Education survey gives state C grade

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A survey by a national education publication gives Maine a mediocre C grade when it comes to educational standards and accountability, ranking the state 28th in the nation.

However, Maine is “struggling with the right issues” when it comes to applying academic standards and holding schools accountable, according to Lynn Olson, a senior editor at the trade newspaper Education Week and project coordinator for Quality Counts 2001.

Overall Maine has one of the top three educational systems in the United States, according to an analysis of the Education Week report by States News Service.

The report, which evaluates student achievement, standards and accountability, improving teaching quality, school climate and the adequacy and equity of school resources, indicated Connecticut had, arguably, the best system. Connecticut was ranked first in five of the 11 categories, and in the top three in six of the 11 categories.

Maine was top ranked in three of the 11 categories, and scored in the top three among the states in five of the 11 areas measured. Ranked third was Montana, which had the top mark in a single category and ranked in the top three states in a total of four categories.

The area of accountability in which Maine received a C, however, is particularly important as officials try to improve schools by putting the state’s new K-12 academic standards, the Learning Results, into operation by 2003.

“Maine is interesting because it has done a lot of work on its assessment system and has a rich system,” Olson said in a telephone interview Tuesday with the Bangor Daily News.

She commended the state for the way it is working with local school districts to help them develop their own means to measure student achievement, rather than just relying on a single statewide standardized test like the Maine Educational Assessment.

Many states have implemented standards and imposed accountability without providing enough time, material, or teacher training to help students reach the standards, according to the report, entitled “A Better Balance: Standards, Tests and the Tools to Succeed.” And in “too many states, students’ academic fates rest too heavily on performance on a single test.”

Maine’s glaring deficiency is that it lacks an accountability system – or penalties – to hold schools responsible for student performance, Olson said. “We look at whether a state has a complete system. That’s what’s largely bringing down Maine’s grade.”

This doesn’t set well with some education officials who cite the state’s long history of local control over curriculum.

Yellow Breen, special projects director for the Maine Department of Education, is bothered by the Education Week ranking because the journal “has always looked at how prescriptive standards are, how much they direct what schools should be teaching, and that’s contrary to our [the Department of Education’s] philosophy.”

Breen said Maine’s K-12 academic standards, the Learning Results, which were adopted in 1997, are not a state curriculum.

So, “Education Week is criticizing us for something we have chosen not to do,” he said. “We’re a local control state. We want to define common expectations, but not what is taught.”

When it comes to helping local school systems find ways to assess student performance, Maine’s efforts are right on the mark, according to the report, even if there is little accountability to the state. Maine’s use of multiple forms of assessment “reflects what the research community is saying,” according to Olson.

According to Quality Counts 2001, many experts argue that a broader picture of student performance is needed than that sketched by standardized tests alone. But exactly what the multiple measures must be is “far from clear.”

In Maine, state education officials are recommending that local districts use projects, chapter tests, midterm and final exams, term papers, and portfolios as well as standardized tests to determine who graduates from high school. In the end it will be up to local school boards to decide who has earned a diploma.

The magazine notes that in 1998, the Maine Educational Assessment was revised to measure students’ achievement of the Learning Results.

The report criticizes some states because their “tests do not adequately reflect the standards or provide a rich enough picture of student learning.”

“What Education Week is recommending philosophically is exactly the approach we’re taking,” Breen said about Maine.

He also emphasized the report said it is crucial to provide “enough lead time” for teachers and students to prepare for being held accountable.

The education department has drafted legislation that would tie a high school diploma with reaching the levels laid out in the Learning Results beginning with the class that graduates in June 2007.

“That would give our schools a full 10 years from when the Learning Results were adopted,” he said.

One startling grade for Maine in the Quality Counts report is a D+ in “resource equity” – the fairness with which money is distributed among poor and rich schools. That is a drop from last year’s C grade.

Two years ago, the education department began a five-year initiative endorsed and funded by lawmakers that has increased state K-12 school aid and redirected more of it to the poorest 40 percent of school districts in Maine.

There are two reasons for Maine’s tumbling grade. One is a change in the way the grade is figured. The second is that the financial data used in the report is from 1997, and doesn’t reflect recent state efforts.

The new indicators Quality Counts uses are exactly what Maine is trying to do, Olson said, and that is to provide more overall state aid to education and to try to get more to the poorest districts.

Breen said that the 1997 data “profiles the problem we showed legislators two years ago.”He also noted that once again, Maine was near the top of the rankings when it comes to the percentage of total “taxable resources” – a ratio between state and local tax revenues and the gross state product – spent on education. In 1998, Maine put 4.9 percent toward schools, tied for third with Michigan behind West Virginia’s 5.3 percent and Vermont’s 5.4 percent. The national average was 3.7 percent.

And Maine was second highest in the percentage of educational funding going to instruction, at 67.3 percent, trailing only New York’s 68 percent. The national average was 61.8 percent, according to Quality Counts.

But regardless of all the ways states can be ranked, Breen said, the report reaffirms that Maine students’ academic performance, as judged by scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, was at or near the top in the country.

Among fourth- and eighth-grade students on the 1998 NAEP, the worst that Maine students ranked in reading, writing, math and science was sixth best.

Breen said, “Our bottom line is performance.”

Myron Struck of States News Service contributed this story.