Maine:
Lifting the Bar

by David J. Hoff

On the state's 1998 reading exam, just 1 percent of 4th graders and even fewer 8th graders were rated as distinguished, the highest classification. Twenty-two percent of the 4th graders and 18 percent of the 8th graders scored at the advanced level.

Maine is routinely recognized for student achievement, but the state believes it can do better.

"As a state, we're prepared to say, 'We're going to lift the bar,' " says Commissioner of Education J. Duke Albanese. "We look great when we compare ourselves to other states because the other states are scoring so poorly."

The data Maine will collect will be both far-reaching and specific. Starting this year, the 14-year-old Maine Educational Assessment will test students in English, math, science, and social studies. For the first time, the assessment will be linked to the standards the state adopted in 1997.

The statewide assessment will provide individual student results on both a standardized scale and a performance ranking, identifying students' performance as "distinguished," "advanced," "basic," or "below basic." It also will report scores on the school, district, and statewide levels.

Eventually, Albanese hopes the testing system will link its scores to test scores from other industrialized countries.

Of the 41 countries that took part in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, Maine ranked higher than all but one in science and behind only six in math, Albanese says.

The state education department is also working to ensure that standards-based testing is not a once-a-year event. Officials there are training curriculum directors and teachers in how to analyze the standards, plan lessons with them in mind, and design tests to determine whether students have met the standards at the end of a series of lessons.

The result will be a comprehensive package that includes a portfolio of student work, along with state scores comparing individual students with their classmates, schoolmates, and peers around the state, country, and world.

Unlike other states deeply invested in reforms based on academic standards and assessments, Maine does not have a system of rewards and sanctions for schools. A task force of state leaders is discussing the sort of accountability measures to recommend to the legislature, possibly this year.

But Albanese and others say the tradition of granting towns and school boards independence from state decisions makes it unlikely the state would adopt severe sanctions. Accountability measures are likely to "look more like technical assistance and visiting teams" of experts, the commissioner says.

On another front, state funding for schools started to recover last year from the difficulties of the early 1990s, when Maine's economy slowed to a crawl.

In a 1998 supplemental-spending bill, the legislature added $16 million to a fiscal 1999 education budget approved one year earlier as the second half of a biennial budget. The extra money raised the total increase to $33.2 million--the largest single-year boost in school spending in eight years--and the total school budget to $558.3 million in state funds.

Lawmakers also started to address the problems facing school infrastructure last year.

They put $20 million into a fund for no-interest loans to pay for districts' construction projects. In 1997, a state survey found that districts needed $200 million to shore up their buildings.

In addition, the education department will recommend that the legislature put two $40 million bond initiatives up for votes this year and next.

© 1999 Editorial Projects in Education

Vol. 18, number 17, page 149