Education Commissioner Duke Albanese recently expressed his displeasure at several news stories, including in this paper, because they used the word “fail” in referring to 19 schools in Maine. The stories used “fail” because a press release from the U.S. Department of Education said, “Public schools that fail to meet state standards for two years to offer students more choices,” referring to vouchers. The federal department also listed the schools that fell into this category, including the 19 from Maine.

The Maine department’s Web site the day after the stories appeared said, “Please know that we do not consider these schools to be failing, but rather needing improvement. The federal designation is that these schools need improvement.” It is important to note that the determination of whether schools are passing or failing or whether they need improvement is based on state-level testing, in Maine’s case, the Maine Educational Assessment. Also, the scores are a couple of years old and are the product of measures that will not be used beyond this year. Even so, “needs improvement” is a mushy designation (which the feds themselves use) compared with pass or fail. What school doesn’t need improvement?

The disagreement over word choice between the Maine and Washington, however, is useful because it highlights two very different emphases in evaluating schools. If “needs improvement” is weak at least in Maine it is followed up with state-level support, professional advice and a strong dose of encouragement to improve performance. Colleagues from more successful schools try to help the struggling ones; in-state research is giving educators a much better sense of what types of programs produce positive results and which do not. The outcome can be seen in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), billed as the nation’s report card and taken by students in 41 states currently and all states starting next year. Maine ranks consistently among the very best in this test.

The federal government is more definitive in its press releases but also more punitive. “For the first time,” says Education Secretary Rod Paige, “school districts must tell, and parents will know, which schools are not making sufficient academic progress.” Whether this is meaningful, however, is up to the states. Kansas, for instance, had 118 schools make the secretary’s list of schools in trouble yet rated above average on all four recent NAEP scores, doing almost as well as Maine. Arkansas, on the other hand, had no “failing” schools to report, yet fell below the national average on all four NAEP scores.

Identifying which schools are not doing well is a necessary goal, although if Secretary Paige had visited Maine superintendents’ offices after the MEA results were printed, he would remove that “For the first time” clause. Failure brings about the penalty of the potential loss of funds as students are given the choice of going to higher-performing schools in the district.

Certainly, the first objective should be to ensure a student is offered an opportunity to get the best education available. But, just as Maine and other states have concluded that classroom grades alone aren’t sufficient to determine what a student has learned, simply identifying failed (or need-improvement) schools is not enough. The Bush administration could do more about funding the federal share of special education, worth $60 million annually to Maine. It could easily do more to make available to these schools top-level educators from around the country to meet with the local school boards and identify areas to work on.

Maine has a bunch of these educators and probably would be willing to share.