TEST TO THE TEACH

Teachers around Maine have spent months compiling stacks of documents detailing how their students would meet local assessments required in the Maine Learning Results. The work has been long, tedious and often comes in addition to their full-time duties. The further along they have gotten, the more evidence has accumulated that in some cases the assessments are a hindrance to education instead of a help, and that what began as a way to measure student achievement had become a bureaucratic exercise in record-keeping. Last week Gov. John Baldacci properly said, “Enough.”

He called for a moratorium while the state figures out a better way to determine how to ensure students are achieving the high standards set out in the Learning Results, the state’s goals for what every child should know. The Department of Education plans to submit a work plan to the Legislature by mid-February that will include a review by an expert in education systems, Michael Fullan.

For now, Commissioner Sue Gendron says, schools should stop what they’re doing on local assessments while the state re-examines the structure of this part of Learning Results. She expects that a new model will be announced in the fall.

Meantime, this extensive project has provided late nights for educators busy with unraveling the various layers of standards, clusters, indicators and assessments. The work, perhaps useful for building consistency within schools, has also demonstrated why teaching is not the same as making widgets. Too often, the standards have narrowed

content and limited opportunities for learning – some teachers, for instance, found that they spent more time trying to meet a particular standard than teaching a lesson that might intrigue students while also instructive.

Ever since the federal No Child Left Behind Act was introduced, states, rightly, have been demanding additional funding from Washington for the added demands sent down to them. Local teachers have just as strong a case with the state: If Augusta is content to pile more work on schools, the resources – added pay, extra help, etc. – should follow. Commissioner Gendron has indicated she was willing to do this. Legislators ought to be interested as well.

Whatever the reforms of local assessments end up being, they should recognize that Washington is not nearly done imposing rules on local districts. A news story this week, for example, reported the federal government for the first time will rate the academic rigor

of every high school in the nation.

Whether that is a good idea remains to be seen, but the last thing Maine educators need is more redundant record-keeping from the federal and state governments when they have a large enough challenge teaching.