Education: January 2010 Archives

As we reported earlier this week, the Education Committee killed LD 1739, a bill which would have eliminated the budget approval process. They are, however, considering getting rid of budget validation through a second bill, LD 570.

LD 570, if you look it up online, has no text whatsoever at this point, it is simply a bill title for the committee to use to create its own legislation. The idea is that the Committee will put all the fixes to the district consolidation law that it wants into one bill and pass that bill rather that pass a whole bunch of smaller bills.

The problem is that LD 570 will never get a public hearing. Once the committee decides on the content of the bill and passes it out of the committee, it goes directly to the full House and Senate.

For those of us interested in preserving budget validation, then, the time is now to start putting significant pressure on the education committee.  According to the committee agenda sent out on Friday, the committee intends to debate and perhaps decide the changes to school budget procedures that it intends to include in LD 570 during its work session on the bill beginning at 1pm on Thursday, February 4th. It is impossible to say what the committee will decide at that time, but those of us interested in preserving our right to vote on school budgets need to let them know what we think right away.

Last weekend, supporters of the school budget validation process were so effective at getting their message out that the sponsor of LD 1739 begged the committee to kill it. With the work session on LD 570 coming up next week, the committee needs to get the same treatment.

A list of education committee members can be found here. Let them know, right away, how important it is to have a referendum vote on school budgets. Remember, in emails that went back and forth between committee members last fall, it was clear that budget validation was something many of them do not support.

If you disagree, they need to hear about it as soon as possible.

When school district consolidation was passed, we were assured that "opportunities for choice of schools" would be preserved. We know already that school choice has been lost in a number of Maine towns and now it is under threat in Alna.

Our secret sources out there have forwarded to us the following email, which was sent to the chairs of the Education Committee:

Dear Senator Alfond and Representative Sutherland:

 

I am writing on behalf of the Town of Alna to request that the Education Committee consider a minor modification to the school consolidation statute.  According to staff at the Maine School Management Association, the amendment I propose probably only has significant impact for the Towns of Alna and Westport.

 

Background:

Neither Alna nor Westport have public schools.  Before consolidation, our towns contracted with the Wiscasset schools under terms that allowed us to either send our children to the Wiscasset schools for K-8, or tuition them to other schools of the parents' choosing.  It was a rather one-sided contract that favored Alna and there was no fiscal impact on our town because we would not pay per student more than our contracted tuition amount with Wiscasset.

 

However, we are now a member of RSU 12 and the RSU is obligated, by statute, to pay the out-of-district tuition costs for Alna students -- some $232,000 for K-8 this year.  Because of the relatively fixed costs of running an RSU, this payment for out of RSU students reduces the operating revenue for the RSU.  This loss is made up through an increased assessment on all RSU towns.  Because Alna now is part of a school unit, this has a direct fiscal impact on us -- some $18,000 this year in increased costs.

 

Proposal:

Many of our residents would now like to revisit our choice policy, but DOE has interpreted the statute to mean that the guarantee of choice going to consolidation is binding -- apparently in perpetuity -- on all parties.  This means a policy we adopted as a no-cost option for our citizens is now binding, regardless of the fiscal impact on our taxpayers as well as those communities within the RSU.

 

We wish to amend the law to simply allow towns to reconsider, by vote of town meeting, whether they wish to continue a choice policy for their town students.  We wish to limit the amendment to K-8 students so as to cause no impact on existing law with regard to the public academies.  If towns wish to continue choice and pay the additional costs, they will be at least allowed to renew that choice affirmatively, knowing the financial impact.

 

This issue takes on particular urgency because we have considerable anecdotal evidence that families are moving to Alna, and perhaps Westport, simply to avail themselves of our "open checkbook".   A considerable number of Alna children now go to private Montessori and other schools in the area at RSU taxpayer expense. Realtors advertise this as an advantage to purchasing a home in Alna, so this unintended burden on Alna and the RSU is likely to grow.

 

We believe the current language was unintended. We do no believe the legislature intended to lock towns into increased costs, or to deprive RSUs of much needed revenue.

 

This proposal is endorsed by the Alna Board of Selectmen and one of our two RSU board members. (I simply have not reached our second member.)

 

Thank you for your consideration.  I have attached my non-expert attempt at a drafting fix.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Doug Baston

So let's think for a moment about what is going on here. The town of Alna has school choice.  Realtors, unlike the gentleman writing the letter, understand that this is a good thing for Alna.  It makes the town a more attractive place to live, which has led to an influx of young families. (How many towns in Maine would kill for an influx of young families? How many would consider such an influx to be a problem?)

The problem, as the letter writer sees it, is that the young families living there and moving in are making the wrong choices with their school choice rights.  They are - GASP! - attending Montessori schools at taxpayer expense. Why?  Because families in Alna, like all consumers, have weighed the choices before them and picked the one that best meets their needs.

 

In the world of the free market, the choices these families are making would send a signal to competitors, in this case the other schools, that they need to improve their product.  Ideally, these other schools would do whatever it took to provide a product these families want in order to win them back.  That way, all schools are getting better all the time - this is the beauty of competition.

Public education, though, is a monopoly.  The solution to the problem of having families choose a school other than the government school is simple - take away their right to choose.  That is what has happened in the Bath area, in Pownal and Durham, and in other towns around Maine, and that is what this gentleman seems to want.  Taxpayers outnumber parents, so you put choice out to a vote, parents and children lose, and Alna then gets to send another $18,000 to RSU 12 to support schools that parents in Alna, given a choice, don't want their children to attend.

Monopolies are bad, but government monopolies are far worse.  Time for parents and school choice supporters to mobilize.  The education establishment has taken school choice away from parents in towns all over Maine, and they are coming for Alna next...

I served two terms in the legislature and, as part of my work for MHPC, I have had a fairly regular presence there ever since.  Even so, it is hard even for me to explain what happened today with regard to LD 1739 and the budget validation process.

 

Actually, what happened with LD 1739 is pretty simple, it was killed by a unanimous vote of the committee.  This was done after the committee heard an request to just that from the bill's sponsor, Rep. McFadden, who claimed that he had been so swamped with emails protesting his bill that his email system had shut down.  "It is such a bad bill I would not vote for it myself," he said as part of a brief mea culpa before the committee.

 

What happened after the death of LD 1739 is a bit harder to explain. 

 

Next on the committee's agenda for the day was a work session on LD 570.  LD 570, if one were to look it up online, consists of a title, "An Act To Improve the Laws Governing the Consolidation of School Administrative Units," and that's it.  It is a so-called "concept draft" which is really just a legislative vehicle for the committee to use in crafting its own bill.  The idea seems to be that the committee will hear, or has heard, a number of bills related to school district reorganization, and intends to kill all those bills and create a kind of omnibus bill containing all the provisions the committee thinks are necessary to "fix" the consolidation law.  As such, the bill could contain any number of changes to state law, including, it is important to point out, getting rid of budget validation.

 

In fact, the committee chair, Sen. Alfond, basically said that LD 570 did contain a provision to get rid of budget validation, though the committee as a whole seemed to think that what LD 570 contained had yet to be determined.

 

What happened was this:

 

Before entertaining a motion to kill LD 1739, Sen. Alfond explained to those who had come to testify on that bill that though they were indeed killing off LD 1739 without opening it up to public hearing, LD 570 was next up on the docket for a work session, and since there seemed to be, as far as he was concerned, a consensus that LD 570 was going to do much the same that LD 1739 would do (kill budget validation), it seemed reasonable to accept public testimony on budget validation as part of the committee's work session on LD 570.

 

Again, LD 570, if you read it online, has no language attached to it whatsoever.  So what is Sen. Alfond talking about?

 

I essentially asked this question during my testimony. I told the committee that I had been concerned at the late notice of the public hearing on LD 1739, which, to my knowledge, was scheduled on Friday.  Sandy MacArthur, of the Maine School Management Association, agreed with my assessment that the bill has very little advance notice.  I then expressed concern that despite the recent demise of LD 1739, the committee seemed, from what Sen. Alfond suggested, to be interested in getting rid of budget validation anyway.  I got lots of puzzled looks in response to this and a reply from Rep. Finch that he didn't know what LD 570 would ultimately look like and might not vote for it when the time came anyway.

 

Talking with one or two committee members afterward, it became clear that Sen. Alfond has some kind of agenda for LD 570, though that does not seem to have been fully shared with the committee.  Indeed, his suggestion that LD 570 might eliminate budget validation seems to have been an opinion that much of the rest of the committee does not share.

 

The upshot of all this is that regardless of the defeat of LD 1739, budget validation remains under threat, this time from members of the committee itself, starting with Sen. Alfond.

 

My advice?  Rep. McFadden folded instantly when confronted with hundreds of angry emails demanding the preservation of budget validation.  Those emails need to continue, but should be directed to Sen. Alfond and the rest of the committee.  Remember, the committee is in the process, as we speak, of constructing LD 570.  When is it is complete, it will be voted out of the committee and sent to the full House and Senate without a public hearing.  The public hearings are over.  The task before those of us who support budget validation, therefore, is to keep the pressure on the committee itself and make sure that LD 570, when they finally do complete it, does nothing to threaten budget validation.

 

So what to do?  Keep those calls and emails coming.  A list of education committee members can be found here.  Send them the same message that brought Rep. McFadden before his own committee to beg them to put his bill out of its misery. 

 

In short, LD 1739 is dead, but the fight continues.  We are not out of the woods yet, but we certainly know which path to follow.  Let them know what you think!

 

 

Legislative Hearing MONDAY!

 

A bipartisan group of state legislators is working to take away our right to vote on school budgets.  LD 1739, "An Act To Remove the Requirement That the Annual Budget of a Regional School Unit Must Be Approved at a Budget Validation Referendum," would not only repeal the state law requiring districts to use the budget referendum process, but repeals the budget validation law entirely.  If this bill passes, school budgets will be approved at school board meetings only and will never go before voters for a referendum vote.

 

Here are the parts of LD 1739 that eliminate school budget referendum votes:

 

Sec. 3. 20-A MRSA §1485, sub-§3,  as enacted by PL 2007, c. 240, Pt. XXXX, §13, is amended to read:

 

3. Budget approval.   A regional school unit's budget must be approved at a regional school unit budget meeting and by a budget validation referendum as provided in section 1486.

 

Sec. 4. 20-A MRSA §1486,  as amended by PL 2009, c. 98, §1 and c. 415, Pt. B, §§7 and 8, is repealed.

 

 

Despite requirements that the public be given advanced notice of public hearings, the public hearing on this bill, which would empower Maine's education establishment and takes voting rights away from Maine's people, is this coming Monday, January 25, at 2 pm in the Education Committee Room, Room 202 of the Cross Office Building, which is behind the State House in Augusta.

 

This bill represents an almost unprecedented attack on the rights of Maine voters.  We need to fill the Education Committee room and fight back against the entrenched forces of the education establishment.

 

Please join us on Monday as we speak out for the right to vote on school budgets, and please contact as many people as you can an urge them to join us in this critically important effort to fight back against the special interests in Augusta and the legislators who do their bidding.

 

IMPORTANT: If you can't make the hearing in person, please email testimony to the committee clerk, David Desjardins, at David.Desjardins@legislature.maine.gov.  Ask that he distribute your testimony to the committee. That way you will still be able to make your voice heard!

If you have any questions, please contact Stephen Bowen, the director of the Center for Education Excellence at the Maine Heritage Policy Center, at sbowen@mainepolicy.org, or by cell phone at 207-691-7132.

 

 

As if any further evidence was necessary to demonstrate how far behind the other states Maine has fallen in terms of education reform, 40 states have submitted Race to the Top grant applications, Maine is not among them.

According to Education Week, Maine joined Alaska, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Washington, in sitting out the first round. Not exactly a murderer's row of education reform powerhouses in that list.

Maine doubtless sat out this round because it failed to do what so many other states have done, which is to adopt meaningful education reforms that would make it more competitive for the Race to the Top grants.  As I reported in a new research paper, Maine would have to embrace a vast array of reforms in order to compete for the grants, something there seems to be little inclination to do in Augusta.

Legislation to improve Maine's competitive standing is evidently on the way from Commissioner Gendron, but has yet to be seen.

Education Week's annual Quality Counts report is out and the news isn't great for Maine. Each year, the education world's paper of record catalogs a whole host of data on the nation's schools and ranks states on everything from standards and assessment to teacher quality to dropout rates.

The school finance section of the report reveals that Maine is among the highest spending states in the nation. The paper calculated Maine's 2007 per-pupil spending, adjusted for "regional cost differences" to be $13,646 per-pupil, the fourth highest in the nation behind Wyoming, New Jersey and Vermont. The percent of "total taxable resources spent on education" was 4.8 percent, good enough for third highest in the nation. Spending on schools, despite what one hears, is not an issue.

Despite this high spending, Maine is in the middle of the pack on the "chance for success" measures, despite the fact that 97.7 percent its children have parents who are fluent English speakers, the fifth highest rate in the nation.

A fascinating fact from this section of the report? The percent of adults in Maine ages 25-64 who are working full time and year-round is only 68.9 percent, well below the national average of 73 percent. Only three other states have a rate that is lower. What on earth are Maine's adults who are not yet of retirement age doing all day?

Maine's ranking on the "teaching profession" indicators was 31st in the nation. Maine's requirements for entry into the teaching profession are weak, according to Education Week, and its evaluation and accountability provisions virtually nonexistent. Teacher evaluation is not tied to student achievement in Maine and Maine's data system, as I reported in our new Racing to Catch Up report out earlier this week, does not match student outcome data to individual teachers, as is done in 20 other states.

A fascinating fact from this section of the report? The median student/teacher ratio in primary grades in Maine is 8.8 to 1, by far the lowest in the nation. The number two state, Vermont, has a student/teacher ratio of 11 to 1. The national average is 15 to 1.  And our schools don't think they can find any way to cut their budgets??

As I reported in the Racing to Catch Up report, Maine is seen as doing very poorly on standards and assessment. Education Week ranks the state third from the bottom in the standards, assessment and accountability section of the report, giving the state poor marks for its lack of real accountability measures, its poor reporting of school performance, and the absence of any kind of sanctions for low-performing schools.

So, what have we learned here? We have learned that we spend more on our schools than almost any other state, we ask our teachers to teach fewer kids than any other state, yet our academic performance is average at best and that is before one accounts for state's unique student demographics.  Perhaps all of this comes from having virtually no accountability for teachers, school administrators and school boards. We spend a fortune, get mediocrity in return, and do nothing about it.

Following the lead of Michigan and California, yet another blue state, Massachusetts, has moved education reform legislation forward in response to the federal Race to the Top grant.

According to the Boston Herald, "the bill passed early Thursday morning strengthens the state's application for $250 million in federal funding, makes it easier for the state to step in and help underperforming districts and lifts the cap on charter schools in the lowest performing districts."

The bill, reports the Boston Globe, would give superintendents "broad new powers to make dramatic changes at the state's worst schools, including the removal of ineffective teachers," and would also "double the number of charter schools, which generally operate free of unions, in the state's lowest-performing school districts."  "Charter schools," the paper continues, "have among the highest MCAS scores in the state, [and] have been a boon for many urban families looking for alternatives to traditional schools."

Maine, of course, has no charter schools thanks to the bipartisan defeat of charter school legislation last year.

So three of the nation's very bluest states have defied their education establishments and have each enacted legislation that brings more accountability to their educational system and more educational choices to students and families.

In Maine, we're still waiting for Education Commissioner Susan Gendron to introduce the reform legislation she is developing.  Given what other states are doing and the speed at which they are doing it, whatever she comes up with had better be very, very good. 

Look at the news - we are to the point now where on meaningful education reform we are literally falling further behind the other states every single day.

Last month, it was reported that the Michigan legislature passed a substantive education reform package designed to strengthen its competitive position with regard to federal Race to the Top funds.

Now comes word that legislature of California, of all places, is poised to do much the same. According to the Associated Press,

"The California Legislature has sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger landmark education reforms designed to overhaul the state's worst schools.

The reforms will allow California to compete for part of the $4.3 billion being made available to states under the Obama administration's Race to the Top initiative.

Under the legislation, state officials could close failing schools, convert them to charter schools or replace the principal and half the staff. Parents whose children are stuck in the lowest-performing schools would be given greater leeway to send their children elsewhere and could petition to turn around a chronically failing school.

The measures also provide a method for linking teacher evaluations to student performance."

This is, of course, an impressive array of reforms, and it comes, amazingly, from one of the most liberal states in the nation.  The reforms, naturally, "were opposed by the California Teachers Association," but impatience with perpetually underperforming schools, combined with the chance to win millions in federal education funds, seems to have tipped the scales against the status-quo education establishment, at least in California.

What about here in Maine? Education Commissioner Susan Gendron says she intends to advance a series of reform proposals herself, but it remains to be seen whether the education lobby in Augusta, which is among the state's most powerful and most resistant to change, will get on board.

If they don't, Maine will continue to fall further and further behind states across the nation, both red and blue, that have taken meaningful steps toward real reform.