MEA scores signal needs of schools Maine tests weighed against new federal law

The recent “flat” Maine Educational Assessment scores will have new ramifications in light of the recently passed federal education reform law, a Department of Education spokesman said Friday.

For the first time under the new No Child Left Behind legislation, the state’s standardized test given to students in grades four, eight and 11 will be used to define proficiency and, thus, identify “priority schools” in need of improvement, said spokesman Yellow Light Breen.

Nineteen such schools were identified in Maine by the federal government last summer.

Releasing the new MEA performance reports Thursday, Maine Commissioner of Education J. Duke Albanese said “the scores are flat and the need for improvement is critical to give students the opportunity to meet the standards of Maine’s Learning Results.”

Reading and writing scores were highest, while those in math and in science and technology were weakest, the commissioner said.

The gender gap in which boys once did better than girls in math and science has disappeared, “but the continuing gender gap is clear in reading and writing with males performing significantly below females,” he said.

Under the new federal law, low-performing schools will be required to provide transportation to other schools in the district out of their Title I money if parents request it for their children. Schools also will have to provide supplemental services like tutoring, after-school help or summer school with Title I funds.

By January, Maine must come up with revised criteria for designating schools that need to be improved, Breen said. “The MEA in some fashion is a big part of that process,” he said.

Conversely, an improved performance on the MEA “will be one way to get off the list,” he added.

The federal government is letting each state define proficiency based on its own standardized test and local assessments, Breen said.

In July, 19 schools were declared to be failing based on the MEA, using methods developed a year or two ago before the passage of the new federal law and before towns began working on local assessments, Breen said.

Some of those schools will move off the list because they “have been improving” with help from Maine educators contracted by the department.

“Some are getting intensive assistance while some [are getting] more cursory types of monitoring assistance,” he said.

Breen wasn’t sure whether the new criteria would mean more failing schools, but “there certainly will be a different set,” he said.

Albanese said in a press release that “Maine’s mixed performance … must be viewed in the context of the state’s superlative performance in contrast to other states and the country on national tests.”

Breen echoed that sentiment Friday. “We’re not worried the feds will come in and attack Maine for its performance” because students here historically do well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, he said.

This is the fourth year the MEA has been geared toward the Legislature’s new Learning Results, according to Breen. It’s understandable that some people are becoming impatient to see improved results, he said.

But the lackluster scores suggest that “[our] standards are challenging and confirm it will take us several years to make progress,” he said. “We hope that as students spend more of their time in classrooms that are aligned with Learning Results … we’ll begin to see those performances increase.”

With the new law requiring students to be proficient on state tests in reading and math within 12 years, some states appear to be lowering their standards for student performance, according to Education Week, a trade publication.

But Maine should continue with its rigorous goals, Breen said. “It’s important that we set the standard for proficiency that makes sense for the feds relative to the MEA and not that we lower our standards to match the lowest common denominator,” he said.