5-year High School Program

Bill Nemitz' column in this morning's PPH quotes Governor LePage saying, "I believe we need to create a five-year high school program in Maine where students can graduate with an associate's degree as a heads-up in going into the workforce or as credit toward a four-year degree at the university or college level." After yesterday's announcement that he intends to make it as hard as possible for both documented and undocumented immigrants and refugees to feel at home in Maine, I was relieved to see something both positive and substantial.

Having worked briefly an Early College High School start-up at Lorraine County Technical College in Ohio, I can attest to the potential - and the challenges - of such approaches. We've learned a lot since then, and the governor and Mr. Fitzsimmons of the Community College system are wise to build on the work of North Carolina, which has gone the farthest and had the most success with this model.

Mr. Fitzsimmons points out that the NC implementation "began with a $21 million grant from the Gates Foundation and each year the legislature allocates $19 million for those new 'early colleges.'" Mr. Nemitz concludes by saying, "'good luck with your base when they realize what it takes, alas, to turn a good-but-complicated idea into simple reality. It's called 'state spending.'"

I'm not so sure - at least not at the levels of North Carolina. I not only think we can do something "good-but-complicated" for far less money, but do so more effectively. Though I was unaware of the 5-year high school design team formed by Mr. Fitzsimmons, it sounds like they're largely on the right track. The question, as Mr. Nemitz points out, is how we get there and how we pay for it.

Securing additional money, whether grant or tax generated, is not enough. Maine's had millions of dollars of both Federal and foundation grants come through - and I've helped spend a bunch of it, including the first Early College initiatives in Maine. If we've learned one thing, it is that funneling huge chunks of money through the usual channels produces precious little substantive change, and when it does, it's awfully hard to sustain. So before we start the conversation about new money, might we have a real conversation about what we're doing with the money we already have?

Right now, Maine's schools are funded by state, local, and federal tax dollars. How that money is apportioned has both to do with the state's EPS formula and the ways individual towns vote to supplement (or not) that formula. Unless I understand Mr. LePage incorrectly, putting more money into that system will not happen in this administration.

So what if, instead, we did a simple cost-benefit analysis that said "we aren't getting what we can out of the money we are spending." I would argue that such analyses have been done, by the Maine Coalition of Excellence in Education and the oft-quoted "Georgetown study" among others. And though this is certainly a heretical question to many of those charged with spending the money we currently direct towards schools, we should ask any way: what would it look like to spend the same money differently?

Charter school legislation is one way to redirect money. I've written extensively that charters can be effective, and equally extensively that, as Mr. Nemitz points out, the devil is in the details. But charters are not the only way. Rep. Peter Kent of Woolwich is introducing legislation that would establish Maine Enterprise Schools as autonomous public schools focused on rigorously preparing Maine's young people for the "new local economy." The legislation he proposes does NOT require new state spending to work - but it does require the autonomy to actually spend what money there is differently.

Why? Well, MES is built on assumptions (read: best practices) that are VERY difficult to integrate (read: impose) into existing schools. First, we don't think current age-grading works well for many kids and most teachers. Community colleges know all too well the high cost of remediation - essentially paying two or three times for not having succeeded the first time. Second, and related to that: we don't assume that one teacher standing in front of twenty or thirty kids, all of whom start at different places, can (or should) all get to the same place at the same time.

Maine Enterprise Schools proposes starting with 6th graders and using what are traditionally thought of as middle school years to focus on measurable, high standards of literacy, numeracy, and reasoning for every student - so that we simply no longer send kids to high school before they're ready. If that takes two years, then the student gets to start high school a year earlier. And if that takes four years, that's ultimately better for the kid, the family, the community, and the taxpayer. The numbers don't lie: the earlier we lose kids, the more they cost later on.

The same principle applies to high school and early college: Hold kids to high standards, move them on when they're ready, and NOT before. Such approaches also, by extension, place the accountability for learning much more meaningfully where it belongs: on the student, who can then genuinely experience the relation between effort and result; the teacher, who, in our model, doesn't get to give a kid a C and pass him on to the next teacher, but rather is accountable student-by-student for ensuring that standards are met; and last but not least the parent, who in small schools can much more meaningfully and reliably get the support they need to help, rather than hinder, their child's learning. (See Geoffry Canada's Harlem Children's Zone for evidence.) Eliot Cutler, in his campaign for governor, called his education policy, "No Excuses." Works for me.

How can we do this? Our approach, in addition to starting earlier, is TRUE asset-based, community-based learning. By creating collaborative relationships with existing small businesses and non-profits, we don't need to build new buildings. We site our schools on existing, under-utilized assets (public trust farms, mothballed school buildings). That in turn enables us to design learning experiences that bring our students into DAILY contact with the work of Maine's farms, forests, fisheries and creative economy. The work that Mainers do - from marine biologist to swordfish boat captain - is the primary motivator for learning, not something experienced as an one-time field trip or occasional add-on.

But smaller, more community connected schools are just one of the many structures that can be supported by redirected, existing funds. I've advocated for MUCH more meaningful collaboration between social service agencies and non-profits, so that other money spend on kids - through Health and Human Services, Juvenile Justice, etc. - can be concentrated and effective on a KID by KID basis. As anyone working in those systems can tell you now, the money we spend in social services is spread so thin and in so many competing, disintegrated ways to as defy logic.

We've proposed collaborative relationships with Learning Works, Good Will-Hinckley, Jobs for Maine Graduates and other organizations that have EFFECTIVE practices and track records, but that now must function either as push-in, add-on, or last resort programs. To a certain extent, such approaches can close gaps - but what would it look like if at least some of those resources were deployed in ways that prevent the inevitable cracks from widening into gaps in the first place?

Here's where our approach dovetails with that sketched out by Mr. Fitzsimmons. We all know that our current system keeps some kids in school high school long after they're ready to leave anyway, and drives others out without the skills and dispositions to assure long-term, productive employment. We fully intend to redirect some of the money that keeps kids in unproductive stages towards more productive endeavors. Each of our graduates will be required to have completed at least one course at the Community College. An Associates Degree leading to a four year degree, is, in our model, one of three pathways that our students can choose leading into what would be their senior year. (The others being an apprenticeship or a "gap year," which encompasses organized experiential learning, study abroad, and volunteer experiences.)

Of course we will have start-up costs (renovation, teacher training, materials and equipment) but both federal charter school grants and foundations like Gates and Nellie Mae are designed specifically to offset such costs. We also expect to be in partnership with Maine's business and philanthropic communities, which have vested interests in such break the mold schools. Once we're up and running, our dollar per student cost will be the same or lower, but our success rate will be higher.

How can we be so sure? Partly because we are building a network of teachers, social workers, and entrepreneurs with the talent and commitment to do this work. Our schools are designed at a scale that enable those folks to focus on what works for each kid, rather than what works for the average kid in each of the five or six groups of 20 kids they see each day. But more importantly, our schools will re-create something that's been lost for MANY of the kids who struggle most with school: regular, structured relationships with people who are doing something they can envision themselves doing when they are older.

Mr. Nemitz is right when he says it will not be easy. The only thing harder than finding new resources in this economy will be getting those who already have those resources (existing school systems, mostly) to give up what they have. But with UTMOST respect for the folks (I'll include myself) who've dedicated their careers to making such schools work: we need to admit our success rate is too low to justify the same pattern of one-step forward, two steps back innovation.

Our work will not take kids from schools that are working for them, nor will it take teachers away from those kids. It will give some of those teachers, and lots of the kids who need it, a place to connect and succeed, rather than disconnect and lament what went wrong. (Now, if we can only get Mr. LePage to understand that Maine's immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are much more likely to be an economic engine for Maine than a drag on our economy...if we don't scare them all off first.)