A decade ago, education experts were urging states to establish rigorous
academic standards and hold students and schools accountable for meeting
them. Maine and Massachusetts embraced the reform movement. But the two
states traveled down different paths.
Maine in 1996 created Maine Learning Results, which was hailed as the
most comprehensive and ambitious effort of its kind in the nation. It
set high standards in eight subject areas and required 220 school
districts to create their own assessment systems to determine whether
students mastered the material.
In contrast, Massachusetts created lower standards and required
students to pass a state exam to get a diploma.
Today, the two states stand in sharp contrast.
Maine's efforts have stalled, with Gov. John Baldacci now calling for
a yearlong moratorium on local assessments to give officials time to
figure out ways to fix the system.
While Maine's scores on national tests have remained stagnant over
the past decade, most states have seen improvement. Few have seen scores
jump as much Massachusetts, which last year had the nation's highest
proportion of students at or above the "proficient" level in reading and
math in grades four and eight.
The Bay State's system of standards and assessment over the past
decade has made it "something of an education policy star," according to
Education Week.
Massachusetts' success has some in Maine wondering whether simpler is
better when it comes to education reform.
Learning Results proved to be too ambitious, and the state failed to
provide school districts with adequate support and clear guidance, said
Robert Shafto, executive director for the Center for Educational
Services in Auburn.
"We overwhelmed people," he said. "We got 10 pounds of reform in a
five-pound bag."
Test scores tell the story.
A decade ago, Maine's students were outperforming students in
Massachusetts and the rest of the nation in reading and math.
But since then, Massachusetts' scores have surged, while Maine's
scores have remained flat or declined.
For example, between 1992 and 2005, Massachusetts' eighth-grade math
score climbed from 273 to 292 on a 500-point scale - a gain of about two
grade levels. Only two other states showed more improvement.
During the same time period, Maine's eighth-grade math scores inched
up from 279 to 281. Only one other state - Iowa - showed less
improvement. Maine in 2005 was ranked 23rd in eighth-grade math.
Maine's eighth-graders' improved a bit in reading, but most states
saw larger gains.
The difference can't be explained by money.
Maine in 2003 spent $9,521 per pupil when adjusted for regional cost
differences, the seventh highest in the nation and about $1,000 per
student more than Massachusetts.
Over the past two decades, per-pupil spending in Maine increased more
than in any other state except for Georgia, according to a report
released Friday by the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The Education Week report, "Quality Counts 2006," found that factors
such as per-pupil spending and student demographics had less of an
impact on student achievement than a state's history of raising
expectations and standards. Ranking states by efforts to improve
standards and accountability, Education Week placed Massachusetts third
in the nation and Maine 42nd.
Maine Education Commissioner Sue Gendron said the trends in Maine's
test scores are alarming.
"I want Maine kids to be competitive with the rest of the world," she
said. "We are losing ground, and that is not acceptable. As a state, we
have not changed, and other states have."
Mark Eastman, superintendent of SAD 17 in western Maine, said policy
makers should consider the success of Massachusetts and other states.
"We have been leading the pack until recently," he said. "But now the
pack has caught up to us and gone by us."
Michael Sentance, the New England representative for the U.S.
Department of Education, said Maine Learning Results is the most
ambitious reform agenda he has ever studied, in its breadth of content,
its required level of proficiency and its system of local assessments.
But that system poses a huge challenge, and it's clear the state has
a lot of work left to do, he said.
Massachusetts' 1993 reform law reduced local control over education
and gave the state a greater role. By 2003, all students had to pass an
exit exam in math and English to graduate.
Sentance said Massachusetts decided to start with lower standards
that could be raised over time. Despite protests, the state created an
exam called the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.
When 10th-graders first took the test in 1998, 45 percent passed. In
2001, the first year the test counted toward graduation for
10th-graders, the numbers of students with passing scores jumped 30
percentage points, because the students took the tests more seriously,
he said.
Massachusetts requires schools to tutor students who fail. For
students who continue to fail, a principal can recommend the student's
entire body of work go to a review committee. Today, more than 90
percent pass the test.
The state gives "underperforming" districts two years to show
improvement or face a state takeover.
Critics say the state exam has caused many schools to focus efforts
on marginal students at the expense of the better students. Also,
because the standards are relatively low, it hasn't caused the bulk of
the state's students to aim higher.
A Boston Globe study last year found that the test has little effect
on those who enter the state's public colleges. In 2004, more than a
third of incoming freshmen from public high schools had to take a
remedial course in reading, writing, or math, down only 2 percentage
points from 2002, when passing the test became a graduation requirement.
In Maine, as policymakers pushed for reform, the same tension
developed over local control and state authority. But in Maine, local
control won out.
In 1995, Gov. Angus King proposed that high school students pass an
exit test before they graduate, but many local school districts said
they didn't want to give the state that much power.
Maine educators also argued that "high-stakes tests" would be unfair
to students who know the material but struggle with tests, and that
teachers would simply teach to the tests.
King said in an interview last week that political opposition forced
him to compromise and abandon the idea of exit exams. That may have been
a mistake, he said.
"If you want to measure kids in math, why does Brunswick have to have
a different test than Windham?" he asked. "Isn't long division the same
in both places?"
He also said that Learning Results was never implemented as
envisioned and that many school districts have created too many tests.
Maine's system of local assessments is now widely disliked by
teachers as a cumbersome, time-consuming mandate that interferes with
classroom instruction. The class of 2002 was supposed to be the first
class for whom diplomas were linked with meeting Learning Results
standards. But that deadline has been pushed back several times. The
current deadline is the class of 2010, and some legislators suspect that
date won't stick either.
In addition, the diploma link has unraveled. The law was amended last
year so students who fail to meet Learning Results standards will still
be able to get a diploma. They just won't receive a diploma with a
Learning Results "endorse- ment."
Gendron, the education commissioner, said many schools have overbuilt
the assessment systems. One high school, for example, created 130
different assessments for social studies.
"The assessment was driving everything as opposed to teaching and
learning," she said.
Gendron said about a third of the state's school districts have
created systems that are working fine, a third are still in the process
and a third are struggling. Small school districts, she said, are having
the biggest problems.
Policymakers mistakenly assumed that school districts could do the
work on their own, but it proved to be too big a task for many,
especially small districts, said Shafto, the education consultant.
"It sounded like a good idea. We all went along with it," he said.
"In retrospect, it was largely an exercise in wishful thinking."
Eastman, the SAD 17 superintendent who also chairs a state advisory
committee on Learning Results and the federal reform initiative No Child
Left Behind, said policymakers should use the moratorium to focus
Learning Results on core areas, such as math and English. Supporters of
Learning Results, though, worry that a moratorium would embolden those
who have long opposed Learning Results and dash hopes for real education
reform.
Many districts have done a good job creating assessments, so the
state shouldn't put the law on hold because other districts have failed
to make the effort, said Peter Geiger, who was vice chair of the task
force that wrote Learning Results.
"I would rather see us go forward," he said. "It's the holding back
that has hurt us in the process."
Duke Albanese, who was King's education commissioner, said some of
the Learning Results problems have nothing to do with the law.
He said nobody had anticipated that the federal government would
create No Child Left Behind, which created more work and confusion for
teachers and further eroded support for Learning Results.
Gendron will appear before the Legislature's Education Committee on
March 15. She will discuss the moratorium, which the Legislature would
have to approve, and her intention is to create a task force that will
report to the Legislature next year with a plan to fix the assessment
system.
She said the task force will define a core curriculum at the high
school level and also look at creating statewide tests for math and
language arts that all students would take after completing a course.
The tests in effect would be small exit exams.
Albanese said a statewide exit exam may be more efficient, but a
mixture of assessments presents a more realistic picture of whether
students have mastered the material.
While Massachusetts has shown quick success at boosting students at
the bottom, Albanese said, Learning Results when fully implemented will
improve the performance of all students because the standards are
higher. He urges patience.
"It will take time for performance to grow," he said. "Absolutely."
Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at:
tbell@pressherald.com
