ORONO, Maine — Maine Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen advised education students at the University of Maine on Wednesday to be open to new ways of teaching and engaging their students that might seem radical to some.
Bowen spoke to future educators enrolled in an intensive one-year master of arts in teaching program, which certifies graduates to teach grades 7-12.
Earlier this year, the commissioner released a plan that calls for drastic changes to the way Maine students learn. The report calls for a new look at how students advance through school — basing their advancement on performance and mastery of material rather than putting them through to the next age-based grade level once the school year ends.
Bowen said students have been shepherded from one grade level to the next based on average scores, meaning, for example, they might have performed well in social studies but struggled in math. The students don’t benefit by being pushed to the next math course before they’re prepared, he argued.
“We’ve got this curriculum that’s kind of a mile wide and an inch deep,” Bowen said.
Schools also need to be prepared for students who excel and make opportunities available for them to challenge themselves and continue advancing, he said.
“What happens if this kid blows through your entire math curriculum by sophomore year?” Bowen asked, arguing that schools need to adapt programs to become more flexible and allow students to enroll in higher-level courses or stay to get more experience with lower-level classes if needed.
Bowen cited Gray-New Gloucester Middle School as an example of this new way of educating students as they advance through the school system — a place where students of different grade levels are placed in classes based on their proficiencies in subjects.
The commissioner also used the example of a new partnership among Hermon High School, United Technologies Center, Eastern Maine Community College and UMaine that will allow 15 Hermon high schoolers to earn up to 29.5 college credits — at a significant cost savings — during their junior and senior years and summer vacations.
Bowen said changes to the education system will meet resistance from some parents, administrators and teachers.
“If you’re not averaging grades, that means you’re not ranking kids in your class, which means there’s no valedictorian anymore,” Bowen said.
Teachers and administrators will need to be the ones to ease those concerns by showing that the new way of teaching will work, he argued.
Students in the graduate course that Bowen spoke to Wednesday already have earned four-year college degrees in fields ranging from pre-law to mechanical engineering, but some told Bowen they were drawn to teaching because they wanted to effect change in their communities in a different way.
The commissioner urged the future teachers to work hard to keep students engaged and interested in school by finding unique ways to involve them in the topics they’re learning about.
“Nothing in the school affects student achievement more than having an effective teacher,” Bowen said. “These teachers-in-training and I got to talk about teachers as ‘education managers’ and how we build a system in which students are engaged and at the center of every decision made.”
At the high school level, most schools already do a lot of this and have for years. They allow kids to take the course levels they need or want regardless of grade level. And it is good to offer vocational options, work cooperative options, business track options, etc. But, especially at lower levels, it is ridiculous to consider an “individualized self-paced” proram for each and every student. It is unworkable, and kids need to be with their peer groups. School classes can not be set up and managed like individualized correspondences courses. It’s not manageable, especially in larger schools, and there must be group based methods and approaches as well which are very powerful learning methods as proven by decades of research. Some students need to be pushed and not allowed to wallow in “self-paced” land. It doesn’t match the real world. Athletic teams are not self-paced. College and trade schools aren’t self paced. Graduate schools and professional schools like business, medical, and law schools are not self paced. The workforce is not self paced. — Also, all kids receive multiple batteries of standardized testing in core areas. Those scores are used to direct programming including a host of interventions for struggling learners under the Response To Interventions laws we already have. Accelerated programming is already offered for advanced learners. The standardized test scores are reported to students and parents just as grades for coursework are. Students and parents, in a sense, receive multiple report cards, not just the traditional ones with As and Bs. Certain elements and threads of Bowen’s ideas have some merit and practicality, and indeed are ALREADY happening in the schools right now. But this idea of entirely blowing up all current practices and going to gradeless schools with individualized self paced programs for every student is not doable, not manageable, and is NOT good education practice given the absolute need for kids to be with their peers, need group based learning situations and opportunities, and must be prepared for the real world which is not at all “individualized and self paced.” And getting rid of Valedictorian and Salutatorian? Ya right. Not gonna happen.
Those sort of things you say are NOT good education practice are already being done in other states and they do work. http://carpediemschools.com/
The things mentioned in the article are being done in some districts while others are stuck in the 1940’s with no forward thought.
My child has flourished this year and managed to complete not 1 but 2 years of education during 1 school year of home schooling. She managed just fine, better actually, then she did in group based learning situations. I would never have considered pulling my oldest out of school because she needed the social setting the school provided due to her Asperger’s diagnosis.
We may have intervention laws but that doesn’t mean that those children are getting what they need.
Even this ‘radical’ idea will not fix what is wrong with education in the U.S., but nobody wants to address the real issues. Dumbing down, playing games, lots of time for social activities – these are all part of the problem. People are hired without knowing their fields well, then are asked to teach areas they know even less. The whole concept of valedictorian is useless, and sets up competition; students who want high grades often just avoid courses where they might be risking their class rank.
Students come to college now with weak preparation in history, languages, and literature/the arts. Often they can’t read Roman numerals, don’t know the parts of speech, can’t find half the world on a map. Too much pop culture passes as real knowledge, yet there is an obsession with quantifying or measuring what has been learned. Creativity is stifled, because that’s hard to measure.
I can see with my children what you are saying. Is there any good (I hate to say it) Free web sites that parents can go to and help fill in these gaps? My Children have Asperger’s Syndrome. I find that the school they go to have no real clue on how to teach my children.
I have used Khan Academy videos over the past year to supplement the education my children were getting at school.
As a fellow Asperger mom I can say I totally agree with you. My daughter just graduated this year. The school did not offer much help with accelerated courses. I paid for her college level classes that the high school would not give her credit for completing as they were done at home on her own time even though she was doing her homework for her college classes during her study halls at school.
Public education needs someone like Bowen in there to shake it up. Maine has not had much forward thinking in the Dept of Ed and now the MSMA is holding up Charter Schools too.. Give our children some options! Rural Maine needs public school options as much as Southern Maine does. The Charter School Commission needs to put on their big boy/girl panties and do what they’ve been asked to do by the people who went and spoke to them…..Approve a Virtual Charter School so all the students in Maine get a CHOICE!
It’s a myth that charter schools perform any better than public schools. Many charter schools cherry pick their students, and sadly, they accept far fewer special needs students, so students like your kids probably would not be accepted into many charter schools. Public schools, by law, have to accept any and all students. It is quite a bit more expensive to educate children with special needs; the federal gov’t. does not provide states with 100% financing for the education of special needs kids, so the states are expected to fill the gap, and sadly many states have slashed funding for education. The push to privatize education is proving to have mixed results. Many of these schools are motivated by profit and not the education of all students. Virtual schools are motivated by profit, so yes, they’ll take your money and maybe you’ll be able to “speak” with a “teacher” once in a while, but for the most part, the students are on their own–teaching themselves, and whether or not they actually learn is questionable.
I lived in FL and know all about their charter schools. I have 1 child who was ‘home schooled’ last year using a virtual program who has done amazing things. I had plenty of contact with her teachers through email, skype and phone calls. No child held back is their philosophy.
My oldest with Aspergers NEVER once got anything from the school for help. She wasn’t a behavioral issue, she is quite bright and capable of doing her school work with a little help at home to stay organized. I actually had to fight with the school to give her a 504 plan for modifications to group projects (she’d do the whole thing herself anyway while others got the benefit of her grade) and use of her computer/ipad during class instead of taking notes on paper. It took more then 3 years to get them to agree to that!
I have read the proposal from the K-12 virtual charter school, they include many things for special ed students and low income as well. No cherry picking allowed in Maine….As a public charter school they have to accept any and all students or have a lottery if there are too many from one district wanting to go.
I know our local schools, where I live, have not once talked about educating our children at any school board meetings the past 2 years. They have actually cut the only ed tech (certified teacher) that is certified in reading recovery….does that sound like they care about the education of the students? They care about the bottom line, budget cuts, curtailments, and that is about all you will hear about if you attend school board meetings where I live. No matter whether it is for profit or non profit the bottom line is all they are concerned about. Locally it is about providing a substandard education that people won’t complain too much about. Charter schools have much more to answer for to the state then public schools do. They can and will be closed if they continually have lower then state average test scores. So the question then becomes why is it ok for students to consistently LOSE points year after year on the NWEAs at the local middle school? On average they are 20% below state average by time they get out of that school.
If private schools are motivated by profit, then they need to do s superior job in order to sell their “product.”
After what Mr. LePage and Mr. Bowen have already done to education in general and to current and retired teachers themselves, I’m a bit surprised that there even are any students seeking future occupations as teachers that Mr. Bowen could stand in front of. I suspect a lot of good people who once thought about such a career have moved on to fields of study that are more rewarding emotionally and financially (Wages and pensions).
Sad to say, but I am no longer mentoring student teachers because I cannot, in good conscience, counsel anyone to go into this profession–not that it’s treated as such anymore. As long as the attacks on teachers keep occurring, the “best and brightest” will not be attracted to this field.
The teachers ask to be paid as though they are interchangeable widgets with variations in salary only due to advanced degrees of dubious value and the ability to fog a mirror for another year. Then they complain because they aren’t being treated as professionals. You can not make this stuff up.
“Nothing in the school affects student achievement more than having an effective teacher,” Bowen said.
The operative words here are “in the school”. Unfortunately, some students come to school hungry, angry, depressed or sick because of their home conditions. Slashing funding for the poor is not helping our schools. Education begins at home.
Here we go again! Last year Maine joined over 40 states in the Common Core States Standards Initiative. With CCSS comes National Assessments with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). Both the standards and assessments are setup Grade by Grade for K-12. Standards Based Education eliminates grades so how do these two education approaches fit together? It sounds to me like a way to rig the system. Students can be carefully selected to be tested at grade levels to insure higher test scores. Very helpful if your pay is determined by test results!
To get the bill passed, LD 1422, an amendment had to be added to pay for teacher training. The funding equation is 1/10 of 1% of education costs of the district. This won’t even cover 1/2 a day’s training, ask any superintendent. Statewide however it does amount to a substantial amount of money, all of which will go to the very same people that pushed LD 1422. A $50K grant from the Nellie Mae Foundation for a retreat for members of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee last fall produced a 13-0 vote in favor of LD 1422, despite numerous concerns raised by the Maine Principals Assoc., Maine School Board Assoc., Maine Superintendents Assoc., and Maine Community Colleges.
Standards Based Education is not new. The SBE fever hit Maine in 2008 thanks to Susan Gendron, who now works for (SBAC). She introduced Maine to the Reinventing Schools Coalition(RISC) out of Alaska. RISC began in 2002. If you want to see the success of RISC I urge you to go to their web site, look up the PUBLIC schools using RISC. Then check their test scores on greatschools.org. Alaska – Bering Strait School District and Lower Yukon School district. California – Lindsey Unified School District. Colorado – Adams 50 School District. Then check with the parents of RSU 2 here in Maine and see what they are saying about RISC. You will find a different theme.
“Education managers”…more like puppets.