AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Paul LePage says Maine’s 21 percent rate of students who fail to get their high school diplomas is better than the national 25 percent rate. But in his weekly radio address, LePage says that’s still not good enough.
The governor says more needs to be done to encourage students to succeed. And that’s what his education reforms try to do.
They encourage more choice in what schools students attend, expansion of career and technical education, open public funding to all state-certified schools and better teacher evaluation.
In the Democratic response, Sen. Dawn Hill of York says LePage has thrown too much at the Legislature at the 11th hour.
Hill says that includes a supplemental budget full of policy changes and requests to spend money that’s not there.
It’s not our schools that are in need of repair it’s our society. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of other countries out there today that are whooping our butts academically. The one key element they have and we and our children don’t is “Aspirations” to learn utilizing even an ounce of self respect or respectfulness to the greater society that we all eventually must become part of. How does this big new “fix” to schools raise aspirations of the majority of our students? Not a heck of a lot. This plan is nothing short of a “Pile of Pandering” to those who want more educational success but aren’t prepared in any way to instill the aspirations that will be needed to make that happen. Outcome? Large scale dismantling of public education, untold damage to the majority of our children’s educations, and ultimately educational failure because we never addressed the root problem, us.
The 20 % who where unable to complete high school education used to have meanial jobs to look forward to in Manufacturing in Textile Mills, Papermills, And shoe shops!
Now they end up on Welfare or out on the street because those jobs got wholesaled out to China and Mexico!
A certain percent just dont have it!
They didn’t abandon education,
WE abandoned them!
Change isn’t necessarily reform, it’s just something different.
Want to improve public schools? Give them the opportunity to bounce out all the useless “students” (cough cough) raised by useless “parents” (cough cough) who do nothing but waste everyone’s time, money, and effort while amounting to nothing more than a bucket of warm spit. But that won’t happen, because the community loves that schools serve as holding pens to keep these useless scumbags from being out and about in the community during the daylight hours.