AUGUSTA – All students should be ready for college when they graduate from high school, Maine Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron said Friday.

Speaking during the first meeting of a group charged by Gov. John Baldacci with creating a comprehensive, statewide educational plan, Gendron called for high schools to eliminate the practice of “tracking” – separating students according to their perceived ability and then funneling some into less challenging classes.

“Tracking is the number one barrier keeping students from meeting the state’s high academic standards and from being prepared for college,” said Gendron, who chairs the Task Force to Create Seamless Pre-Kindergarten Through Sixteenth Grade Educational Systems.

The 26-member group has been asked to recommend ways to make all levels of education in the state more efficient, accessible and collaborative.

Promoting college readiness is another goal of the group, which must issue a report by January. Members include legislators, higher education officials and educators.

Some people are resistant to the idea of eliminating tracking, Gendron said in an interview after the meeting.

“It’s the way high schools have operated for many years. We have created paths for students and … students who are going to go out into the work force have been directed into courses that aren’t as rigorous and challenging,” she said.

But parents should be aware “that the system we knew won’t ensure success for students any longer,” Gendron said.

Within the next 10 years, 80 percent of the jobs coming into Maine will require associate’s degree level work, she said. One of the questions for the task force is “how do we ensure our young people have the skills necessary to access career options.”

Some people are concerned that the aim is to “advance the college-ready agenda for everyone,” Gendron said. But a higher level of literacy and math skills also is necessary for trades such as construction.

Task force member Don Cannan, director of the Lewiston Regional Technical Center, said students today need to be taught a different kind of literacy, one that teaches them to read for information gathering so they can understand manuals, instructions and tax forms.

“This is standing education on its head,” he said.

Changing people’s minds about tracking will require a “cultural shift,” said Gendron. Several task force members agreed.

Students in Advanced Placement and honors classes often get much of teachers’ attention while those in the “general” track are ignored, said Rep. Gerald Davis, R-Falmouth, a former teacher and member of the Legislature’s Education Committee.

Sue Huseman, interim president of the University of Maine at Machias, said that last year, thanks to grants from MELMAC – an educational charitable foundation – all sophomores from 32 high schools across the state were able to take the PSAT, a preliminary college entrance exam, that’s typically given on a voluntary basis.

Students who weren’t previously thought of as college goers performed very well, said Huseman, who is on MELMAC’s board of directors.

“We shouldn’t track kids or label them and we certainly shouldn’t limit them by our sense of what they can do,” she said during an interview later.

This fall, all 10th-graders will take the PSAT thanks to a partnership with the College Board, a national organization that helps administer college admissions.

All the signs indicate that Maine’s high school curriculum needs to be more rigorous, Gendron said.

Students’ scores on math and English standardized tests have remained stagnant over the past few years. And more college freshmen are having to take remedial courses.

Research shows that when students who haven’t been designated as college preparatory are placed in more challenging classes they rise to the occasion, Gendron said. The trick is to adapt curriculum to students’ different learning styles.

Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, a member of the panel and a former high school teacher, recalled that when he used the history of cars to teach government to students in the automotive program, they did just as well on tests as those in the college preparatory path.

“You can’t teach all kids the same way,” he said.