Education: December 2009 Archives

According to the Associated Press, the Michigan legislature has taken a major step forward on education reform in hopes of winning federal Race to the Top grant funding:

According to reports, "the state could add more charter schools and poor-performing schools could be taken over by state officials under legislation approved Saturday in the Michigan Legislature. The broad legislation -- which also raises the state's dropout age from 16 to 18 and ties teacher evaluation to student test scores -- will be signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm."

The bills include provisions allowing a state takeover of persistently low-performing schools, raises the dropout age from 16 to 18, allows standardized test scores to be used in teacher evaluations, and makes it easier to fire poor-performing teachers. More charter schools would be allowed under the new laws and the state's teacher certification laws are to be amended to encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, especially in high-need areas like math and science.

Maine's Commissioner of Education evidently intends to introduce similar legislation here, though it remains to be seen if the education establishment, with its knee-jerk opposition to meaningful reform, will get on board and help move Maine's schools forward.

For the sake of our kids, let's hope so.

As a sign of how far behind the other states Maine is with regard to school reform, Education Week today included Maine among a group of states it dubbed the "disinterested dozen," which are states that did not seek grants from the Gates Foundation to help them prepare applications for the federal Race to the Top fund.

According to Education Week, the Gates Foundation has provided twenty-five states with grants of up to $250,000 to help them organize their applications for the federal Race to the Top Fund. In order to qualify for funding from Gates, states had to meet a set of criteria outlined in a letter from the Gates Foundation's Vicki Phillips.

The criteria are as follows:

1.    Has your state signed the MOA regarding the Common Core Standards currently being
developed by NGA/CCSSO? [Answer must be "yes"]
2.    Does your state plan to adopt the common core standards by June 2010 (as currently
referenced in the draft RTT guidance)?  [Answer must be "yes"]
3.    Demonstrate how your state plans to adopt/prioritize the common core standards currently
being developed by NGA/CCSSO? [Answers will be scrutinized to assess commitment and
viability]
4.    Does your state offer an alternative route(s) to teacher certification?  [Answer must be "yes"]
5.    Does your state grant teacher tenure in fewer than three years?  [Answer must be "no" or the
state should be able to demonstrate a plan to set a higher bar for tenure]
6.    Does your state have policies or grant programs  (e.g., TIF grant) in place that encourage the
placement of the most effective teachers in schools with most disadvantaged kids (e.g.to campuses undergoing state/fed accountability intervention) [Answer must be "yes" or state
must demonstrate commitment and/or plans to put policies in place]
7.    Does state have at least six of the DQC's 10 essential data elements?  (Required six: unique
student identifier, teacher‐student link, student level enrollment data, graduation and dropout
data.) 
8.    Does your state have policies that prohibit the linkage and/or usage of student achievement
data in teacher evaluations?

Unfortunately for Maine, most of its answers to the questions above would not be to the liking of the Gates Foundation, which is almost certainly why the state did not even pursue a Gates grant. 14 states applied for grants and were turned down, another dozen, including Maine, didn't even apply for a Gates grant in the first place.

(The answers Maine would have to give to the questions above, but the way, would be Yes on 1, No on 2, No plan at this point on 3, No on 4, Yes on 5, No on 6, Yes on 7 and Yes on 8.)

As Education Week notes, "not winning a [Gates] grant may not bode well for these states' chances of winning a Race to the Top grant."  Maine plans to sit out the first round of Race to the Top grants and apply in the second round after the state "makes some changes" to improve its competitive standing.  As we'll demonstrate in an upcoming research paper, Maine's ongoing resistance to educational innovation means it is a long, long way from being in a position to complete for federal funding, something the Gates grant debacle makes abundantly clear.

  


 

As debate continues around consolidation, school funding, and school reform here in Maine (more on the governor's "not quite charter schools" idea later), it is important to keep track of how many Maine families have simply opted out of public schools altogether by homeschooling their children.

The Maine Department of Education maintains data on the state's homeschooling population and while their website has not been updated in a couple of years, a recent request for updated numbers reveals that according to the state, 5,006 children are being educated at home this school year.  Is it me, or is that a remarkably high number?

According to the state, as recently as 1998 there were only 3600 students homeschooled, meaning that the number of homeschoolers has risen 35 percent in just over a decade, during a time when the number of school-age children actually declined.  There are 20,000 fewer kids in our schools today than there were in 1996, yet the number of homeschoolers has gone up by 1,500.

Maine, it turns out, is not the only place this is happening. A December 2008 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that nationwide, more than 1.5 million students were being homeschooled in 2007, up an astonishing 74 percent since 1999.

What is going on here?  Almost certainly the rise of the internet and of web-based educational materials has made it easier than ever for families to develop comprehensive programs of instruction.  Additionally, though, more and more parents may be opting out of schools that they no longer see as providing meaningful learning.  A USA Today article from January of this year, reporting the findings of the Department of Education survey, discussed the rise of a group known as the "un-schoolers," who simply do not feel that modern standards- and test-driven schools meet the needs of their children.

So could it be that all of our debate about how to improve our schools is for nothing? Will parents, given access to ever-improving and ever-more affordable educational material online, continue to vote with their feet and leave the public schools behind in ever-increasing numbers?

It is hard to say, but the explosive growth in homeschooling is certainly worthy of more study.