and moving forward."

Sounds very much like what I was saying as Maine's legislature killed the charter school bill last spring.

Cutler even makes mention in his Friday blog post of the new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report I mentioned in a blog post last week.

So, there is at least one gubernatorial candidate talking the talk on charter schools. What about the other 20 or so candidates for governor? Stay tuned...

Maine, once thought by many to be a leader in educational innovation, now trails much of the nation, at least according to a major new report sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and authored by the left-leaning Center for American Progress and the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

The report, titled Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation, gave Maine 2 B's, 2 C's and 3 D's on various measures of educational innovation from school management and staffing to educational data and technology.

In particular, Maine was criticized for not having charter schools or performance-based pay for teachers, for having inadequate data systems, and for poorly implementing technology. The state also struggles to "manage its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation." According to the study, 93 percent of teachers report that paperwork and other duties interfere with their teaching. The state ranked 45th in the nation in school management alone.

MHPC is also mentioned in the report (though identified incorrectly as the "Maine Heritage Foundation") as being "a member of the forward-thinking Policy Innovators in Education Network," which we are.

This report could not come at a better time. The legislature's ineffectual Education Committee is busy meeting by email to discuss potential budget cuts, and is apparently looking at eliminating a public vote on school budgets as a potential cost-saving measure. This same committee rejected charter schools earlier this year and has proven reluctant to take any bold steps, such as implementing new high school diploma requirements (it created a "working group" comprised of status quo-backing interest groups to study the idea instead), to transform Maine schools.

Could the Chamber report be the kick the Committee needs to get it to stand up to the special interests that are throttling innovation and finally move Maine forward?

We'll see...