Is Maine ready for Learning Results?

My colleagues and I aren’t prophets, but we can see the handwriting on the wall; and we predict there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth across the state three years from now. Why? Because 2008 is the first year Maine students will be required to meet the standards of the state’s Learning Results in order to graduate from high school. We have concerns that students and parents across the state may not be ready for this new way of getting the credits needed to graduate. We’re also concerned about how this mandate is affecting our profession.

I teach at Washington Academy, a high school in East Machias. As a faculty, we, like faculties all over the state, have been working the past few years to align our curriculum to the Learning Results to be ready for this year’s freshman class, the class of 2008. To graduate, these students, by state law, must demonstrate competency in the following subjects: English, social studies, science, mathematics and health-physical education.

To do this, they must take a number of assessments in each subject area throughout high school. If they don’t show proficiency the first time, students will get the chance to take assessments a second time. These are called replacement tasks, and the number of replacement tasks offered to students is a local decision. And, keep in mind, they must also meet local requirements to graduate. For instance, at Washington Academy, students must receive 20 credits, four in English, and so forth.

For those unfamiliar with the Learning Results, there are various content areas such as Science and Technology and English Language Arts. Under each of these content areas are standards. For example, under the content area of Civics and Government, one of the standards is Purpose and Types of Government. Under each standard there are performance indicators given for elementary, middle and secondary grades. One under Purpose and Types of Government for high school students is “Compare and contrast

the purpose and the structure of the United States government with other governments

(parliamentary, dictatorship, monarchy) with respect to ideology, values and histories.”

Assessments must focus on these performance indicators. Assessments must be valid and reliable, meaning they must measure what they are supposed to measure and the results should be consistent over time.

Assessments are scored in the following manner: 1 – not met the standard; 2 – partially met the standard; 3 – met the standard; and 4 – exceeded the standard. (A 0 would be given only if there was no attempt to answer or the answer was totally unresponsive to the question.) The state has put out assessments that are considered valid and reliable for teachers to use. These approved benchmarks are recommended by the state, but teachers may use their own; however, the process of ensuring the validity and reliability of these is quite complicated. For scoring to be considered reliable, at least three teachers must agree on the scoring.

“Where’s the time coming from to do this?” asks Pete Rensema. He and his colleagues in the math department attended a state workshop on scoring assessments. “Even in a well-structured workshop environment where the facilitators were state content specialists, it took three hours as a group before we could consistently score the same task,” Rensema said. He also feels some assessments are too difficult. He said he’d like to see state legislators take the assessment “Ode to a Fraction,” saying, “Most wouldn’t pass it.”

English teacher Jodie Handrahan: “It’s wonderful to have standards. People can be assured that students have met criteria.” However, she feels that the biggest problem with assessment tasks is that not all students will be at the appropriate developmental level when the task is given. Assessment tasks in high school are labeled 9-12, and they tend to involve higher-order thinking skills. Ninth-graders are very different from seniors on many developmental levels, hence their responses to these tasks will, necessarily, be different.

Parents of special education students need to know that their children are expected to meet the same grade-level standards as other students. After getting laws regarding Individual Education Plans (IEPs) in place because students aren’t the same, or can’t perform at the same level, state law now specifies they must prove they are the same: they must prove that they are capable of passing the same standards as other students.

So, the question is which set of laws takes precedence? Our special education director, Sarah Hostetter, asks, “What now is the purpose of an IEP?” She said she was “very concerned that some students are expected to meet much higher grade-level standards. These students have been evaluated and it has been documented that they are functioning at a much lower level.”

How many times have I heard comments from my fellow teachers that the state is trying to turn students into “one-size-fits-all,” “cookie-cutter” molds? James Ausprey, science teacher, expressed his concern about this. “There’s a danger of treating students as commodities if we lose sight of students as individual human beings.”

My colleague, science teacher Don Sprangers, has concerns, both for the students and our profession. “It’s all about accountability. They’re (the government, by mandating these assessments) holding students hostage to prove that teachers are doing their jobs. As a professional, you can put the burden on my shoulder. As a teacher, I can handle it. But it seems we’re not being given the respect due us as professionals. If schools are failing, look at the top – administration.”

He feels administrators – superintendents on down throughout Maine – should take the lead in implementing the process in their schools, then teachers can better prepare their students. “What [the state] is trying to accomplish is good; they’re going about it in the wrong way.”

According to Rob Walker, presidents of the Maine Education Association, in the November 2004 Maine Educator, “NCLB [No Child Left Behind], Learning Results, local assessments, and targets are devouring so much time and energy that more than 60 percent of Maine’s teachers have considered leaving the profession in the past two years, and better than 40 percent would think twice about entering the profession if they had to make the decision today.”

The Dec. 30, 2004 edition of The Ellsworth American has an article that speaks to this problem: “… long hours and the added demands of new state and federal learning requirements and assessments are making it tough to recruit and retain teachers.” At Washington Academy, we have two ed techs who were preparing to enter the teaching profession, but because of this state law, may not.

Our ed techs, Mike Hinerman and Zeke Gaddis, sit in on our workshops. Our last workshops revolved around the process of determining when departments would give assessments. I asked Hinerman, who worked with the English department during the workshops, if all this would keep him from becoming a teacher. He responded, “It’s entirely possible.” He labeled the state’s expectations “unrealistic, capricious.” He said some of the English tasks were so difficult, college-bound students would have difficulty proving they’d met the standard.

Gaddis said, “It concerns me to see teachers losing the flexibility to create curriculum for individual classes. I realize we need accountability, but essentially creating a statewide pass or fail test seems like a cookie-cutter approach to education. Everyone learns different things in different ways. This loss of individuality combined with all the added bureaucracy is really making me think twice about pursuing education as a career.”

These are some of our concerns; but the process of implementing the Learning Results into a school system is very complicated, so, of course, I haven’t covered them all. At our last teachers’ meeting, we were given some good news. Because of the many concerns about the implementation of the Learning Results, Maine’s commissioner of education, Susan Gendron, has promised to put together a committee to address this.

Carol Mason teaches social studies at Washington Academy in East Machias.