Two of the governor’s education bills deserve to be defeated and a third should be amended. The two bills, which would take the “public” out of public education and put schools in the marketplace, have the potential to widen, not bridge the gap between good schools and bad schools. The third, implementing a standardized teacher evaluation system, is sound in theory but needs tweaking.
Gov. Paul LePage genuinely wants to improve public education in Maine. Though some of his agenda seems based in a resentment for public sector workers, most of his ideas about schools are not aimed at punishing teachers but rather highlight other parts of the school picture.
These include the need to provide paths for students bound for trades and other skilled labor jobs, getting the most out of each state education dollar and building more accountability into the unwritten contract between taxpayers and teachers.
And Education Commissioner Steve Bowen has set the table for a vigorous debate about how schools should be structured in the 21st century, a debate that’s long overdue.
But the two school choice bills — allowing families to choose to send their children to schools in other administrative districts if there are openings, and allowing the state to send funds to private religious schools — have the potential to increase the gap between good schools and bad schools. Both will be the subject of public hearings before the Legislature’s Education Committee beginning at 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 15.
LR 2775, An Act to Expand Educational Opportunities for Maine Students, would allow schools to accept students from outside their town and district boundaries and still receive state education dollars. The idea is that parents whose local school is not performing well can enroll their child in another school.
Mr. Bowen and other proponents believe schools losing students will shape up. But how? They will be losing funding. They will likely end up with students whose families are unable or unwilling to get them to the “better” schools, thereby accelerating the downward spiral. Good teachers won’t want to take jobs in such schools.
Market forces are exactly what the early American proponents of free public education wanted to avoid, so that rich and poor would have the same opportunities.
The second bill, LR 2774, An Act to Remove Inequity in Student Access to Certain Schools, is similar. It would allow state funds to be used to pay tuition to private schools, including schools with religious curricula. For example, the city of Portland currently does not receive state education money for Portland students attending that city’s private Wayneflete School. Under the proposed change, the school would receive that aid.
The problem is that state education funding is not likely to increase, so the slices of pie being passed among the state’s schools would get smaller.
A third bill would implement a statewide teacher evaluation system. The Maine Education Association, which represents teacher interests, does not object to the concept of evaluating teachers. In fact, the MEA’s board of directors last year endorsed a teacher evaluation policy developed by the National Education Association.
In the governor’s bill on teacher evaluation, though, is a component that would allow superintendents to consider a teacher’s evaluation in laying off teachers when budgets call for such cuts. MEA Executive Director Rob Walker argues that a bad teacher should be removed based on job performance before such cuts are needed. The association wants to stick to seniority as the criteria for cuts required for budgetary reasons.
The MEA also objects to a part of the evaluation bill that allows appeals of evaluation on incorrect implementation of the process, not for subjective mistakes.
Both problems should be easily fixed.
The governor and commissioner want to see bold changes in education, but the school choice initiative carries with it unacceptable risks. The bills should be defeated.
Exactly. Why aim for some good schools instead of trying to raise all to the same standard? Why remove state funds and allocate them to private institutions? This make no sense whatsoever.
No one cares what the right thing to do is . They only care if this is good for them . Send kids off to college with IQs in the 80s and think they will become professionals . They will never compare to the kids with a high aptitude who only finish high school or dropped out. I know many people with a college degree that can not think or did not retain much of what they learned .
This is unfortunately a true statement. College is not for everyone. And really we need to focus on trades just as much as college. Not everyone is a computer genius, but they might be a fantastic electrician, plumber or mechanic. These skilled positions are going by the wayside when these services are still needed and someone with this aptitude can make a great living doing something that not everyone has an aptitude for. I have always liked the idea of why are we not raising experts? Why put our kids in our idea of a neat little box when they show us from a very young age what their abilites and interests are!
No one could make you happy about this.
There must be a lawyer or two around. Lemon v. Kurtzman was a Supreme Court decision in 1971 and held that governmental aid to religious schools was unconstitutional. Can Maine get around this? With the law, who knows.
School choice has some interesting ramifications. Say two high schools not far apart geographically both face declining enrollments. Say both schools have the capacity for more students. Will they enter competition to get students from the other school? Now each school will have to spend more money to make it seem more attractive to potential students. Will the residents of each town or district be willing to spend more money in an effort to attract more students? I can see principals and superintendents going back to school to earn MBA’s to bring economic and business expertise to what had been educational leadership. Cost-benefit analysis, marketing, budgeting in the face of uncertainty. Sounds exciting.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court case* allows tax credits for state vouchers to be used to pay private religious schools. That’s the premise upon which Bowen is working.
*http://schoolboardnews.nsba.org/2011/04/nsba-supreme-court’s-arizona-ruling-may-promote-state-voucher-schemes/
Here’s another scenario for you. You have a private religious school that you are sending your child to. You are paying tuition plus your property taxes which are used to support the public schools. Now all of a sudden children from the public system are comming to your childs school and their tuition is being paid by the tax payers. I think I would go a little balistic and demand that the state pay my childs tuition also. As would just about all the other parents that have been paying tuition to the private school.
Like saying you need algebra 11 to become an auto mechanic . I would bet $100 I would do a lot better than some of these kids that took algebra11 on the math part of an SAT . I am 25 years out of high school an only went as far as algebra 1 . Why are we not talking about the facts Some kids have more natural ability than others find thier strengths and work on them. I have no use for people who outright lie to further thier own cause .
In my 68 years, I have only met one person who actually used algebra in their daily life. Of course that may because I didn’t socialize in mensa bars.
I use Algebra in my daily life. Most of us do. Especially if we are reading our news online or using technology at all.
You use algebra every day. It’s just so second nature you don’t think of it as algebra.
It’s 130 miles from Bangor to Portland. How long will it take you to make the drive if you stick to the speed limit? Naturally, you answer 2 hours.
You did this.
130 miles = x * 65 miles/hour
Solve for x.
x = 2 hours
Or a more complicated example:
You’ve budgeted $35,000 for a new employee in your business. Payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, and worker’s compensation insurance will cost 13% of her wages. Plus, your business will put 3% of her wages into a SIMPLE IRA. Assuming 40 hour weeks, how much can you afford to pay her?
We’ll call her wage W, costs C, and retirement plan R.
W + C + R = 35000
But C = .13 *W, and R = .03 W, so we can substitute:
W + .13W + .03W = $35,000
W(1 + .13 + .03) = $35,000
1.16 W = $35,000
W = $30,172
52 weeks * 40 hours per week = 2,080 hours
$30,172/2,080 hours = $14.50 per hour
You want to send your kid somewhere else, fine. Private school go right ahead. Just don’t expect to get any tax breaks for credits. It is so stupid that some people think they should get a tax break.
As a parent I would go crazy if my child was in an underperforming school and I couldn’t do anything about it. Today the only remedy available to parents is to sell their home and move to a better school district. The parents with the financial resources can and will move to a better school district in a heartbeat and those that can’t will remain stuck in in underperforming districts.
The essence of this issue is that the current system will only serve to widen the educational gap between the financially well to do and those less fortunate. Giving kids the ability to go to the school that best serves their needs regardless of whether they live in the school district or not is the only fair and common sense solution.
I just don’t understand how at the state level, the solution for failing and under-performing schools is to allow parents to send their children elsewhere. What about the children who aren’t sent elsewhere? Fend for yourself? Why not work on those schools and make them better instead of diverting funds away?
You raise a valid point, but how do you get the school to recognize the need for change and act on it?
California has a solution to this problem in the “parent trigger” a reform that went into effect in January 2010. The law gives rights to parents whose children are stuck in failing public schools. If more than 50% of the parents sign a petition they can force a school closed, shake up its administration or turn it into a charter.
If parents were empowered to shake up failing schools we might not be having the debate that you and I are having.
But does this make sense for Maine given how rural our state is? It’s not like there are other school options just in a different part of town. Most places you have to travel at least half an hour to get to the next school. And if there are these shake ups, how do we get new talent in these very rural towns for positions that are offering salaries that are not exactly enticing?
It just doesn’t seem like a productive solution for our state.
So then, what exactly would you have us do to address this problem? How do you bring about change without shaking up the status quo and taking some risks? Our kids certainly deserve more than our sitting on our hands paralyzed by indecision and fear of the unknowns.
I’d look at what works for the schools that are succeeding and try to implement that in the failing schools.
You get involved in your childs education. You closely monitor their progress. You demand accountability from your child and his teachers.
In the real world just try and demand accountability from your child’s teachers. The administration and other teachers circle the wagons, label you a troublemaker or worse, discount you, and just plain ignore you.
That is the time to take the complaints to the principal, superintendent in your district and if that doesn’t work, then start working with the state. I have done this several times working with families whose children are having trouble in school. If a child happens to be a special needs child, then there are even more avenues to get involved. I don’t mind being a troublemaker for my kids’ education. They will eventually deal with you, if for no other reason than to shut you up and get you out of their school. Everything needs to be done in writing, certified delivery confirmation letters. Phone calls don’t happen. I don’t think twice about contacting my children’s teachers and have on several occasions. I have called a principal regarding how a teacher treated my son and have not had a problem since then. Things can get done in schools and teachers can be held accountable. I am also very quick to give a teacher my business card with contact information on it, which is really just a way to say, I am a social worker and I will be involved in my child’s education.
I have found the superintendents of the schools to be the most unresponsive of all. Arrogant, condescending, and only interested in having a record of self aggrandizing accomplishments on paper so they can move up to a larger school with higher pay in a few years.
The average person is not a social worker who frankly has a position that the administration recognizes can get them in hot water. Nor do many parents have the time and money to document everything the way you describe. Doesn’t it tell you ANYTHING about the real situation when you have to document everything? When you feel it is necessary to use your position as a social worker to pressure teachers into paying attention to you? This is a symptom of the rot in the educational system.
By the way, teachers and administration have plenty of ways to make a child “pay” for having a parent who makes waves.
”
I have found the superintendents of the schools to be the most unresponsive of all.”
I find it strange that you use the plural when referring to both the superintendents and the schools. Are you trying to tell us that you have had problems with more then one spuerintendent in more then one school? Or is this possibly just another fairy tale?
I guess you can’t read or maybe you have only been involved in your school a couple of years. Superintendents rarely stay at the same school for more than a few years. It’s all about the career and moving up to the bigger school with more pay. If you are involved with your school for a long period, 30 years or more as I have, then you are going to deal with several superintendents.
And just try to monitor their progress. Barriers designed to keep parents out of real interaction in the education process are raised at every turn. I have found it next to impossible to obtain even the curriculum. I don’t think they want parents to know just what the curriculum is because they are afraid some parents will raise objections to parts of it and because comparing actual progress and results with the official curriculum would show exactly how bad they are failing.
speaking as a teacher – your right on!
I’m not a real teacher……bu I play one on TV! Yeah………..I really believe you.
then come into my classroom! Come spend a day with me.
As a teacher then I suggest you get some professional help as you are suicidal. You must enjoy cutting your own throat.
get a life and grow up – I think its time for your diper to be changed.
You haven’t been a parent for quite awhile it seems. I can tell you from experience that there is almost no way to get involved if the teacher does not want you involved. I had a failing student in school and I couldn’t even get the teacher to keep me informed of my child’s progress. They don’t have to talk to you at all if they don’t want to and there is nothing you can do about it. Without this law you can’t even put them in another school unless you move.
Yep it’s been a little over 20 years since our youngest was in school. I can vividly recall the school calling to inform us that he was falling way behind. In fact he hadn’t turned in one project in any subject since the begining of the school year. This happened to be March. I was working 60+ hours a week and my wife was doing roughly they same. He never missed a day in school and we, in hindsight, now realize that he was there physically but where his mind was is anyone s guess.
We went to the school and demanded to see the teachers, we demanded a list of all the projects that he needed to complete plus a running daily list of any new projects that were required. We got both. One of the teachers who we talked to made a statement that it wasn’t their responsiblity to keep us informed on a daily basis. I quickly told him that he has a new responsibility to at least let us know if there is a problem in a timely manner. Our son completed every project that was required both before and after before years end.
If you don’t squeak, you won’t get any oil.
I can still remember being informed at the END of the school year that my daughter, (and her entire class), would not get credit for the advanced class they had taken because they had not covered enough material. The teacher had held the class back all year to “help” a couple of students that were having trouble with the material. The teacher came right out and said that the students having trouble were school board members children and that being in the advanced class was important “socially”.
Even though fwteagles and I differ politically, I have to agree with this particular statement. Inheritantly in rural Maine, it would be a challenge to shut under performing schools down. I agree there is a disparity in the quality of education, but there has to be a better solution other than shutting schools down, or stifling them. Perhaps more routine teacher performance evaluations would help. There are state standards of education quality, but what other yard stick do we have other than student test scores? Just thinking out loud.
ftw and I agree a lot, and that trend continues on this issue, for instance in Aroostook County, there is not a lot of “choice” to begin with. So while the “other” Maine will see the up side, if any, northern will be left in the woods as usual.
You’re right there. Pulling your kids out of school and moving to another town is hardly an easy option. But before that, you need to get involved in your town’s business. Go to school board meetings, town meetings, and make your voice heard on where resources are put.
Yeah, it’s not easy…raising kids isn’t.
I think it’s something they have been teaching in business schools. Never fix a problem with a bandaide that an organ transplant can’t be used on.
So should the parents have to keep their children in these schools until they are made better, like 5-10 years from now? That doesn’t make sense either.
Every parent who goes along with this is certain that his or her child will be accepted at one of the private schools, and surely NOT left in the local school to cope with the stresses of reduced funding. It’s a delusion.
Exactly. Pulling kids from under performing schools will only worsen them. Fix the schools first.
Not necessarily. If a child is doing well in a school, the parents are likely to be happy and want to keep their kid there. It will be the students who are not doing well in a school system who will want to seek an alternative school.
Your child will perform good or bad according to your attention to what your child is doing. If you aren’t doing your job, your child, would do as good or poorly in either a so called under or over performing school. The key being parental involvement.
“Couldn’t do anything about it”?–there are plenty of things you can do without helping Republican leaders destroy public education!
Communicate with your child’s teacher and school staff.
Join the PTO.
Attend school board meetings. (My husband went a step beyond that–he became a school board member.)
Vote for school funding in local elections.
Talk to your child–find out what he/she is learning and supplement as necessary.
Supervise your child’s homework.
I’d like to add lastly…………. vote anything but republican in the next election cycle so that these destructive baggers won’t have a leg to stand on towards destroying our state. Send king paul back to his home state of florida (or was it canada?) .
I’m curious how you destroy something that is already destroyed?
That is an incredibly stupid comment. Public education in Maine is not destroyed. Maine ranks with the top 10 states in education. It’s flip comments like yours that stoke the conservative antagonism toward public education. If you think your ignorant attitude will improve education I’ll be glad to pay you for your trouble.
The reason that so many schools are underperforming is that they have been tasked with doing the darn near impossible with little to no resources all the while having to deal with a mountain of rules and regulations, all well-meaning and most of them needed, but without having the necessary resources to fulfill those regulations. Charter schools and parochial schools don’t have to meet the majority of regulations and requirements. Many can also cherry-pick the students that they want and turn away, or expell, the ones who give them the slightest challenge. Instead of whining that your school is “underperforming” (whatever that means) how about GETTING INVOLVED. 99% of the time, when someone complains about an underperforming school, it’s actually the students and parents who are underperforming.
You as a parent have a lot of power to change things in a public school. Just attend school board meetings with other concerned parents. Demand a study group that looks at what schools that perform well are doing. You have power at the local level to make changes. When you leave it in the hands of Augusta you become disempowered.
Gov. LePage does not genuinely want to improve public education in Maine. Whatever gave you that idea? LePage appointed Commissioner of Education Bowen who came out of Maine Heritage Policy Foundation which is a Koch brothers operation and includes the goal of ending public education. That would seem to be the opposite of improving public education.
You are spot-on about the goal of ending public education. Private companies want all of our taxpayer dollars. Every last penny. And, they will get it anyway they can. Lying, cheating, stealing. This has been an ALEC goal for quite a while. And in many states they have reached their goal of skimming profits off taxpayer’s hard work. In PA $45 million in profits was obtained. How is it we are so easily seduced by these guys/gals? Cannot people see through the hype? There is no interest in children here? Only profits. And we are just a short step away from falling in line with the other states whose public officials have caved to the kickbacks offered.
the GOP likes to keep the voters uneducated. they’re easier to con that way.
Shouldn’t this be called diversity?
Here we go.. damned if or no.. LePage is trying to enact his ideas and the moonbats howl.
Bowen is a direct product of the Heritage Policy Center. His interests have nothing to do with what is good for our state or our children. His interests are what his handlers tell him they are. In this case taking money out of our school system to feed private schools.
How about dumping a funding formula which rewards wealthy Southern Maine districts at the expense of everyone else??? Or how about local populations actually putting their $$$ where their mouths are and ponying up the dough for a better educational system in their towns as opposed to trying to get by on the cheap and whining about what they get.
Having reached a certain age, I can tell you that this endless debate over the quality of public education is just tiresome. Every time changes, even modest changes such as the ones being presented in these bills, are suggested, the educational establishment howls that 1.yes, change is needed but 2. this change is toooo radical and 3. it will result in the demise of public education.
So their solution is to just keep going on with an antiquated educational system and to add more money–because more money will certainly make it all better.
Right now, the rich in America get school choice. And the poor get no choice. And it seems the MEA and the BDN want to keep it that way. That’s sad.
This should be the foundation for all educational decisions: the parents are the primary educators of their children and are thus charged with deciding how that education should be attained. The state is there to assist the parents through providing educational opportunities for the parents and students to access. These educational opportunities are funded by the taxpayers, who all have a vested interest in seeing the population educated. But the choice of which educational opportunity a student accesses should be left up to the parent and student.
Tell me–does having the NEA develop a system for evaluating teachers make anyone think we are asking the fox to guard the chicken house? Now, how effective is that going to be if the goal is to get some good eggs?
Your belief that the the NEA and the AFT have a vested interest in protecting poor teachers indicates an assumption that most teachers are poor quality and that the NEA and the AFT have no interest in teacher quality.
Let’s transfer this thinking over to a cupcake union and ask yourself this: why would it be beneficial to a cupcake union to encourage the hiring and retention of bakers that made cupcakes that fell flat and tasted nasty.
It does not make sense for any union, cupcake, paper, ironworkers, chamber maids, teachers unions to protect bad workers that turn out a defective product.
Teachers’ unions do not protect bad teachers. They do not promote bad teaching. If you go to the NEA’s web site and start digging you will find not only model teacher evaluation forms but also best practices lists, educational research and much more.
It makes a great deal of sense to have a union involved in determining product quality. It makes no sense to constantly smear and denigrate the people that produce the product and the union that has a very big stake in that product quality.
I think the NEA and the AFT and their smaller denominations spend too much time defending teachers and practices that they should not be defending and too much time crying wolf when parents suggest changes in the structure of education.
Like it or not, statistics show that our public educational system is putting out a lot of bad cupcakes. So you are right: why would the union encourage the hiring and retention of ineffective teachers?
I think the unions are doing what they truly believe will provide a good education. I credit them with mostly good intentions. But I also think many of the policies they advocate are just wrong. And I get a bit outraged when their representatives testify against any change, using scare tactics and misinformation.
What policies do you think are just wrong; what change , what misinformation, what scare tactics out rage you. Be specific. You are just making vague accusations.
Several problem assumptions in this article. The first being that funding will not increase. It always increases. The second that good teachers will not teach in under-performing schools. Good teachers will teach wherever they are paid well. Competition for students will improve the quality of education. Presently quality has a lower priority when Superintendents prepare budgets, as evidenced by their choice of replacing teachers with either double-dippers or first year ones instead of quality teachers who cost more. The present system needs a huge amount of work, mostly at the top.
This buffoon that we have in the Blaine House is trying to undermine public education. He even goes as far as to say that he has the kids’ best interests at heart. What hogwash!! He has shown over and over that all he really cares about is following ALEC/MHPC guidelines and pleasing the Tea Baggers.
He most certainly had kids’ best interests at heart when he threatened to close schools on May 1 if his budget demands were not met. And he definitely had kids’ best interests at heart when he wanted to relax the number of hours per week that a student could work at an after-school job during the school year. And no one could argue that he had kids’ best interest at heart when he suggested that they could do their after-school jobs at a “training wage.”
“School choice” is in reality another tax break for the wealthy. With tax dollars following the student, those who are currently sending their kids to private schools, at their own expense (which is as it should be) will have their “extra” educational expense reduced at the expense of the local school district. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer … education.
If someone has the impression that a neighboring district has better schools than their own district, and they want their kids to go there, move. If you didn’t take schools into account when you bought your home, that is your own problem. Don’t expect other taxpayers to support your personal decision to abandon local schools.
To the baggers its a double pronged attack. A tax break for the wealthy as well as an attack on a union. Voting in November can’t come soon enough so that this bunch can be rendered powerless.
Those clamoring the loudest for school choice and public funding for private schools are the people whose children will be hurt the most by weakening public education.
Oh no–not another one of these “poor stupid people don’t know how to vote in their best interests” comments? Please.
“have the potential to widen, not bridge the gap between good schools and bad schools”With any luck it will put bad schools out of business.
Yes, school choice does “risk” widening the quality gap, but there is a quality gap now and the reason that it persists is that it’s too easy to make excuses as to why any particular school is doing just fine as it is. When people attempt to get involved with their local school and help it to improve, their suggestions and observations are seen as a reason for getting defensive rather than as possible starting points for improvement. If we have school choice at work, and 15% or more of students leave a particular school, then the usual excuses won’t work. School boards will be forced to admit that they have a problem, and that they need to address it. My experience as an instructor and from the public school teachers in my family is that the structural problem is the school board, superintendent and/or principals. There are some bad apples among teachers, but the administration sets the tone. They’re under a lot of pressure from local booster-types (who often serve on the board) not to admit that their school is anything less than wonderful.
What exactly does the BDN have against parents, the true “customers” of the public school system, being able to choose what school their child attends?
Isn’t this a pretty basic American idea?
It is also an American idea that if you want something extra (a different school) then you have to pay for it.
The choice bills do need to be defeated. To call them risky is to miss the point. They are down right dangerous. They create the false concept that competition works in education. Doesn’t. That false assumption will lead not just to an education gap but to a class gap.
Parents are not the customers of schools; they are the owners.
Let’s see… Maine has 40% functional illiteracy- the product of the public school system run by Democrats for the past umpteen years. The people elect a businessman who pulled himself up from poverty and wants to reform the current broken and expensive system that rewards incompetency. The options include increasing the number of children who attend private schools which graduate students who are educated enough to attend top universities and colleges. The options also include ways to reform underperforming schools into specialized programs such as math/science/technology/arts programs to help students study what they love and assist in a career. But the liberals who are only on the side of the unionized public sector employees scream bloody murder, “You can’t do that! That’s not fair!”
That about sums it up so far…
“Republicans Bad; Democrats Good”. Different day, same editorial.
The American educational system is the nearest thing to socialism that exists in this country. No wonder it costs too darn much and achieves so little.
It is past time that educators are motivated by something other than seniority and tenure to keep their jobs. Well done, Governor.
It is only a short step from here to allowing public funds to be used to support for-profit educational programs. One such online school garnered 45 million in profits from taxpayers in Pennsylvania. And read this as a forewarning: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html?_r=1& pagewanted=all . Right now the law allows only non-profits to receive state tuition funds, but we are only a step away from that going away. And, a Stanford U. study found that only 17% of charter schools actually did better than public schools. The rest did as good as or worse (37%). Ready to play roulette with your child’s future?
One incredibly stupid and
classless act of all the fiscal shuffling going on in Maine schools is
taking place in Limestone, Maine.
Under Governor Baldacci
Limestone and Caribou merged (consolidated) their school administrative
functions, and the school superintendent for both school systems is now
the old Caribou school superintendent, Frank McElwain.
The LCS,
the Limestone Community School, still uses its facility in Limestone,
which is also used by the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, a
statewide, boarding-student, magnate school whose new Director is Frank
Shorty.
Now, in a ludicrously detrimental effort to trim the
school budget, Superintendent Fank McElwain is determined to close the
pool in the LCS/MSSM facility in Limestone, saying the pool is a
“luxury” item.
The pool costs approximately $60,000 a year to
keep open, far less than the cost of two teacher salaries and even less
than the cost of Frank McElwain’s impressively bloated future
superintendent’s pension. But, McElwain has been leading a crusade to
to close the area’s only swimming pool to “save money”.
It has
been asked by residents of Limestone, what is the educational value of
teaching kids to swim? This begs the question, what is the value of
just own drowned child’s life?
To make fiscal mismanagement all
the more mind-boggling, just this year the swimming pool was graced by a
new one million dollar chip-fired hot water boiler, a LePage
Administration expenditure meant to save on the fuel cost of this public
building -and- keep the fuel expenditures in Maine instead of letting
the money run out of Maine to pay for imported fuel oil.
But,
Superintendent Frank McElwain is still willing to tell the hundreds of
swimmers from numerous surrounding communities who use the pool every
month all year round, that the pool is a luxury we cannot afford.
The pool is used by swimmers from the Limestone Community Schools, the
Caribou Schools (when they were willing to pay for a swim team), the
Maine School of Science and Mathematics and by a half dozen surrounding
communities even as far away as New Brunswick.
There is an extreme paucity of pools everywhere in Aroostook County.
The editor(s) at the BDN would have government guarantee employment for the makers of corsets and garter belts when the populace expresses a clear preference for pantyhose.
That’s good stuff!
One of the unintended consequences of school choice would be the additional expense schools would be liable for with incoming students. If a the student qualifies for special services on a 1-on-1 basis, the school would need a new teacher. Will the State cover the entire expense of the additional staff? Doubtful.
What would regulate how many additional students a school could enroll and how they are selected. Would they be able to select only the students they want and reject ones they don’t? School choice advocates might surely howl if the school they want their kids to go to have no ‘openings.’
This is a educational Pandora’s Box if I’ve ever seen one.
Hey–how about this: WE need to pass these bills so we can find out what is in them! It worked for health care reform–it should do the job for education reform.
I don’t believe that Mr.LePage cares at all about the quality of our children’s education. If I am wrong…….he sure has a funny way of showing it.
There is nothing wrong with making PUBLIC schools compete for being number one and keeping kids enrolled. Maybe if there were more competion we would have kids ready for high school and less money wasted on bloated budgets and over paid babysitters.
This is just more of Gov. LePage’s mean-spirited attitude towards anyone he sees as of inferior stature to a manager. I spent 35 years in education, and I can tell you that if you think school management is looking out for your kids you are wrong.
You know I am going to ruffle a few feathers – you know what if you truly care about your childs education – teach them! supplement your childs education! talk with your child about what they learned about that day in school – and drive them to learn more!
Parents need to stop looking for a “better school“ they need to be that school!
I’m speaking here from the perspective of a parent of two kids, one in college, one just graduated. I’ve also been a school board member and the chariman of the district’s finance committee. My wife works as a contract teacher in public schools, and I have taught at the college level in both public and private colleges.
Historically, the reason that the public funds education is NOT because it benefits the child. It certainly isn’t because it benefits the employees of the schools. The reason has always been that it’s in the interests of society to have well-educated people in the work force. Back in the 19th century, that meant teaching kids to read and write so that they could be more useful factory hands.
Then, John Dewey and his ideas expanded the mission of public schools to creating good citizens.
On the path to the present, the employees of the public schools were organized into unions, and those unions have become very influential politically. The legislature has regularly passed rules that increase compensation to school employees, and make it very difficult to walk back any of those increases. School bus drivers are employed year-round, even though they don’t work in the summer. A school district cannot decide to switch to a private bus company unless the employees vote to allow it. You can image how often that happens.
In the same way, if a district and its employees can’t agree on a new contract, the employees continue to work on the old contract. Because most contracts include seniority “steps” in compensation, and cost of living increases, not having a contract with the employees does nothing to reduce a districts’ costs.
The government has also been very active in demanding “special” programs for “special needs” children, which can be a very wide category. The mandates are far-reaching, and require extra staff and space, and the mandates aren’t fully funded.
The state board of education, led by the Department of Education, has been very forward in exerting control over school districts, drafting rules and doling out money that enforce their conception of what a school should be like. This has effectively rendered local boards powerless, which takes away the voice of the local people who supposedly own the district. The only part they “own” is the obligation to raise taxes to pay for the buildings and programs that the state mandates, and to staff it with employees whose compensation is substantially controlled by state rules about work rules. In theory, the state pays for their power by making a commitment to funding “state aid” to local districts. The state has NEVER lived up to its commitment, but that doesn’t lead them to back off on their demands.
The result of all this? It’s pretty simple. Local voters know that they have no control over the school or its employees, and they protest by voting down budgets. Does this help? No, because under the rules if a budget isn’t passed by district-wide vote, then it can be passed by a “special meeting,”which is often populated by district employees and their families.
So the idea that these are local schools, and that district residents should have some sense of ownership and obligation to it, is pretty weak. Which leaves parents looking at the quality of program that their child is being offered. This is also pretty weak. If you have a child who has “special needs” because at age 13 he has worked his way through the entire curriculum that the math department offers, don’t make the argument that the kid is not being given an “appropriate curriculum.” You’ll quickly discover that the legislation mandating special education specifically excludes kids who aren’t getting the program they need because they’re off the top of the chart. Some teachers are apologetic about the fact that they’re not serving your kid, but on the whole, it’s not their job.
I was personally in that situation, and found that the “best” advice I got was that I should send the kid to the boarding school in Limestone. Being sent away from home seems like an odd reward for a kid of the type that our economy very much needs.
Would the proposed changes, which would allow parents greater flexibility in choosing an appropriate school for their kid, help correct the current situation? Based on the 41 states that currently allow charter schools, they have their place, and offer a wider range of curriculum for kids.
NCLB added a tremendous burden to schools and huge under-funded or unfunded expenses.
Some of the students need one-to-one babysitting for the entire day that they are at school. That means that a teacher aide must be with them constantly from the time they get off the bus until the time they get back on it at the end of the day. What is the cost of one teacher aide? How does that impact the average cost per student? When any particular school has an unusually large percentage of this type of student, it’s test scores are going to go down because only a very small percentage are exempted from the testing. This fact alone will skew the results to make it look like a school is underperforming.
School Choice will skew these data even more. Schools willl not accept students who are going to add additional expense over its per pupil cost to educate while driving down test scores. Those students are going to be stuck in their current system regardless of school choice. The accepting schools will get more of the cream from their neighboring districts without taking any of the fat. That will have the effect of making some schools appear to be “bad schools” and others appear to be “good schools.” This is already the case with private schools v public achools. How many SPED students do you think schools like John Bapst or Waynflete have? These are schools that easily test above the norm. They are “good schools.” That does not mean that any public schools are actually “bad schools.”
Add to this the increased per pupil cost of schools that lose revenues with their better students going to neighboring schools and you have a recipe for disaster.
How about we just get the government out of the education business?
“Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!”
Changing the way teachers are evaluated, starting charter schools, instituting new testing methods, etc. are simply ways to rearrange deck chairs. Until we manage to regain parent’s and children’s respect for school and learning there will be no improvement.
Conservative groups have been fostering disrespect and active antagonism toward public education for about 50 years starting with Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum.
We are now reaping the results of those efforts. Parents are suspicious of and do not respect schools, teachers and curriculum. A child can not be expected to respect learning and studying hard when their parent shows contempt for the work the student is being asked to do.
We desperately need to stop listening to the conservative naysayers. Public education is essential to a middle class and to a democracy. Conservatives are not trying to improve public education they are trying to get the American public to scrap public education.
If parents want to send their children to private schools or another district, then they can pay for that themselves.
Sounds right to me!
Translation of above:
If parents are concerned that the district schools are failing to educate their children, they should just shut up and accept the miserable education provided by the government monopoly school. Or they should move to another district with better schools. Or they should have the wherewithal to pay for private school.