A version of this story first appeared in the Morning Update newsletter. Sign up here to receive the Morning Update and other BDN newsletters directly in your inbox.
Happy Thursday!
Summer is back in town for one day only. The highs today will be climbing into the low 80s for a good portion of the state before falling back into more seasonable 70s.
We’ll have mostly sunny skies once the scattered morning showers move on.
We’re still waiting to see whether the recent rain lessens the severity of the drought gripping the state. As of Thursday morning, the U.S. Drought Monitor hasn’t updated its drought map since last week. But with parts of the state having seen 12 fewer inches of rain over the past year, it may be just a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Maine schools still teach reading in ways that aren’t proven to work
In 1992, Maine’s fourth graders ranked second in the nation in reading. Today, they’re 44th, lower than their peers in every other New England state. Even by Maine’s own low bar, only 64% are proficient in reading.
Educate Maine, a Portland-based nonprofit, tried to figure out what went wrong and shared its findings exclusively with the Bangor Daily News.
What stands out in the first-of-its-kind report is that Maine has drifted away from teaching foundational reading skills supported by science toward a patchwork of techniques that may or may not be proven to work.
Maine students also just aren’t reading enough — roughly 30 minutes a day on average, compared with the 90 to 120 minutes or more recommended by literacy experts cited in the report.
While that seems dismal, Kim Russell, director of special projects for Educate Maine, said the report “isn’t about laying blame. It’s about saying this is a fixable problem and we know how to fix it.”
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From the Opinion Page
“Every political and corporate leader needs to fully digest the truth and significance of this.”