Maine Governor Candidates debate Higher Ed

The Maine Compact for Higher Education held their annual symposium yesterday, and the news was grim in several ways. I'll get to the gubernatorial grimness in a moment.

Anthony Carnevale of the Center on Education and the Workforce led off with a study projecting much greater growth in jobs and sectors that require more effective (and quite different) workers than Maine is currently producing. While I can quibble that the focus on post-secondary education as the gateway to earning power rests on some tenets that I think are worth challenging - the data, both current and projected, make clear that Mainers are going to struggle to find jobs that support families unless a dramatically different set of trends prevail.


We also heard from a panel of business leaders, who said something that I hear all the time - that even in this economy, many of the workers who apply for the few open jobs are woefully under-skilled, requiring companies to invest an enormous amount of time and money initial training and ongoing learning. The good news is that there are some successful programs, often public/private partnerships, that companies have devised to meet that need. And several speakers made a point about adult learners that I believe to be true about all learners - that Mainers are enthusiastic and successful learners when given the opportunity. Less encouraging was the fact that the successful workforce development tends to be in companies large enough that they can - and must - invest in adult learning. There seemed to be agreement that for employers of 20 and fewer people - including many of the creative economy micro-businesses that many experts project to be a significant growth engine of Maine's economy - such programs are difficult to create and maintain. (This might be a good time to check out Maine Enterprise Schools' site - we'll produce those workers, and do so by the time they're 18 or 19.)

After lunch (a fascinating conversation with a Maine Arts Council employee who also sees those creative economy jobs growing in Maine) Colleen Quint from the Mitchell Institute (a former employer of mine), set up the gubernatorial debate with a fresh off the presses report entitled "Indicators of Higher Education Attainment in Maine." Again, the data is sobering, summarized in a supplemental policy white paper thusly:
• Maine has the lowest post-secondary degree attainment in New England, and the lowest per-capita income. Within Maine, economic needs are most critical in the regions with the lowest educational attainment.
• Maine’s population is projected to stop growing by 2020, and our population of traditional-age high school and college students is projected to decline by 20% over the next decade.

The Mitchell Institute identified Four Key Public Policy Opportunities, the lack of which present barriers or obstacles that will leave Mainers out of the kinds of economic development predicted by the Georgetown study earlier.

I. Aligning Higher Education with Workforce Needs
II. Financial Access to College
III. State Support for Higher Education
IV. Multiple Pathways to Higher Education

That's where the next governor will step in. Jennifer Rooks from MPBN moderated, kept strict time, and put the four challenges above to the candidates. "What will you to do increase...?"

Unfortunately, based on the sample of highly educated, eager-to-make-the-world-a-better-place folks I talked to afterward, the candidates, to a person, underwhelmed. Eliot Cutler, who I personally think has the clearest, most coherent, and, as he reminded us many times, fiscally realistic policy positions, came across as angry, arrogant, and pessimistic. Paul LePage, after stumbling with some early answers, found his groove - a groove that, as far as I can tell, consisted of some crowd-pleasing, put-kids-first language that masks (for this audience that is not his base) the deep hatred of most of what public schools stand for that comes out in his speeches to that base.

Shawn Moody was everyone's favorite - by a long shot. He was humble, down-to-earth, did not pretend to know what he doesn't - which, with all due respect, came across as quite a bit. A former elected official - a liberal woman who knows politics said, "I hope he stays in this, develops some deeper positions on a wider array of policies, and runs again. He's an independent Mainers would vote for." Kevin Scott - I wish I could say this in a nicer way - caused a lot of head scratching, of the, "That guy's a piece of work, huh?" variety. Clearly wicked smart. Not a credible candidate for governor, at least not now.

Which brings me to Libby Mitchell. I doubt she came in saying, "I know they're saying I'm a business as usual Democrat, and I'm going to prove them right," but that was the effect. While mostly shy on specifics, the two that stood out - her idea to renegotiate the state liquor contract as a source of revenue to pay for anything that needed paying for, and her adamant opposition to charter schools - were cited by two very accomplished women educators I spoke with (the women who should be Libby's base) as reasons to try to ignore Cutler's arrogance and vote for him.

Her answer to the charter school question, "I won't vote for anything that takes money from the public schools," is, for those of who know that the best charter schools are public schools (and some of the best public schools are charters) is no more accurate a statement than calling health care reform "death panels." Like some of LePage's red meat statements, it plays to a perceived base. In this case, though, I think it cedes crucial votes to other candidates in favor of votes she'll still get with a more nuanced - and more evidence-based - position.

Afterwards, I spoke with Ms. Mitchell, who was gracious and listened for a minute or so while I said what I been angling to say to her for quite a while. "I just want to share with you that lots of folks who generally lean democratic are deeply frustrated. They feel you're not articulating a position that makes clear that your administration will actively and enthusiastically enable genuine education innovation. The perception is that you're so closely allied with the MEA, which has effectively blocked most recent attempts at innovative language..." at which point she cut me off and, well, she scolded me for saying that union positions are part of the problem. She used Casco Bay HS and King Middle School as examples, not knowing that I was the Expeditionary Learning school designer who had to fight through the Portland teachers union's rather fervent opposition to that school. I explained that some of the strongest charter movements such as Green Dot are producing much better outcomes WITH the collaboration of forward looking union leadership.

We agreed that the word "charter" is part of the problem - when I spoke about "autonomous public small schools," she warmed to the idea, and, when I asked, point blank, "Will you commit to working with the DOE and the legislature to create the kind of programs that can make innovation not just possible, but a priority," she said "Yes." I promised her to get her a draft of such a plan posthaste - and will share that here.

Why then, did I end up feeling like the day was such a loss? Here's why. I was in a room with a bunch of very accomplished people, all gathered together to say, in unison and with a lot of data to back it up, "our schools are not producing the folks who can generate the next wave of Maine's economic growth." Our network of 1000 or so Mainers - from Bath to Lewiston to Northhaven to Greenville - are working to create, for any Maine community that wants one, public schools that will serve any kid who comes through the door, will do so at a cost at or below the average public school cost - and will produce those knowledge economy, green economy, and creative economy workers.

Yet I got the very strong impression that the solutions being contemplated, at both the higher ed and the pre-K through 12 level, all must be grafted on to the existing systems - the ones the people in that room have built and now run - and pretty much agree are not working. The candidate who most gets that, Eliot Cutler, made it harder for me to bring people over to his side. The candidate who represents the party I most ally with issued a blanket statement dismissing the entire strategy we think most likely to get us there. The candidate who (until yesterday, anyway) led in the polls wants everyone to be home-schooled. And the candidate who everyone likes - and who, because he has lived it, knows more about what the next generation of Maine's kids and businesses really needs- is probably 4 years away from turning that appeal into votes.

So here's my plea to those who sounded, and heard, yesterday's alarm. It is no longer about thinking outside the box, it is about acting outside the box. Every day and dollar we invest in propping up the systems we've proven to ourselves do not produce the results we want is a day and a dollar not invested in systems that will. The wrenching change people fear will come anyway - and the further we push it off, the worse it'll be when it gets here.