Initiatives await next governor

That Maine's Race to the Top application failed is no surprise to anyone who knew anything about the process or the Obama administration's goals. Maine's application was not seen as a credible attempt to implement the actual reform strategies as much as a somewhat half-hearted attempt to get the money that might go with such an award. I've written previously about the three "sheep in sheep's clothing" bills passed to make it seem like the Education Dept. might lead the charge for reform - money or no money, they were unlikely to enable any serious rethinking of how our schools function.

What this article highlights is what was true when those bills were passed - that it is the next governor who has the chance to make some real change. The candidates' positions are captured fairly clearly.

I like that Libby Mitchell highlights the need to customize learning for each student, and I'm a fan of much of what the Maine Learning and Technology Initiative and Jobs for Maine Graduates do - they are relatively high quality "push-in" approaches that do the best they can within the current structures. But we have thirty or so years of "push-in" reform, and by many measures, we're at or behind where we were when we started. Ms. Mitchell's overall position seems to be that we're on the right track, that we need to keep funneling money to folks to whom money has already been funneled, and that the MEA needs to approve or everything we do - which comes out as being "sensitive to teachers" in this article. I'd love to see her articulate a strategy that enables real "best practice" innovation - regardless of whether we get a big chunk of federal money.

Eliot Cutler makes a point that I think shows a different kind of sensitivity to teachers: "We've put our good teachers in straight-jacket." He's not shy about raising the third rail of school reform, teacher performance. Evaluating teachers based on student performance is one of the trickiest, and least well-understood, reform strategies - one that needs to be implemented carefully in order to prevent all kinds of unintended consequences. Cutler also favors charter schools - another often poorly understood, hot-button strategy. As I've written elsewhere, we've learned nationally how to construct charter legislation in a way that is cost-effective, reduces the achievement gap, and avoids the "taking money from the existing schools" fears that are often raised. It will be up to the next legislature to ensure that any such bill meets these standards, but Cutler is clearly willing to lead that charge.

Paul LePage's stance is not much of a stance. His libertarian leanings come out in his "leave it up to local school boards" position. With great respect for those who serve on such boards, those that are able to lead their schools towards substantial reforms are few and far between - and what progress is made is often undone when a new slate of candidates, outraged by the changes made by the reformers, is elected in the next cycle. I may agree with him, but for very different reasons, that we "have to careful about accepting federal money with strings attached." Federal money that insists that we do more of what we're already doing - which the DOE's Race to the Top application would largely have done - will be profoundly counterproductive.

Kevin Moody has yet to articulate much of a vision for schools- I like that he mentioned low performing schools, but his advocacy of merit pay, a strategy that sounds good but has shown no evidence of making a difference for students, leaves me with questions. Kevin Scott suggests we allow private schools to authorize charter schools...a very bad idea. The states that have done the most damage with charter schools are those that have not ensured that charter schools are fully public in every way. Such "keep the government out of schools" movements may sound good, but tend to reduce, rather than increase, options for students most in need of options.