If it's Tuesday, it must be...merit pay

I met this morning with two veteran teachers who work in a local middle school in a district considered one of Maine's best. They had heard about the possibility of Maine Enterprise School in their community and wanted to learn more about our approach. One of the teachers was talking about the math curriculum - how she's been ordered to abandon her successful, project-based, integrated math lessons in favor of an approach designed to raise test scores by scripting each lesson each day for the entire school year. Consistency, this is called. I'll admit that I was surprised, in a district that has such a history of "best practice" and test scores that are generally thought of as high, to see exactly what she meant - but literally, that is what it was. If you are in sixth grade in this school, the only variable is when the first snow day will come and throw the whole shebang off.

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