Lobby groups seek delay of Learning Results

AUGUSTA – The state’s major education lobbying groups plan to ask the Legislature today to postpone the implementation of Maine’s Learning Results.

The Maine Education Association, the Maine School Management Association and the Maine Principals Association say they want more time – perhaps as much as two or three years – so the use of the new academic standards will coincide with a proposed new funding method that is supposed to pay for them and so schools can develop reliable local assessment systems.

The groups will ask the Education Committee to adopt an amendment to a bill that would establish the new funding system – called Essential Programs and Services – that is supposed to require the state to give each school the money it needs so all students can meet the standards in the eight academic areas of the Learning Results.

The amendment calls for the creation of the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Status of Implementation of Maine’s System of Learning Results to determine how much progress each school system has made in incorporating the academic standards into its curriculum and to recommend ways to help schools do this.

The commission also would consider how annual testing requirements contained in the newly enacted federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act could affect the implementation of the Learning Results.

Schools are supposed to have assessment systems based on the Learning Results up and running for members of the high school graduating class of 2006-2007, who must meet the academic standards in order to graduate. But the Essential Programs and Services system isn’t planned to be fully in gear until the 2007-2008 school year, MEA President Idella Harter said Tuesday.

“I don’t see what the rush is. Teachers are stressed. We feel like we’re in a pressure cooker,” she said. “People are more concerned about leaving a legacy. They aren’t really thinking about what’s good for kids. All the education groups that are on the front line have come together with an amendment that would make this more practical and doable.”

Harter said the assessments must be bias free and “test what we are trying to measure.” They must contain legal safeguards in case a parent disputes the results. MEA members are complaining about lack of time and training to design the assessments, she said.

Commissioner of Education J. Duke Albanese said Tuesday that his department has made some changes to the Learning Results timeline to alleviate concerns.

After hearing complaints from superintendents and other educators, he is proposing that only the academic standards for English and math be implemented in 2006-2007, and that those for science, social studies and health and physical education be delayed until 2008.

“We think this is clearly reasonable,” said Albanese, adding that he understood the “hard work” school systems have ahead of them.

Education Department spokesman Yellow Light Breen denied that the state was hurrying to adopt the Learning Results. Pointing out that they were adopted in 1997, Breen said, “We ultimately need to take the standards seriously and use them to both shape our instruction and measure what students are learning. So we’re not rushing into anything, but at some point we have to apply the new standards we’ve all agreed upon as a state.”

Breen said current spending for education across the state – $1.7 billion – is about 90 percent of the total level that’s needed. “While it’s not the full level of Essential Programs and Services, it’s adequate to get the job done in the core areas. So it’s illogical to say all of learning results should be delayed until we get the last 10 percent. It would be just as logical to say that if 90 percent of the funding is here now, why not implement 90 percent of the Learning Results right now,” he said.

Breen said the state is contracting with the University of Maine System and the Maine Math and Science Alliance to develop a model for assessments that schools can choose to adopt.

“We think this will relieve a huge amount of pressure and apprehension about whether [Learning Results] are doable,” he said.

“Each year we go without implementing the Learning Results and without measuring whether a student has actually acquired skills is another group we’re sending out the high school doors with a diploma that may not be preparing them for the work force or higher education,” he said.