Select Maine panel fails the test

It’s a disappointment to see the Bangor Daily News endorsing several of the major proposals of the Select Panel on Revisioning Education in Maine (Todd Benoit’s op-ed of Aug. 26-27, “The shape of schools to come”).

The select panel comprises a small group of education leaders in Maine who are determined to sell the public on the idea that public education in Maine costs a lot because of administrative overhead – and that therefore, the solutions include cutting the number of superintendents, consolidating school districts into 35 mega-districts and having a single bargaining unit for all the teachers in the state. Related reports project savings of $133 million over five years, since average class size is supposed to increase and administrative overhead decline.

Unfortunately, these recommendations are more concerned with control of dollars and decision-making than about enhancing children’s learning. Several states that have tried consolidating districts to save money and broaden the courses available to high school students have not achieved those goals and have reversed course. The nearest example is West Virginia, where no reduction in administrative costs occurred over 10 years of district consolidation.

Fewer superintendents led to multiple assistants of this and directors of that. Few of the larger high schools actually offered a wider array of courses. Children spent longer hours on buses; extracurricular participation declined; parent-school relations suffered. You can read this story at the Rural School and Community Trust, www.ruraledu.org.

Over the past two decades, expenses for public education in Maine have continued to rise, while enrollment has declined, mostly the result of smaller class sizes. The EPS (Essential Programs and Services) formula is supposed to address this issue through a version of funding by student enrollment. Unfortunately, this formula is so obtuse that only one Department of Education staffer can manage the computer programs involved. School boards and superintendents rarely see the results in a timely fashion, and the formula includes factors that unfairly reduce payments to small and rural schools.

Meanwhile, achievement by Maine children in public schools has been essentially flat, as measured by a variety of tests, both local and national. Recent national studies show that Maine’s high school dropout rates are much higher

than officials have been willing to admit for years, while the most recent SAT scores continue to disappoint.

Also over the past 20 years, the percentage of school-age children in Maine who attend public schools has declined slowly but steadily, as more families are home schooling, new private schools open up and more families take advantage of the tuitioning-out programs available in dozens of communities with no local district public school.

Many measures of the health and well-being of our children suggest that trends in Maine are similar to those in other states, with a great and increasing diversity of learning needs among children. This translates into a need for public education options at all levels, to allow families and children to find affordable programs to match children’s needs.

The select panel’s report makes only a brief reference to public school options, suggesting that families could choose among schools in their mega-district, if they provide their own transportation. The select panel does not discuss the inequities in Maine’s current system of education options, which favor families who are willing to bear the expense of private school tuition, or of moving to certain towns to take advantage of town tuitioning-out programs, or of home-schooling.

The report confuses correlations with causation. Having many small schools, low teacher-student ratios, many small districts and relatively good achievement scores are highly intertwined facets of education in Maine. But correlations do not indicate the direction of causal factors. Calling for massive change in some factors, such as size of districts and size of schools, without understanding causal connections, risks serious unintended consequences, in addition to inviting battles with small towns where schools are a cornerstone of community life.

The report counts “inputs” as “outcomes” – as in using numbers of AP courses as an outcome for students, when it is one of many “inputs” to an education program, not an indication of student learning. And using the number of AP courses taught onsite to rate the quality of a school is outmoded in this age of distance learning, which allows small schools to offer a wide variety of courses and activities no matter where the school is located.

The select panel’s report omits any reference to serious national debates about the organizational dynamics of public school systems, such as discussed by Ted Kolderie in “Creating the Capacity for Change: How and Why Governors and Legislatures Are Opening a New-Schools Sector in Public Education.” (See www.educationevolving.org.)

The select panel report does not discuss the benefits of allowing families, students and teachers to choose the schools they attend and support, including the positive effects on parental involvement and teacher empowerment. On the contrary, the panel recommends a single bargaining unit statewide for teachers. This would give enormous power to a single union and reduce even further the flexibility of existing public schools to try new approaches, curricula and-or instructional techniques.

The select panel report makes no reference to the growth nationally of public school choice, or to the dramatic growth of the public chartered school movement in 40 states and Washington, D.C. And so, there is no discussion of how the public chartered school model is providing effective incentives for keeping administrative costs down, a much better approach than state mandates that haven’t worked for decades.

Rather than adopt the recommendations of the select panel for more centralization and state control of publicly funded education, Maine education leaders should develop a formula for distributing state education dollars that will be clear and understandable by all citizens, fair to schools of all sizes and promote options by having funds follow each child to the public school attended by that child.

Both public chartered schools and several large school districts have developed these approaches. The select panel’s omission of these key issues is shortsighted and shortchanges Maine’s families.

Judith Denton Jones is a sociologist and education planner who lives in Hope. Dr. Jones is also the chair of the Maine Association for Public Charter Schools.