Archive for November, 2009

BLOG: Charter Schools: The Democrats’ Final Fall

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Now that the protracted debate about school consolidation at least is off the ballot and out of the headlines, maybe, just maybe, Mainers on both sides of that issue will shift their attention to some of the more fundamentally important questions about K-12 education in Maine.

  • Why are we spending so much on public education in Maine and apparently getting so little in return?
  • Teachers are the most expensive component in our under-performing systems. Maine has great teachers in our public school systems, some of the very best in America. But why do we have so many teachers per pupil?
  • Why aren’t we measuring excellence, performance and efficiency and rewarding school systems that achieve excellence at the lowest cost?
  • Teachers, legislators and the governor are wailing over some of the deepest cuts in state aid to public education in history. So, why did those same teachers, those same legislators and the same governor just walk away from from an opportunity to collect millions and millions of dollars in federal funding for our public schools?

Maine voters interested in answers ought to examine the cozy relationship between the Maine Education Association (the teachers’ union) and the leadership of the Democratic Party in Maine.

Last week Education Commissioner Susan Gendron informed the Legislature’s Education Committee that the Baldacci Administration will not submit to the Legislature a bill to permit charter schools in Maine.

I wrote Governor Baldacci last week asking him to reconsider his decision. I also emailed Senator Bill Diamond (D-Windham) and Representative Emily Cain (D-Orono), the chairs of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, where the funding cuts for public schools will be determined, and I urged them to take action to bring charter school legislation back before the Maine Senate in order to potentially offset some of those losses.

The decision not to reopen the charter school issue is tragic, crassly political and wrong. It constitutes a huge blow to our best educators and to parents all over Maine who have pushed for this legislation. They believe that charter schools are a chance to innovate and experiment in ways that ultimately can benefit all schools in Maine. (It’s not as if Maine schools couldn’t stand a little innovation. Just recently a bipartisan report from the Center for American Progress and two other think tanks ranked Maine 44th among all states in educational innovation, concluding that “Maine does a poor job managing its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation.”)

This decision is also terribly costly. A law permitting charter schools would make Maine eligible to receive a share of $4 billion of funding through the Race to the Top program. Race to the Top was created by the Obama administration earlier this year in an effort to bring more schools up to par with national education standards. Maine is now one of only a handful of states that won’t be eligible for any of that money.

It is hard to find anyone opposed to a law that would simply authorize (not require) charter schools – other than the powerful teachers’ union and its allies in the Maine Democratic Party.

Why is the teachers’ union opposed? Because the union contract wouldn’t govern hiring, salaries and benefits in charter schools.

Why is that a threat to the teachers’ union? Because Maine’s ratio of classroom teachers to pupils now has become the second highest among all the states, fully 25 percent worse than the national average.

Too many teachers, too little innovation, not enough excellence… and a refusal to take federal money in the midst of a budget crisis because some or all of those circumstances might have to change. This is what Maine parents want for their kids?

The Democratic Party in Maine was once a great reformist party. For more than 25 years, from its rebirth in the late 1940s, the Democrats were a party committed to maximizing opportunity for all the people of Maine. Sadly, the party has become an inbred shadow of its former self. Saddled with so many political obligations to so many interest groups that it seemingly can’t keep them straight, the Democratic Party leadership is apparently incapable of embracing new ideas and committed only to maximizing opportunity for whichever one of its allies is next in line at the public trough.

Partisanship and close ties to special interests – in this case the teachers’ union – once again have trumped the public interest in Augusta: no charter schools, no Race to the Top funding.

This time, the real losers are our kids.

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BLOG: 100-20+0=?

Friday, November 13th, 2009

The arithmetic isn’t hard. Any third grader in Maine could figure out the answer to this problem. Yet, the answer seems to have eluded their state fathers and mothers!

Dwindling state revenues are forcing state officials to make massive cuts — millions of dollars — in the state’s share of funding for K-12 education in Maine’s public schools. At the same time, the federal Department of Education is getting ready to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to states in the Race to the Top program.

But not to Maine. MPBN reports that Maine will be standing in the corner, likely ineligible to receive our share. Why? Because we are one of the few states left in America where charter schools are not allowed. Indeed, in a recent, bipartisan joint report that reviewed programs in all 50 states, conservative and progressive national think tanks ranked Maine’s K-12 education performance near the bottom, concluding that “Maine does a poor job managing its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation.” (Read the entire report here. Click on the map of Maine to see the report on Maine.)

All states are suffering today. But while other states will find some federal funds landing in their coffers to ease the pain in local school districts, Maine won’t. Can’t our state leaders add and subtract?

Now would be a good time for the Maine Legislature to re-examine the policy prohibiting charter schools…and to fix it.

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BLOG: Moving On From The Debate Over Consolidation

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Many people across Maine have asked me how I intend to vote on the contentious issue of school consolidation — Question 3 on next Tuesday’s ballot.

I answered that question in an television interview with Augusta schools superintendent Connie Brown several weeks ago, and again just this past Friday in response to a question from blogger Derek Viger of The Maine View.  Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, we need to sit down and figure out the answers to much bigger questions about K-12 education in Maine.  There are much bigger issues at stake here than whether or not we consolidate schools. The important questions are whether our schools are producing excellence. Are our kids getting a quality education? And, are we doing so at costs we can afford to pay?

Please read the rest of this blog to see what I have said on this critical challenge.

There’s are much bigger issues at stake here than whether or not we consolidate schools in Maine. The important questions are whether our schools are producing excellence. Are our kids getting a quality education? And, are we doing so at costs we can afford to pay?

Those are the central questions facing our education system. And the answers are going to be different in different parts of the state. Because of that, consolidation isn’t the right answer everywhere.

With that said, I’m going to vote to sustain the enacted school consolidation law because I think it’s a set of tools that we just can’t throw out. I think we need to take what’s there and fix it.

The issues to me with Maine’s K-12 education come down to equities, excellence, efficiency and cost-effective performance.

Every kid in Maine should have an opportunity for an excellent education. I believe every kid in Maine should be able to stay in school and to be excited about it. I don’t believe we can write off kids in one part of the state or another part of the state. That’s just not the right approach. As governor, I simply won’t permit it. Our kids are too important.  They need and deserve more from us.

Now, we need to figure out how to correct inequities and achieve excellence in a more cost-effective way, because in the next few fiscal years in Maine, we are going to have a budget crunch the likes of which we’ve never seen before. There’s going to be a lot of pressure to cut spending on state aid to K-12 education because it’s such a big part of our state budget. When that happens, some towns in Maine are going to be just fine because they can raise the money to make up the difference. But there are a lot of towns in Maine where they are not going to have that opportunity. So the gap is going to grow and not narrow.

We need to figure out how to narrow that gap – even in tough budget times — because all Maine kids are our kids, and every single one of them is entitled to a great education.

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