THE CONTEXT
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The world is global, connected and competitive; but Maine students are falling behind. Together, let’s strengthen every school, empower every teacher, and prepare every child for a better future. There are 400,000 people under the age of 25 living in Maine. If we can keep them in Maine and employ them in the new jobs that our competitive, global economy demands, they will become the greatest resource for the future prosperity of our state.
By 2018, nearly 60% of Maine jobs will require training and formal education beyond high school, and over 40% of those will require either a two- or four-year degree, but too many young adults graduate from Maine high schools without the knowledge and skills necessary to enter the workforce or to be college ready. As a consequence, Maine is left with an undereducated workforce that is a poor match for the nation’s burgeoning knowledge economy, and our income levels lag behind all other New England states.
Our elementary and secondary schools fail too many of our students: between two-thirds and one-half of Maine’s elementary and middle students don’t meet national standards in reading and math; Maine recently finished behind New Hampshire and Vermont in both Grades 3-8 reading and Grades 3-8 math; and our average high school graduation rate hovers around 80%.
Moreover, only about one-third of our high student graduates go on to earn a college degree, a rate lower than the U.S. average. Only half of our 8th graders ultimately enroll in college, and of those who do, more than a quarter require at least one remedial course. 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.
Although Maine’s enrollments declined precipitously during the last decade – hitting rural areas of our state much harder, school expenses continued to rise. Net expenditure per student in Maine is 8% higher than the national average, despite per capita income in Maine being well below the national average; when regional cost differences for salaries are taken into account, Maine has the fifth highest per pupil expenditure rate in the nation. Despite the rising costs, a significant number of our teachers are not well paid. Maine ranks 43rd in the nation in average teachers’ salaries, and we rank last among the New England states.
Maine has the second highest (after Vermont) student-teacher ratio in the nation at 11.3 students for every teacher versus a national average of almost 16:1. The average student-teacher ratio in rural states that currently perform as well or better than Maine is 13.5. The difference between 11.3 and 13.5 amounts to $150 million in higher costs for Maine each year.
It’s time to take a fresh look at education, to insist on reform designed around the needs of students, their families and the community and to get smarter about how we use our resources.
Maine’s system of public education needs strong leadership 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.
THE OBJECTIVES
Mainers have a can-do tradition of working hard to meet high standards. To ensure that all our students have the opportunity to meet world-class standards and to compete in a global economy at a cost we can afford, the Cutler Administration will:
- Make excellence, quality, performance and efficiency our touchstones.
- Innovate, hold educators accountable for student performance and create a culture of expectations and achievement that gives every Maine child a fair shot at success, wherever she or he lives in Maine.
- Ensure access to lifelong learning opportunities for all Mainers.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
- All young children should have access to quality programs that advance their development and readiness for school.
- Parents, children and educators must share responsibility for academic success.
- Bureaucratic and political walls that protect mediocrity and keep out innovation must be eliminated.
- When educators and teams of educators demonstrate gains and growth in student performance, they should be recognized and rewarded.
- All Mainers, no matter where they live, should have lifelong access to the knowledge and skills they need for success in college and workforce training.
THE MEANS TO THESE ENDS
1. Early Childhood
If Maine is to achieve our desired outcomes for children, including high school graduation and college degrees or occupational certificates, we must start by improving early childhood education.
School readiness and academic success starts with early childhood education. Consistently, evidence points to early childhood experiences having lasting impacts on later success in life. As a child’s brain grows, the nature and quality of early experience establishes either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all of the development and behavior that follows. Getting things right the first time is easier—and less expensive—than trying to fix them later.
Public investments should focus on prevention, rather than on addressing the problems that arise when a child has adverse early experiences. We have long known that interactions with caregivers are important in a child’s life. When we coo at our babies, when we sing and read to preschoolers, we are building relationships that are the foundation for their future success. The latest research shows us that these relationships actually shape brain circuits and lay the foundation for later developmental outcomes, from academic performance and interpersonal skills to physical and mental health.
I will work to support Maine families in their children’s quest for success. We must improve our efforts to ensure that all children receive appropriate developmental screening and are provided appropriate and necessary services.
As Governor, I will focus my efforts on making sure our youngest students are ready to enter kindergarten with the necessary social-emotional, cognitive and early language and literacy skills for continued success in school. Our benchmark for success at the end of my first term will be to reduce by half the number of children who cannot read proficiently by the end of third grade.
2. Kindergarten through Grade 12
The Cutler Administration will revitalize our public school programs and introduce talented high school students to the excitement of higher education and apprentice programs before they graduate from high school. To those ends, our public school system must embrace public charter and magnet schools, reward performance, smart-size the curriculum, integrate technology, emphasize the role of our schools as community centers and break down the barriers between academic and technical education.
3. Charter Schools
Student achievement should not be a matter of chance, but of design. All of our schools can and must do better. But those children for whom traditional public school is not productive need another option. I will push for the passage of legislation that will permit the charter of innovative, autonomous, small public schools as alternatives to our regular public schools. Charter schools will be held accountable for student learning but not in the traditional ways of governing and operating schools.
Maine must do better than the so-called “Innovative Schools” approach that was supported by the Maine Education Association and enacted by the legislature. This misnamed scheme keeps innovative schools in the same strait jackets that deprive teachers, administrators and parents of the opportunity to think and to act “outside the box.” Across the nation, forty states have created opportunities to form charter schools – free, public schools that operate substantially independently of local school boards and the traditional collective bargaining rules. Maine can learn from these other states’ experiences. Many charter schools are thriving, and many have fostered dramatic innovations in the quality and delivery of cost effective education.
4. Magnet Schools
The Cutler Administration will help communities offer rigorous academic programs structured around students’ individual interests through the creation of new magnet high schools. The Cutler Administration will reach out to our universities and business partners so that magnet schools can inspire meaningful classroom activities and introduce students to the excitement of higher education and apprenticeship programs before they graduate. To help do this we will encourage more flexible use of our university and community college campuses. By way of example, we could establish magnet 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.
5. Performance Rewards
I believe that educators and teams of educators who demonstrate their ability to improve student achievement ought to be rewarded for their efforts. Recognition for growth in student success should not look only to student test scores, nor should rewards be limited to pay. We will ask our teachers and other professional educators to design new ways to reward successful collaboration and support opportunities for school leadership and targeted professional development.
The present compensation system, a simplistic seniority based system that makes no distinction between those who lead and teach effectively and those who do not, is not serving either children or the public well and does not drive school improvement based on teacher collaboration and effective mentoring.
I am a believer in looking at growth and gain and how much a student is improving each year based on a variety of indicators and on the efforts of a variety of educators. Where we can identify student success, we should reward those individual educators, the teams and the schools responsible for accelerating student progress. We need to shine a spotlight on that success, learn from it and replicate it.
Many of Maine’s rural schools need qualified teachers in a wide range of fields. Without doubt, Maine’s over-reliance on a lock-step salary schedule for all teachers hurts our state in efforts to recruit and retain top-level teaching talent. With one-third of our teachers expected to retire in the near future, Maine must consider alternative compensation systems and move beyond a lock-step salary schedule to attract the best and the brightest to our schools.
6. Preservation of Local Community Schools
Few, if any, issues in recent years have proven more divisive and contentious to Maine citizens than the issue of school district consolidation. Especially in our most rural communities, consolidation was viewed as a death warrant for the local community school. In my travels around the state, I have heard over and over again from residents in community after community how important their local school is to the community’s well being and very survival.
As Governor, I will look for opportunities to preserve local community schools, by helping communities collaborate to meet the demands for high quality offerings. Rather than penalize communities on their state subsidies for failure to consolidate school districts, I will create incentives for schools to re-design themselves in cost-effective ways so that they can both improve the educational opportunities for their children and young adults and enhance the central role that the school plays in community life.
In some cases, consolidation may be the best alternative available, both in economic and educational terms. Yet often it is not. Accomplishing change and collaboration will not be easy; it will require effective vision and leadership at the state level to remove legal impediments and to suggest models for promising and innovative practices. Schools suffering from declining enrollments could be turned into high quality schools that are integrated into a network of early childhood programs, parenting classes, vocational and non-traditional academic offerings, health clinics and other social services, all focused on improving educational outcomes for our students and residents alike.
Many schools struggle, especially in rural areas, to provide special programs and teachers to support the full range of students’ educational needs. Due to the high taxpayer burden and continuing declines in enrollment, some vital programs are sacrificed in rural and urban schools alike. We can train teachers to make better use of laptop technology, and we can utilize new technologies that can help schools and communities better share resources efficiently in hard-to-staff courses. We should redesign learning environments without sacrificing the vital contact between the student and a good teacher.
7. Longer School Calendar
At 175 days, Maine currently has one of the shortest school calendars in the nation. Maine requires 5 days less than the national average. Our students cannot catch up or surpass their counterparts in other states with an abbreviated calendar. The short school calendar deprives teachers of both the time for instruction and for professional development they need to help our students get to the top. I will propose to extend the academic calendar in Maine by 10 days.
8. Vocational and Skills Training
Maine’s skilled workforce has an average age of about 50. We are watching one of our true competitive advantages age its way out of existence, and we need to reintroduce skilled technical and vocational education to our young people.
Maine has a statewide network of secondary-level career and technical centers, but most are treated as separate adjuncts to regular high schools. Because of this separation many students cannot readily earn academic credit toward high school graduation while simultaneously beginning to develop technical and career skills. As a result, too many young people are denied the opportunity acquire, in an academic setting, the career skills that will be valued in the workplace.
We need to break down the barriers between academic and technical education at the secondary level, without lowering academic standards. Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School has shown that the artificial separation can be undone. It has created a curriculum that provides a seamless education in both academic and technical programs. More Maine high schools and career and technical centers need to be encouraged to adopt this model.
9. Post-Secondary Opportunities
We can create the kinds of post-secondary educational opportunities and experiences that will make Maine students want to stay here for their education. Our college systems need to work more closely with each other – so that the credits earned by a student who graduates from a community college program will be recognized at one of our four-year universities. We must be confident that every Maine student at any age – whether he or she goes to college or not – will be trained and skilled and in a position to reach his or her maximum potential.
10. Adult Education
Maine’s 98 adult education centers offer a vital link for adult learners. The system provides a bridge between the public schools and advanced training and education at Maine’s community colleges and university campuses, while also teaching the skills required for higher-performing and higher-paid jobs. Adult education in Maine’s cities and towns can make available to displaced workers, new immigrants to Maine, and young adults who have dropped out of school an opportunity to learn the necessary language, literacy and mathematical skills needed to take advantage of technical and college level education opportunities required for higher-performing and higher-paid jobs. However, adult education programs and job force development programs fail to connect in far too many communities throughout the state. As Governor, I will provide the leadership necessary at the state level to maximize the efficient use of education and job training dollars by requiring strong coordination between the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, and a reorganized Higher Education system.
11. Higher Education
Helping Maine to overcome its higher education deficit is one of the most critical tasks facing our state today. The percentage of Mainers age 25 and older earning a bachelors or advanced degree continues to be the lowest in New England, and Maine’s rate of increase is slipping relative to that of our sister states. As our country lags behind the rest of world, Maine is falling behind the rest of our country. The problems with the jobs market and the tax burden in Maine won’t be solved until we repair our higher education system.
Part of our problem is money, but not all of it. Maine’s problems also flow from a balkanized system of public higher education management, one that discourages cooperation and too often serves the narrowest interests. Net expenditures for public higher education are low in Maine in comparison to the rest of the nation, yet Maine has the nation’s second highest non-instructional payroll relative to instructional payroll.
We will merge our university and college systems. Having one governing body for both systems will improve efficiency and planning for the various campuses and reduce unnecessary duplication of programs. Broadband technology exists to accommodate video conferencing and asynchronous distance learning, while “hybrid” courses, using a combination of distance learning technology with face-to-face, real–time contact between student and instructor, often result in more effective instruction than either distance or in-person instruction alone.
More centralized planning and administration will allow community colleges and four-year university campuses to more closely collaborate in sequenced, affordable programs in a variety of specialized programs. At the same time, accessibility to needed courses will be improved, allowing students to make continuing progress toward degree completion. In a new funding environment, campuses will no longer duplicate programs in an effort to expand enrollments, such strategies that too often now result in too few students in programs with too few qualified faculty, with the net result of weakening the entire system.
American education has long been the envy of the world, but with the rising cost of college, higher education is becoming affordable for fewer people. By focusing on greater efficiencies, we can begin to bend the cost curve of higher education and ensure that our university tuition is not a barrier to college attendance and completion.