The preliminary report by the Maine Commission on Secondary Education, a panel of educators charged with putting some meat on the bones of Learning Results, got something less than an overwhelming endorsement from Gov. King the other day. The commission shouldn’t feel bad, though — it took the Learning Results folks a couple of cracks to get their part of it right.

The governor’s primary concerns with the report were its lack of explicit recommendations on how to increase parental involvement in the schools and the suggestion that Maine should downsize its high schools to enrollments of about 400 students.

Those concerns are valid. The disconnect between parents and teachers is a long-standing impediment to good education and high aspirations; the commission could serve no greater purpose than to develop specific recommendations on how that breach can be closed.

The school size issue is merely a utopian distraction from reality. The bulk of Maine’s public high schools have enrollments in the 600 to 800 range. Many are smaller, only a handful are substantially larger. The largest, those few in the 1,200 to 1,400 range, would be considered medium-sized in most other states. Maine simply cannot afford a flurry of expensive construction to accomplish such a small and dubious improvement. If the students and parents of the state’s not-so-large large high schools feel alienated, it’s not because the school is in the next town down the road. And at a time when it is more important than ever for high school students to have expert instruction, especially in the sciences, one must wonder from whence this influx of master teachers will come.

But the biggest concern is that Learning Results, enacted by the Legislature last spring, needs nuts and bolts, not more concepts. Learning Results is a valuable guide to the kind of education Maine students need for the 21st century. The commission should be developing a specific road map to get them there, not taking warm and fuzzy detours.

For example, Learning Results recommends that high school math students should be able to “demonstrate an understanding of the idea of random sampling and recognition of its role in statistical claims and designs for data collection.” The commission, in its guiding principles document, observes that “while vision and beliefs necessarily impact ideas and actions, ideas and actions must organically influence vision and beliefs, developing cohesion through the learning experience of all involved.”

Vision and beliefs, especially the organically influenced variety, are no doubt wonderful things, but an understanding of random sampling and it role in statistical claims pays the rent.

The commission’s belief in better education is praiseworthy; it just needs to focus its vision upon the tangible. Learning Results also got off to a vague start, but several rewrites produced the skeleton of Maine’s educational and economic future. The commission’s final report is not due until August — that’s plenty of time to add some muscle.