Gov. Paul LePage’s recent threat to close schools May 1 overshadowed another story about education. That story was Education Commissioner Steve Bowen’s plan to recalibrate the state’s K-12 public education system. It’s a plan worthy of consideration.
Commissioner Bowen is an adherent of the so-called market-based approach to education. He supports a system in which parents can choose the school their child attends, which he believes will force underperforming schools to shape up. He also wants to see more merit-based pay for teachers, based on more frequent, more sophisticated student testing.
Those positions carry plenty of political static, but to dismiss his views and this plan would miss an opportunity to have a frank discussion about how our public schools operate.
Education should be built around students, Mr. Bowen says, an obvious point, but one that is often lost within the multitiered educational bureaucracy. Mr. Bowen, a former middle school teacher in Camden, knows how easily learning becomes secondary to other concerns.
Mr. Bowen asks a key question about K-12 education: “Is the architecture of the system good for kids?” It’s a question school administrators, local school boards, teachers and the Maine Education Association should join him in asking. So much of the structure of public education harks back to the 19th century. What can be jettisoned and what should remain?
Though it might cause logistical nightmares for schools, Mr. Bowen asks why students are classified by age rather than ability. If a 12-year-old is reading well above her grade level, she might better be grouped with 13-year-old and 14-year-olds who are reading and discussing Shakespeare plays.
Digital learning — using stand-alone computers which can walk a student through a lesson, repeating what he or she struggled to master, and computers that can be linked with those of other students and teachers across the state — has enormous potential. Schools have gained significant ground since laptops were put in the hands of students, but even more can be done, Mr. Bowen rightfully asserts.
Yet another way schools can become more student-centered is to switch to shorter duration classes, allowing students to study more diverse subjects. In such a system, teachers become more like educational counselors or coaches and less like pedants.
Internships outside the building should become more common, he believes, and students should have the opportunity to earn some post-secondary credits in a fifth year of high school or if they graduate after four years.
A very critical component of this reconsideration is to build in many more “check-out” lanes, some leading to four-year colleges, some to community colleges, technical schools, apprenticeships and employer-run training programs.
The Bowen plan is more like a vision statement than a policy initiative. It’s an intentionally bold attempt to shake up conventional thinking about our public elementary, middle and high schools. Of course, many hundreds of teachers, administrators and school board members already do such innovative thinking in our schools, and the plan should not be seen as an indictment of them. In fact, Mr. Bowen says, the Department of Education should be understood as a resource. As he says, “We don’t operate any schools.”
Despite the sound and fury of the governor’s pronouncements, there is fresh thinking coming out of the administration which should challenge the status quo; not all the ideas are workable or desirable, but they deserve to be considered.
Sadly politicians like Mr. Bowen as well as school administrators don’t keep their jobs by telling people the simple truth. To justify their positions they always have to provide “solutions” to our problems. The problem with their solutions is that they are usually very convoluted, expensive, and rarely successfully implemented or connected to anything close to a positive result. Don’t be fooled by hucksters who don’t give a hoot about your kids. All they want to do is spread your money for themselves or among their friends/political supporters.
There’s only one real solution to our educational woes, PARENTS who truly care about their children’s education. Get involved in your kids lives and school studies. Pride, hard work, self-worth, and aspirations all “begin” in the home not in schools, on the streets, or through osmotic proximity with a TV, computer, smart phone, or video game. Check their homework, talk to their teachers, and hold them accountable for learning. Otherwise any school they go to will be nothing more than a babysitting service where your kids go to socialize and we keep getting the same poor educational results.
“Otherwise any school they go to will be nothing more than a babysitting service where your kids go to socialize and we keep getting the same poor educational results. ”
So in your own words you have stated that the current public education system in this state is akin to a “babysitting service” that merely provides a socializing opportunity for students.
LMAO…That is the entire reason we need to change the system! Claiming that it is entirely the responsibility of the parents to ensure the time allotted to their child’s education is effective in producing results is a narrow minded position, at best. Of course parents need to be involved with their child’s education, that’s pretty obvious. But to sit here and couch an outright excuse for the failed public education system within an argument that piles all the blame on the parents is simply foolish.
We need to stop making excuses for the system and come up with workable solutions that fix the problems, not just shift the blame.
You can’t teach children who have no incentive to learn. Have no consequences for not learning.
If their parents don’t care, usually the children won’t. The way the system is set up now it is not possible to hold a student back to repeat a grade. They are just pushed through the system from one year to the next. The curriculum is there for any student to learn if they so wish. There are students who come through the same schools who do very well and get scholarships to the best colleges in the country. There are others that come out and can barely read and write.
The 1st time Bowen has to openly disagree with LePage’s school funding it is gonna be meeting not to be missed with a video camera. And Bowen’s call for parents to get more involved, and his pushing for charter school’s, no matter how politely worded, is also going to collide when school choice runs smack into LePage’s public school funding head on. Maine education already has a huge problem in that LePage has called for an almost complete overhaul of the what was known in the past as the Vo-Tech Program but without providing any specific’s as to the ‘how’s’ and ‘where does it lead to’ answers that need to be addressed beforehand. Combine that problem with Bowen’s push toward more parent involvement and something is gonna have to give.
One idea might be the one that BIW had when they were taking the high school kids into the ‘Yard and having them do half the day in a formal school, doing the academic’s and the other half in the ‘Yard working on the ship’s providing the academics a place to be seen and used. Such a combined effort can’t be that hard to envision, can it ? And given that the various skills the kid’s are gonna learn, like plumbing, welding, HVAC, rigging and fitting, that are almost immediately employable in the open market, such an educational system is going to put more skilled worker’s out on the market.
The heck with labor murals, why isn’t Governor LaPage focusing on these desperately needed educational reforms?
Stephen Bowen for Governor!
ok, school choice in Maine? Just how would that work. Let’s say you live in Lee…where’s your school choice going to come from? How about Lincoln, Millinocket, Howland, Calais, Harrington, Greenville???
Is the plan to rebuild Maine’s economy based on building 200 charter schools, each across the street from every failing school in the state? And newsflash…that’s what it will take because when next year’s test results come out…EVERY SINGLE SCHOOL IN MAINE WILL BE ON THE “FAILING” LIST. No PUBLIC school has 85% or more of its kids “meeting the standard”. Want to know how the private schools can do it? Because they can bounce out PERMANENTLY any kid who isn’t cutting it behaviorally or academically. Just ask John Bapst to introduce you to their special education teachers…
Want REAL school choice? End this wacky concept of MANDATORY public education designed to brainwash the masses and turn out good little factory workers (since we don’t have any factories anymore anyway). Give schools the power to get rid of those who are NOTHING MORE than drags on the system. If a child WANTS an education and SEEKS an education and isn’t DISRUPTING everyone else who is seeking an education, then he or she is IN. If not, then you’re OUT…and stop fooling around with trying to keep kids in schools just to keep enrollments up just to get more per pupil money…because half the kids you’re keeping for that reason cost more than they’re bringing in.
As far as progressing kids based on ability as opposed to age…ok, how will this one work? Will you have special classes for bright kids complete with hiring more teachers and more classroom space or will you have your nine year old sitting next to a 14 year old. This isn’t just a logistical issue for schools, it is a logistical issue for entire communities.
Oh to have more time today…
Lake Wobegon, “where all the kids are above average”, is mythical but a good insight on human behavior and perception.
Expelling students who misbehave is a touchy issue. In my experience, decades ago, many of the students who misbehaved had learning difficulties, even outright dyslexia. I personally encountered at least a few students who were bounced from school to school for disciplianry reasons to … Lord knows where. I tutored, in class, least two of them with their reading. Another was a pugilisitc leader of a gang whom I know little about except he picked brawls within a wekk of arriving at a school.
So, if we kick students out with no efforts to “rehab”, what are we kicking them to? But this takes money, resources, etc.
So your alternative is what? If you allow the bully who is picking fights to stay in your class you will lose control of that class. You are no longer allowed to disciplin those who disrupt your class. If the parents don’t allow you to have ritilin prescribed so you can turn them into zombies. What is your alternateve? Theoropy? Where are you going to find professional help?
Any middle school teacher who asks “Why are students grouped by age rather than ability” has obviously not been paying attention to his students.
Age is a factor that is unchangeable. “Smart” does not always translate to “mature.” these students will inherit the world together, they will graduate together, they will change the workforce, and possibly the world together. they need to be a group.
I had a friend when I was in the third grade. She was very smart, and the school skipped her three times. She eventually went to college when she was 16 (after taking a year off because her parents were understandably worried about her going off to college at 15)
She was miserable had several bad marriages, and occasionally calls me late at night when she gets super drunk.
She also reads my BDN comments … I sure wish she would post her thoughts on this editorial.
I agree. Grouping by ability probably only works in one room schools (where the more advanced students helped the less advanced by in-class tutoring). Other than Honors and AP courses in high school, most schools could not afford the resources to accomplish such groupings at any age.
I also agree that “skipping” grades can backfire except for the truly exceptionally gifted. Other means can be used to keep them interested and learning within their age cohort.
I agree with StillRelaxin as far as parents are concerned.
The main problem with todays students as a whole seems to be that they really don’t have to work to progress through the school system. There doesn’t seem to be any incentive for them to do the work required for them to matriculate to the next grade level. I know there must be some compeling reasons to some that allows non-performers to move on with their age group peers but frankly I haven’t seen them. We do NO child a favor by allowing them to go through the system based on age.
You can’t build a home without a good foundation and you can’t build a childs education without the foundation of a thorough understanding of the basics. There is absolutely NO compelling reason why normal children are allowed to graduate elemetary school without this foundation. There is No compelling reason to give HS graduates a diploma who are classified as functionally illiterate.
We are constantly trying to fix already broken children in HS or even College. Stop wasting time and money and insure that they don’t reach this level without the tools and solid foundation that will enable them to thrive in the higher levels of education.
stop playing with the education system. if you want to cut back on costs, than find something else to cut back on. there are plenty of wasteful things in this world to get “rid” of. Pretty sad when it is getting to the point where home schooling is looking better and better.
Seems to me that the NEWS is wasting ink and Mr. Bowen is wasting his breath. We all know that the schools are closing on May 1st. The Governor told us so and we all know that he would never tell a lie. Oops that was Washington and the lies wasn’t it.
Commissioner Bowen and Governor LePage want education to center around the child. However, they use words like “market based approach”, “school choice”, “checkout lanes” “digital learning. These are the terms used by corporations, bankers and hedge fund managers interested in privatizing the untapped pool of public education money. Their interest is mainly in improving their profits and not in improving student outcome.
It is not possible to improve public education by taking tax money away from schools and giving it to corporations that have statistically shown they are incapable of improving student progress. Beware of Bowen and LePages goals for education. They are neither public nor educational.
One of the big goals of ALEC and other corporate funded groups is to end public education and replace it with profit driven private [corporate] schools. They can make a lot of money and teach our kids to be good corporate flunkies. It’s not Laplague or Bowen, the’re just mouthpieces, puppets.
The solution to better schooling has never been, as Bowen and LePage keep telling us, turning schools over to commercial interests. Schools are not an industry. They are not a factory. Children can not be equated with widgets produced. We already know what makes great schools.
Good schools are turning out well educated students in many countries. We are ignoring what they are doing and keep insisting on idiotic solutions like taking money out of public education and giving it to corporations to set up alternate schools which statistics and testing show are no better than regular public education.
The main stumbling block to improving our educational system is the segment of our population that believes that educated people are dangerous liberals trying to ruin the country, that teachers are either stupid or teaching evil nonsense, that teachers’s unions run schools, that good teachers should work for wages no better than those earned by the lowest paid person in the community and that believe all taxes are a confiscation of “their” money.
With people like that running for office there is no way we will improve US education. Bowen and LePage belong to that reactionary group.
Bowen is out of touch with matters of education. He’s closed minded and will fail to find solutions if he continues to silence those of us who have an opposing position. Sadly, such has been my experience with the Commissioner.
Another case of approved but not funded. Excpet if you’re a charter school founded by a corporation.
“Digital learning — using stand-alone computers which can walk a student
through a lesson, repeating what he or she struggled to master, and
computers that can be linked with those of other students and teachers
across the state — has enormous potential. Schools have gained
significant ground since laptops were put in the hands of students, but
even more can be done, Mr. Bowen rightfully asserts.”
Although this is the best way to bring education out of the 18th century model – CD’s will replace teachers and do a better job – as you said the student can repeat the lesson as often as needed – and you don’t need a masters degree to monitor the progress – this will replace thousands of teachers and eliminate the need to herd children into expensive buildings and greatly reduce property taxes. Do you think the union will go along with this.
Who would be in charge of overseeing students while they are progressing and repeating lessons? IF you think the majority of students are self motivated, then I you have never been in a classroom! Where are they going to do these lessons? Who is going to pay for the technology and teach students how to use it? I’m not trying to be argumentative, I’m just curious if you have thought beyond the basic idea.