Growing up, I spent a lot of time in the schools where my father worked as a teacher and then as a principal. I’ll always remember how he walked the hallways, greeting all students by name and sharing in their triumphs and troubles, large and small. My dad knew his students and their parents, and that gave him insight into what each child needed to succeed.
Nowadays, I hear similar stories about students from my wife, who teaches in a public school. She and my dad are among the educators I’m lucky to know, educators who are passionate about the success of their students. They know that a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t ever going to be the answer.
I’m the parent of two school-age children who are fortunate to come from a family of educators. I trust teachers rather than politicians to make decisions about our classrooms. And I say that as someone who’s in politics. We need to return to a simpler time when teachers were able to tailor education to students and use their own experiences and skills to help children learn, grow and succeed.
Washington, D.C., and Augusta have developed a nasty habit of passing mandate after mandate onto our public schools. It started with No Child Left Behind and kept going from there. Some of these were good ideas, but we’ve reached the point where educators are overwhelmed by the sheer number of mandates pushed on to them. No one could have intended to tie educators’ hands as we have managed to.
In the last four years alone, we’ve seen bills requiring Maine to adopt new learning standards called the Common Core and a new standardized testing system called Smarter Balanced. Other mandates dramatically changed the type of diplomas high schools must offer, dictated to school districts how they evaluate teachers and made local school districts pay for charter schools.
This is just a sampling of the new mandates on our schools — mandates that fail to provide either the money or the human resources to implement these wholesale reforms. Some are at best “flavor of the month” reforms that are straining our public schools even when they have not been proven to improve education and help students learn.
Enough is enough.
In the coming months, the 127th Legislature will vote on as many as 150 bills that impact Maine students and schools. Among them is my bill to restore local control to public schools that are inundated with top-down mandates from the state and federal governments. It would put power back in the hands of teachers, school boards and our local communities.
While teachers are spending weeks getting themselves and their students up to speed on the latest standards and standardized tests, they’re missing opportunities to connect with students and their unique needs and strengths.That means building a curriculum that reflects the skills, talents and opportunities of their students, their regions and their communities.
Call me old-fashioned, but I want to get back to the basics. I want to let teachers teach. I want communities to have the power to make their schools better. I trust our teachers to do their best.
Our classrooms are a place to prepare our students for the future. We must encourage our students to pursue their passions and talents — whatever they may be.
Rep. Jeff McCabe, D-Skowhegan, is the House majority leader.