Meeting in Rockland last week, the Maine Superintendents Conference heard the familiar call for dramatic changes in the education system.

It also heard the common refrain for total state funding of education. This would be an inappropriate remedy for the real problems in public education. It will lead only to greater influence from Augusta in local schools and further sap the creative energy of local school boards to customize local curricula.

At this moment, everyone is pointing to education to close the technology gap between the United States and Japan and, more fundamentally, to create a more literate society. Education is cited as the ticket to meaningful work for millions of school children who today are dumped on the job market without a shred of hope of finding satisfying employment that will allow them to become economically self-sufficient.

Speaking in Presque Isle the week before last during a conference on future growth and development in Aroostook County, Henry Bourgeois, president of the Maine Development Foundation, issued a challenge that should be taken up by every county in Maine:

“By the year 2000, Aroostook County should try to exceed every other county in the state of Maine in terms of the education attainment level of every resident…”

Difficult? Certainly. But toughest of all for school systems will be the shedding of old thinking and worn-out processes that haven’t worked for at least 10 years and will guarantee failure in the next decade:

Schools must gear themselves to address the educational demands of the non-college-bound students. Last week, a study commissioned by the Department of Educational and Cultural Services confirmed that 20 percent of students entering high-school classes in Maine drop out before graduation. In a recent poll conducted by the Becker Institute, Maine businessmen said that 25 percent of high-school graduates in this state were unsuitable for even entry-level positions. The bottom line: 40 percent of the children who start high school in Maine next fall either will not graduate or will graduate without the skills to secure entry-level employment.

This phenomenon is not recent. It has been going on for as long as there has been public education in Maine. Historically, the mills and shoe factories and woods camps eagerly accepted these students. There was a place for them. But this is 1990. The economy doesn’t need the dropouts and poorly educated anymore. The system, however, continues to produce them.

School boards, historically dominated by the parents of high-achieving students, must turn their attention to something their members are not familiar with: creating an educational environment that will appeal to students whose life’s mission does not include becoming a doctor, lawyer or architect and whose formal education may not include university training. Guidance counselors are taking a bad and undeserved rap for failing to work closely and successfully with the great, gray mass of children who are not competing for seats in Ivy League colleges. The fact is, these counselors are only fulfilling the mission of the system, which from the top down places its emphasis on those students capable of academic achievement and success, while it virtually ignores students who want to work with their hands as well as their minds.

If you listen closely to the statements of board members and superintendents, you will hear the state mentioned frequently. In fairness, dealing with state mandates and interference occupies far too much local time, but local systems are guilty of allowing state government to become not only the holder of the purse strings, but also to be the seat of imagination and innovation in education. Local boards not only expect the state to come up with more dollars for schools, but, far worse, they wait for the state to provide ideas and programs that will get local education moving in new and productive directions.

It’s going to be a long wait.