Education

This blog post also appeared as an op-ed in the Times-Record on February 12th.

Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont received their report cards earlier this month from NECAPS, the new multi-state consortium that assesses the performance of our education systems. Maine finished third and last among our three neighbors in both reading and math for grades three through eight.   “Maine’s performance is sound,” said a spokesman for the state Department of Education. “We’re where we hoped we’d be.”

Well, this isn’t where I want Maine to be, and I’ll bet that it’s not where most Maine voters want Maine to be — whether they are parents of school-age children or retirees worried about the future of Maine’s economy. Bluntly, we are failing our children, denying them the opportunity to reach their highest potential in an increasingly competitive world.

Maine needs to innovate, to hold educators accountable for student performance and to create a culture of expectations and achievement that gives every Maine kid a fair shot at success, wherever she or he lives in Maine. To do this, we need to make excellence, quality, performance and efficiency our touchstones.

The facts are as plain and harsh as the glare of a full moon on a clear winter night.  Maine has one of the most expensive public school systems in the nation, yet too many young people are graduating from high school without being ready for either college or skilled employment.  We are doing many things well, but there are twice as many lower performing and less efficient schools and school districts in Maine than there are higher performing and more efficient schools and districts.

It’s time to insist on reform and to get smarter about how we use our resources, so that we can eliminate this achievement gap and raise our statewide performance results.

While Maine’s public school enrollment has been steadily declining, across the state we have continued to build expensive new schools with excess capacity.

Our student-teacher ratio has become the second most favorable in the nation at 11.3:1 versus a national average of almost 16:1. If we increase our student-teacher ratio to 13.5:1 — the average of several rural states that are currently performing as well or better than Maine — we would save $155 million each year.**

We could invest some of those savings in reforms that will make a real difference to our kids:

• Negotiate a statewide teachers’ contract that makes teaching and education leadership a true profession with advancement opportunities.
• Increase teacher compensation. (Maine’s average teacher salary is about $9,000 less than the national average.)
• Provide merit pay and performance bonuses for teachers that are linked to student growth and achievement. Eliminate the Maine law that creates a firewall between teacher evaluation and pupil performance.
• Make vocational and technical education broadly available so that Maine will be ready to replace our aging skilled workforce and keep jobs here.
• Increase the length of the school day and the school year in elementary and secondary schools. Maine’s school year is 175 days, while it’s 180 days in New Hampshire and 31 other states, and well over 200 days in China (where the school day is also about 30 percent longer).
• Use existing facilities to create magnet high schools for foreign languages at University of Maine at Fort Kent, for agricultural sciences at University of Maine at Presque Isle, for marine sciences at University of Maine at Machias and for creative arts in Lewiston-Auburn.
• Merge our two separate systems of higher education — the University of Maine system and our community colleges — and operate a fully integrated Pre-K to lifetime public education system.

Finally, let’s tear down the bureaucratic and political walls that protect mediocrity and keep out innovation. Let’s authorize charter schools and charter districts in Maine. Let’s take a fresh look at education by creating exciting new places of learning designed around the needs of students, their families and the community.

President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education initiative will bring hundreds of millions of dollars to states that qualify by authorizing charter schools and pursuing other reforms. Maine will lose out, because the Democratic leadership in the Legislature bowed to the teachers’ union and defeated the bill that would have allowed charter schools. Instead of joining the Race to the Top, we will continue to scrape along the bottom.

Maine’s system of public education needs strong leadership from the top, from the Blaine House.

We need a governor with the courage and independence to put kids first, a governor who won’t rest until all Maine children receive a quality education, a governor who will be a champion for innovation.  Hardworking Maine taxpayers who want the best for their children need a governor who will end duplication, fragmentation and inefficiency.  Maine needs a governor who understands that economic activity, jobs and incomes require an educated and skilled workforce.

We need a No Excuses policy of education reform. When I am governor, we will have it.

**Note as of 6/21/2010: The Maine Department of Education has just determined that the teacher data provided to the National Center for Education Statistics was incorrect and resulted in the US Department of Education miscalculating the student-teacher ratio.  The corrected ratio is 11.3:1, not 9:1 as originally reported by the USDOE and the MDOE.  Based on this revised information, Maine ranks second in the nation, immediately behind Vermont, in the fewest number of students per teacher for 2007-2008.