From words to action

As promised, a proposal for a process that can create healthy, effective, and swift progress creating an innovation infrastructure for Maine's schools. I'm sure I'll miss a few things - this is meant to be specific enough to be a real plan, but drafty enough to be adaptable and flexible (for instance, I learned yesterday that the Maine Association for Charter Schools plans to convene folks around charter schools, likely on Dec. 16....an event like that could easily fit into or be combined with the plan below.)

1) The Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education should convene an education summit – and should do so before the end of this year. The MCEE has cross-sector representation and includes most key constituencies. More importantly, we can start with the work already underway - Prepare Maine.

2) The purpose of the Summit would NOT be to further argue over what needs to be done – but to gain consensus – now that the political landscape has changed in way that makes new approaches possible – on how those new approaches can do the most good and the least damage.

3) The Process: MCEE should agree to delegate to three different - but overlapping sub-groups - the tasks of drafting three pieces of legislation.

Prepare Maine-inspired Round Two Consolidation legislation that reduces the costs where Round One largely failed – at the superintendent and district level – while also incentivizing real innovation. Superintendents and school committees the system that emerges can then embrace and fund the ideas that work, rather than bring forced to further decimate budgets of schools that in many cases, are not working all that well anyway.

21st Century Teacher legislation that:
• makes teaching attractive to the best possible candidates
• increases efficacy and accountability in collaboration with the MEA (the visionaries -of whom there are many - rather than the obstructionists) who know that more accountability is the savior of the teaching profession - even in the short term it moves some less effective teachers out of their current jobs.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools facilitated Pilot Charter School Authorizing legislation, which uses the NAPCS model law as the basis for a law that creates:
• A network of 20 pilot schools within 5 years.
• Qualifies for Federal charter schools funds to offset start-up costs.
• Prioritizes communities and students least-well served by current schools.
• An accountability system that insists on measurable outcomes within defined time frames.
• Addresses "takes money from the public schools" concerns.

4) The subgroups will made up of no more than 12 members each - large enough to have key folks at the table, but small enough to get work done quickly and well. By January 15th, each will produce a draft of legislation. MCEE's board, already cross-sector, will be charged with building the sub-groups - with a specific slant towards people who are willing to get something done, rather prevent something from happening.

- A majority and a minority legislator from both the senate and house.
- A member or designee of Gov. LePage’s transition team
- A member of the State board of Ed and/or Dept. of Ed.
- Two members of the Maine Coalition of Excellence on Education.
- A member of the Maine School Management Assoc, MEA, Maine School Boards Association, and/or other education partners.
- One or more innovation-minded school superintendent
- 2 additional “technical assistance” members versed in nuances of the work the committee is doing…folks like David Silvernail and Glenn Cummings for the consolidation committee, Erin Connor and Duke Albanese for the 21st C. teacher committee, and reps of Maine Assoc. for Charter Schools, myself, or Steve Bowen for the Charter Schools committee.

The sub-groups, working with professional facilitators such as Rob Brown of Opportunity Maine, Craig Freshley of Good Group Decisions, Laura Moorhead of the Institute for Civic Leadership or others will start (and end) with the understanding that it is in everyone’s interest to get a bill done soon, any bill is likely to have some flaws, and that no-one is going to be happy with everything.

5) Legislative members will sponsor/co-sponsor these bills and introduce them in the Educational and Cultural Affairs committee as a first-priority bill for the new legislature - with the bi-partisan, cross-sector support of all of the key stakeholders, who, rather than continuing to fight over their piece of the pie, agree to bake a new, yummy pie together. And Maine, in the bargain, will be known as the state with not only the best-tasting pie, but the most nutritious.

If that sounds too simple, I would only say this: propose something better, along with a plan to get it adopted. I'll work as hard for a plan that someone else proposes as I will for this. But objections without alternatives are fairly easy to come by - and while we object, the young people, families and communities who could be served better continue to languish.

The first post in this series began with several vastly different reactions to last week’s election. Though I didn’t make this point then, I will now – the folks I cited largely agree on what Maine needs, what can get us there, and how we can do that without the damage that some folks fear. Maine has an opportunity to lay the groundwork for an system of innovation and re-invention that not only lead the nation, but significantly reverses Maine’ brain drain and boost our sustainable economy. Or, we can become yet another poster-state for partisan, yo-yo politics that push folks in and out of power without doing much of substance. Our choice.

If you help us do it – with your ideas, your organization’s sway, your political and social network - two years from now we’ll be talking about how what we were afraid of did NOT happen, and instead celebrating the new schools and economic opportunities that are beginning to emerge from the innovations we agreed on.