Maine is Setting New Graduation Requirements: and the Arts MUST be fully part of them

Here we go again: our state legislature is hard at work trying to "dumb down" our state high school graduation requirements.

There are 8 learning standards defined in the Maine Learning Results, yet a new piece of legislation, LD 1325, An Act Regarding Curriculum Requirements, calls for students to "fully meet" standards in some of these areas and only to "partially meet" them in other areas--including the Visual and Performing Arts.

This kind of requirement officially devalues the arts in state law--and ignores broad-based research which proves that students perform better across the board when they learn in and through the arts.

It's important for our students'--and, by extension, our state's economic and cultural--futures that we let our legislators know our students need to FULLY MEET standards in all 8 learning areas: including the Visual and Performing Arts. All Maine students must have equal access to rigorous instruction by highly qualified teachers and their learning must be appropriately assessed. Students must be required to fully meet those essential standards in all 8 areas! For the Visual and Performing Arts, this means students would be required to receive instruction in 2 of the 4 visual and performing arts disciplines--not too much to ask for a well-rounded education, is it? The arts education community is willing and ready to work with the Dept of Education and local districts to find effective ways to make this work within the realities of the school day schedule.

So if you can, gather in Augusta at the Cross State Office Building Room 201 by 1PM THIS MONDAY, MAY 11.

If you are unable to attend the hearing: you can contact members of the
Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs
Senator Justin L. Alfond (D-Cumberland), Chair
justin@justinalfond.com

Senator Elizabeth M. Schneider (D-Penobscot)
http://www.mainesenate.org/schneider/index.htm

Senator Carol Weston (R-Waldo)
cweston@fairpoint.net

Representative Patricia B. Sutherland (D-Chapman), Chair
psutherland@sutherlandweston.com

Representative Edward D. Finch (D-Fairfield)
RepEd.Finch@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Alan M. Casavant (D-Biddeford)
RepAlan.Casavant@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Richard V. Wagner (D-Lewiston)
RepRichard.Wagner@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Stephen D. Lovejoy (D-Portland)
steve.lovejoy@myfairpoint.net

Representative Mary Pennell Nelson (D-Falmouth)
RepMary.Nelson@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Helen Rankin (D-Hiram)
RepHelen.Rankin@legislature.maine.gov

Representative David E. Richardson (R-Carmel)*
RepDavid.Richardson@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Howard E. McFadden (R-Dennysville)
RepHoward.McFadden@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Peter B. Johnson (R-Greenville)
RepPete.Johnson@legislature.maine.gov

Ironies and Tragedies

It’s ironic at best--and tragic for our students at worst--that those fighting school consolidation under the banner of “local control” are looking to the state “for a better deal”(or a legislative repeal) to provide our students with access to better education.

School consolidation is not going away. Coordinating and sharing teaching resources, and spreading administrative costs across larger districts, are proven, effective methods for sustaining small rural schools and improving the level of education we are able to provide for our students. 80% of Maine’s school population is now consolidated.

The close vote on the island, despite months of one-sided, negative reports riddled with unsupported facts, shows there is no mandate here for fighting consolidation. Instead, we could assert some real local control—the kind that provides a better education for our students—by creating a positive, pro-active plan which leverages the benefits of regionalization and is worthy of support.

This effort might start with creating efficiencies in our existing school union: synchronizing schedules to enable the sharing of teaching resources, professional, and curricula development; consolidating contracts to eliminate the costs of multiple negotiations; consolidating purchasing to decrease expenses; collaborating to seek independent grant funding to support important educational initiatives; and creating school cultures which attract peninsula students to take advantage of Deer Isle-Stonington’s particular strengths (marine trades, the arts). These kinds of cooperative initiatives, savings, and educational improvements are necessary and should not require legislative mandate.

State and local funds are limited: funding will be awarded to those with the best, most effective performance, management, and governance; and withdrawn from those who don’t keep up. In turn, we will be asked to cut educational resources our students need; when instead we could embrace administrative change to ensure our kids don’t get left behind other parts of Maine or the country. The sooner we really shift our focus locally—recognizing it’s the children who matter, and not the school committee or where the superintendent is—and implement a good plan for administrative change, the more fiscally and educationally viable our schools will be for our students’, and our community’s, futures.

Wanted: Doll for School Board

The biggest laughs and most audience interaction during this weekend's screening of the movie Lars and the Real Girl at the Opera House came when it was noted that Lars's girlfriend--a life-size, anatomically correct blow up doll named Bianca, whom Lars ordered from the internet--had been elected to the school board in his far northern, tiny rural community.

"We need to get us one of those!" someone shouted one night.

"When can she move here?" asked an audience member loudly on another night.

And on the third night, there was simply a raucous chorus of laughter.

Interesting, right? That of all the jokes, both subtle and crass, in this movie about one community's open-armed acceptance of the delusional first love of one of their members, it's the one about school committee membership that most strikes home.

The point being: a blow up doll ordered from the internet would be better than what we've got.

As a veteran of local school committee meetings and of consulting with the schools, I am sad to say that I concur. While each school committee member is a well meaning and hard working member of our community, their individual efforts are so subjective, inconsistent, unrelated to educational research, and often hostile to actual educational improvement for our kids that it would be preferable to vote for Bianca--or someone most like her.

To wit, as we move toward town meeting, election, and school budgeting season here on the coast of Maine, a few more serious things to consider:

1. With two seats open on the school committee this election season, vote for a person who can
a) keep the big, long term picture of educational improvement in his or her sights, and not be distracted by the usual short term fears of angering the tax payers, and b) can learn to respect the guidelines for what is appropriate behavior for a governing board member of our schools. For instance, shaking one's head negatively during reports of programs approved previously by the board as part of the schools' budget is not appropriate behavior. Neither is badgering citizens who attend school committee meetings (note that none do, unless their child or the basketball program is threatened, as it is such a remarkably unpleasant experience); nor ignoring the priorities set for the current year to launch off on one's own agenda. A good school committee member, like the board member of any effective organization or profitable company, is there to govern: which is defined as establishing policy; hiring and evaluating the administration; and ensuring the funding of agreed upon programs as proposed and recommended by these administrators. It is not the role of school committee members, who have no education or expertise in educational matters, to determine on their own which programs have value and which do not. Neither is it the role of an effective school committee member to treat administrators, staff, and the public rudely or with belligerance.

2. Vote for individuals who either respect the administrators and educators they've hired, and their decisions; or move quickly and legally to let go those not meeting the standards of their job descriptions.

3. Urge your school administrators to do a thorough and proper job on the budget prior to submitting it to the school committee for approval. It is not the school committee's job to establish an abstract budget cap, based on what they imagine voters will pay, and then chew the budget up accordingly. It is the administrators' jobs to review all budget requests; match them up against the priorities established in a school's strategic plan; and bring to the school committee only the budget for what they agree, as administrators, is needed in the coming year.

4. Require that both the administrators and school committees do their jobs and fund continual educational improvement in our schools, by establishing a budget that meets the educational priorities and needs of our students and then researching and developing a variety of funding sources to meet that budget. The school committee is exceptionally lazy in its reliance on tax dollars: many of Maine's and the country's best performing schools receive supplemental funding for needed programs (on our island, think: foreign languages in K-8; a real music program at the high school level; and technology and technology integration that works) from both interested, generous individuals and foundations. The biggest, most valid job of a school committee member is to be able to ensure the funding of continuous educational improvements for our children. Vote for someone who is willing and able to do this.

5. And finally: don't allow anyone -- school administrators, teachers, or especially school committee members who are not subject to term limits but only to the lack of boundaries of their own egos -- to bludgeon your school budget with a sob story of what the taxpayers will or will not pay for. Au contraire, in our community we have proven time and again that people WANT to pay for the education of our next generations. That said, such support does not magically exist. Needs must be communicated to the community, and support organized--right up to the Get Out the Vote effort on the night ballots are cast.

You'd think only five steps shouldn't be so difficult, but these steps have proven to be nearly out of reach for voter and for our local schools. Vicious cycles breed vicious cycles, and the state of our school committee and schools are such that few who are truly qualified want to run for these positions. It's a shame, and our kids are hurt by it. This alone is the biggest argument in favor of school consolidation in Maine: not only are the long term benefits quite clear (the costs of negotiating ONE union contract vs. negotiating several--which, as all successful companies learned long ago, is incredibly cost ineffective), but so are the political and social benefits for our children of busting up the incredibly ineffective system of local school committees.

In the meantime, I'd vote for Bianca in a drop dead minute.

Next edition: What is Real Local Control?

We'll Educate You, Part 1

Last week I was invited to speak with students at Eastern Maine Community College (EMCC). It is always an honor to be asked to visit with college students, and I accept such invitations if I can. I learn a lot, and I love to share the many blessings of my life with young people. Beginning last year, the State of Maine is placing a lot of emphasis on community colleges; in large part because the full 4-year experience has become so ridiculously expensive (as a Bowdoin College alum, I can vouch for this). EMCC is a small huddle of 1960s era brick buildings, complete with the wear and tear one might expect after 40 some odd years. It is tightly situated between Interstate 95 (which one hopes makes it accessible, if not exactly breathable), Rollaway America, a strip of car dealerships, and Acadia Psychiatric Hospital. And it is filled with hard working, blue collar students from all walks of life: lobster fishermen, housewives rejoining the workforce, as well as first year college students. There were 20 of them in this English class, learning to interview and report on what they learn; they were all great. Hungry for life, eager to learn; a different breed from the University of Maine at Orono new media students I visited with several years ago, who were tongue-tied into their own iPod worlds. How can we, as artists and business people, better share our life experiences with the next generation of learners?

Education is a hot topic in Maine communities these days, as Governor Baldacci and the state legislature have legislated a consolidation of our local school districts. We're a rural state, very spread out; and over the years, good old Yankee desire for "local control" has wrought enough separate administrative districts to run the nation's schools. Administrative consolidation is the right idea, although the specifics of the consolidation law itself are causing serious road blocks. The biggest road block, however, is a serious misunderstanding of local control; lead, in fact, by a good-hearted but wrong-headed guy from this island. Local control ain't administrative control, particularly in regard to schools. Local control, in the best Yankee sense, is participation; and participation is something that is dying out in our small local communities. Local control of schools is about the people in the building, the principals and the teachers and the parents; not about where the superintendent is, how many meetings he attends, etc. It's about Parent Teachers Associations, and parents who spend a lot of time in the education of their own children. I will note here that we cannot even maintain a PTA in our community, because there is not enough parental participation in local education (other than basketball, that is). And "local control" is especially not about local school boards, which, in an attempt at representation, consist of well-meaning folks who know and seemingly care little-to-nothing about educational research, policy, or programs; each with their own specific memory axe ("this is how it was when I was in school . . . ") to grind.

How is "local control" best maintained and expressed, so our unique, individuistic Maine communities maintain their original essence? I'll leave that to the next, or to another, post . . .