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Dolly Sullivan is a retired education policy advocate. She was the state coordinator for the Maine Teacher of the Year program.
I read with interest the Bangor Daily News article about Educate Maine’s report on reading instruction in Maine.
Let me be clear: I believe in evidence-based reading instruction. We have decades of research on how children learn to read, and it should inform our classrooms. I agree with the fundamental premise that Maine needs to do better.
But after reading both the article and the report, I’m concerned the narrative is more definitive than the evidence supports. That matters.
I spent much of my career working alongside Maine educators. I know their commitment and expertise. I know they can change practice when better evidence exists. We should have the hard conversation but make sure it’s the right one.
The BDN article states “the typical Maine district spends just 30 minutes a day on reading.” That isn’t what the report says. The report says the median daily time devoted to districts’ science-based reading program was 30 minutes, ranging from 10 minutes to 150 minutes, with 81.5% of districts delivering that program five days a week.
That’s an important distinction. Thirty minutes on one program isn’t the same as 30 minutes of total reading instruction. Good teachers use multiple evidence-based tools and approaches (phonics, decodable texts, small-group work, intervention, vocabulary, comprehension). Multiple resources don’t indicate poor instruction.
The same issue applies to the report’s program categories: science-based, misaligned, mixed, or unrated. Unrated doesn’t mean ineffective. It means no rating existed from the report’s sources. Yet the BDN story characterizes 82% of districts as using a program “not backed by science.” That’s a stronger claim than the data supports.
There’s also this: Roughly 60% of Maine districts responded. The report itself says its findings “should not be considered representative of statewide implementation.” That doesn’t make the findings useless, but we need precision about what they tell us.
Also troubling is the suggestion that this variation explains Maine’s low NAEP scores. The National Assessment of Educational Progress isn’t a diagnostic tool that identifies why students struggle or which practices caused results.
Another caveat: Maine hasn’t been sitting idle. In 2024, the Maine Department of Education provided $10 million in literacy grants supporting evidence-based instruction, professional learning, coaching, curriculum review, and materials. That followed a 2022 DOE literacy workgroup whose recommendations went to the Legislature, plus statewide guidance on explicit early literacy instruction. Maine continues building literacy networks, dyslexia supports, and screening initiatives.
So, when I hear “Maine is late to the game,” that needs nuance. Maine hasn’t adopted a statutory mandate for a specific reading practice. That’s a legitimate policy debate, but not the same as saying the work hasn’t been underway. Educate Maine’s Teach Maine Center, designed by teachers for teachers, already exists to support this work. We should ask how to strengthen it.
Is the work finished? No. Is implementation consistent? No. Do we need continued investment in materials, coaching, screening and intervention? Absolutely.
My final observation: Where are the educators in this article? The BDN piece quotes Educate Maine leaders, business leaders, and a philanthropic representative — important voices, but this is a story about how children are taught to read. Where are the classroom teachers, literacy specialists, principals, superintendents?
We don’t help Maine children by pretending everything is fine. It isn’t. But we also don’t help them by creating a “failing schools” narrative that reduces a complicated educational challenge to a few statistics and a headline. Hopefully the BDN’s investigation of what it calls “Maine’s education freefall” will look beyond test scores to examine the impact of big tech, smartphones and screens on children’s social and academic well-being. To understand why students struggle, we need to consider the world in which they live, not simply what happens once they walk through the schoolhouse door.
We can demand better outcomes, use the science, hold ourselves accountable, give educators the training and support to do this work, and be forthright about what our evidence shows.
Maine’s children deserve nothing less.