WASHINGTON – Gov. John Baldacci along with governors from throughout the country tackled education issues at a national meeting of governors on Sunday.

“I think as governors we have a very big responsibility when it comes to education,” Baldacci said in an interview. “It really can have an impact both in terms of our states’ and our nation’s future.”

Baldacci is a member of the Education, Early Childhood and Workforce Committee within the National Governors Association, which held its annual winter meeting this weekend in Washington.

At the meeting of the committee Sunday morning, the governors heard from Pedro Noguera, executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. Despite mandates enforced by No Child Left Behind, Noguera told the panel, “We are still leaving kids behind.”

The common problem that all failing schools encounter is poverty, Noguera said, and inadequate health care, social problems and a lack of support at home affect education.

“These children don’t see education as a way to get out of poverty because it hasn’t worked for their parents,” he said.

But poverty shouldn’t be an impediment because schools in poor areas are excelling, Noguera said. “If we put kids in an environment that affirms their dignity and affirms their pride, they really can overcome.”

Education is the single best factor in raising the poverty level, said Gov. Bill Ritter, D-Colo. But the key, Baldacci said, is parental involvement and early education.

“You can teach them how to brush their teeth at school, but if they don’t practice at home it doesn’t do anything,” he said. “Many students don’t have that support in the home and the community to encourage them on, to give them the inspiration and perspiration when it’s necessary.”

One of the major initiatives Baldacci said he hopes to bring home to Maine is universal public preschool, championed by Gov. Brad Henry, D-Okla.

Oklahoma’s Educare is a voluntary, partially state-funded public preschool system. The majority of preschool students in Oklahoma attend.

Maine has a public preschool program, but unlike Oklahoma, whether to implement the program is decided by individual school districts. Almost 2,000 students attended preschool in Maine during the 2004-2005 school year, according to Maine’s Department of Education.

In addition to early education, Baldacci said he would look into Gov. Ritter’s initiative to revamp standardized testing and school curriculum in Colorado to make it more about learning and preparing students for college.

The purpose is “not making it about course titles or seat time, but making it about learning,” said Ritter, “and about proficiency.”

Baldacci is focused on increasing the quality of education in Maine.

“Forty percent of the high school graduates … require remedial education,” Baldacci said in an interview. “I remember my professors asking me when I went to college, ‘What did you learn in high school?'”

Investing more than $1 billion in education by the end of the year, Baldacci said the school restructuring plan passed into law last year will help improve the quality of education by reducing costs and providing students with more access and opportunities. The restructuring combined town schools into regional schools, reducing the number of school administrative units from about 290 to 80.

The governors also spoke about a federal mandate that will restrict state spending on education. Most of the governors at the panel disagreed with the mandate.

Taking a different perspective, Gov. Baldacci tried to put it in context: “I understand where they’re coming from,” he said, because the states often use creative ways to gain more education money from the federal government, taking advantage of the government’s aid.

The National Governors Association meeting gives governors an opportunity to “learn from each other,” Baldacci said, and to meet with federal government officials to discuss “pressing issues” in their states.

He said it is important if “I can get somebody to move even a half of an inch in these areas that are having a big impact on our state, like Medicare and Real ID. I need to just use this as an opportunity to do some one-on-one lobbying.”

“I’m having to make cutbacks, make some people sacrifice,” he said. “Trying to protect the most vulnerable, it’s gut-wrenching and it’s hard some times for me to sleep when you’ve got these things that you have to do to balance the budget, to tighten the belt. You’ve got to know that a lot of small businesses and working families are struggling, and you can’t add to their burden.”

Aside from education, a major focus of this year’s winter meeting was clean energy. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., who is chair of the association, introduced the Securing a Clean Energy Future Initiative that encourages governors to help make their states energy-efficient through clean energy technology, research and alternative fuels.

The winter meeting will end Monday with a send-off reception celebrating the 100th anniversary of the association. On Sunday night the governors and their spouses were scheduled to attend a dinner at the White House. An association meeting in July will take up state strategies for evaluating teachers and their salaries.