Now that we have the comments from Maine’s Race to the Top application why we did so poorly is clear. In the coming weeks there will surely be some finger pointing and “It wasn’t me” going around. Some of it has begun already. So who deserves to wear the dunce cap?
I wasn’t impressed by the Race, or at least as much as I had hoped to be. Of course I hoped Maine would win some cash. We could really use the money, but realistically Maine’s chances were slim. Many states perused reforms far more aggressive than Maine’s. Do I agree 100% with the Obama Administration’s idea of education reform? Absolutely not. In some cases there is an emphasis on things that aren’t effective and a lack of effort on things that are. The are some questions as to the long term cost of pursuing the short term gain of the Race cropping up and bias against rural states as well.
Stephen Bowen has reported on the RttT reviewers’ comments. According to Bowen reviewers discussed a few overall issues with Maine’s application. The application lacked any hard details on implementation, the plan itself was weak, and the lack of stake-holder buy-in tainted the whole effort. ““Key support from the state’s principal and teacher associations and parent constituencies is not included and considered a significant weakness,” said one reviewer.
Bowen believes three groups should share the blame for Maine’s RttT failure; the DOE, local districts, the state teachers and principals unions.
1. The Department, for putting together a plan that lacked boldness and, though heavy on platitudes, was far too light on details with regard to implementation. More and better is what we needed.
2. The 133 local school districts who failed to support the plan. What, the status quo is really working so well for you districts that you couldn’t buy into a plan so benign that every reviewer criticized it for its lack of ambition? That absence of support, detailed in the very first section of the plan, hurt the state’s chances from the get-go.
3. The education special interests in Augusta, namely the Maine Principal’s Association and the Maine Education Association. Look around you, gentle reader, the system of schooling you see is their creation, and they would rather turn down $70 million in funding from Washington than change it in any way that threatens their stranglehold on power. Oh, they’ll take the money without the strings attached. You won’t see any of them turning their noses up at the $39 million in “edujobs” money coming from Washington. But ask them to reform, ask them to be more transparent and more accountable, and ask them to give up even one iota of their monopoly power (through the creation of charter schools, for instance), and you get nothing but howls of protest about “federal blackmail.”
Union president Chris Galgay said the MEA wasn’t entirely at fault for how Maine’s RttT attempt turned out. He’s right. The DOE was holding the reins here. This happened on their watch and they put forth a weak application, plain and simple. Although there were a few words of praise, Maine put forward an uninspiring plan. The plan did not convince reviewers that any meaningful reforms the U.S. DOE was looking for would be implemented. The vague nature of much of the application could point to one of three things. Perhaps the DOE did not put their best foot forward on the RttT effort because they just didn’t care. The DOE may have realized the lack of quality in the state’s reform efforts, attempting to mask it in generalities. Lastly, and in my mind least likely, the DOE may not have realized how poor their effort was.
Who is to blame for the unambitious mess that was Maine’s RttT application? The MEA could take some responsibility for parts of the application. Their fingerprints are all over “innovative schools”. The MEA worked on LD 1799. Ultimately the DOE was in charge of painting this picture. Yes the MEA had influence on what colors to use where, but the DOE is the one who presented a Velvet Elvis and passed it off as something fresh and inspired.
Failure to garner stake-holder support hampered Maine’s chances. Take an already lackluster application and couple that with no support. Can you see how we were doomed from the start? With no buy-in, reviewers questioned if any of these tepid reforms would ever become implemented. Maine has a history of reforms never leaving the starting gate as well. Just like the first round, with no community support there was no hope.
Here the MEA deserves a little more chiding than they received with the application. Chris Galgay said that “every local association made their own decision on it.” While that is true, one cannot discount the influence of the parent organization. The MEA did provide some releases on the Race to the Top. In “Race to the Top – or Bottom?” the MEA wrote in opposition of linking student performance to teacher evaluations, expressed skepticism for Common Core standards, and supported innovative schools. The MEA stated they were concerned the RttT sought to alter programs that had been working well for the past twenty years in another release. They also said here that none of the three bills enacted to meet RttT requirements were popular with educators. That is an odd thing to say given the MEA worked with the DOE to develop one of those bills, LD 1801 “Innovative Schools”. Here (pdf warning) the MEA calls the RttT a “federal lottery”. The MEA also sent out a FAQ answering a number of questions and included two other advisory attachments. One of those questions was the following: “Should local association presidents now sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on RttT?” The answer at the time?
Maybe.If your local association leadership has met with your Superintendent and had an opportunity to review and discuss your SAU’s “Preliminary Scope of Work”; and if your local association is willing to commit to engage in the implementation of that draft work plan; then the MEA would recommend that your local association president consider signing the [Memorandum of Agreement].
If your local SAU has checked “Yes” on D(2)(iv)(b) that it intends to use evaluations to inform compensation, promotion and retention, MEA recommends that local associations NOT sign the MOU.
Not really a glowing recommendation.
Certainly these releases were influenced local affiliates’ thoughts on the RttT. Yes, it was their own decision to support it or not, but it would be hard to believe that local unions don’t take at least some advice and direction from their state level entity’s opinions. It would also be safe to assume that some of the information from the MEA trickled down to local district administration as well.
So when Galgay says, “I think [local affiliates] didn’t have enough information, didn’t know what they were signing on to,” one has to wonder how that can be. As shown, there are a number of MEA sources local affiliates could have consulted. The DOE also invited superintendents, along with at least one school board member and one union representative, to attend informational conversations on RttT. The MEA alerted members of this here (pdf warning). Galgay did say that many district were not represented for at least one meeting because they were “just too busy and have too much on their plate”. There were also numerous reports from the Kennebec Journal’s Matt Stone and other papers. At the national level many major news outlets covered the Race. A variety of opinions could be obtained from blogs. Rick Hess, Jay Matthews, Anderson Russo, Tom Vander Ark, and the many bloggers of Education Week are just a tiny selection of online resources on RttT. It is possible affiliate presidents had the information, saw the poor effort the DOE had made and said no thanks. It is also possible that affiliate presidents assumed the MEA HQ had done its homework and was giving them all the facts they needed on the RttT effort, when they were really only getting one side of the story from the top. If that is the case, then the MEA HQ failed to properly inform its members on this issue.
It is important to note that we do not know this to be true. These speculations are based on what is public. Since the MEA HQ will not return my requests for information – I have given up submitting them – it is likely we won’t be able to say which scenario is the correct one. The HQ or local members are of course welcome to provide us with more information here.
It may sound like I’ve characterized the MEA as some cartoon villain, twisting their mustache as they tie the hapless RttT application to the tracks. That is not so. The MEA does have considerable pull on state education matters. They are not an inconsequential union. However, the MEA’s thoughts on RttT should have been no secret to the DOE. The burden was on the DOE to convince local affiliates to sign on. This is necessarily the way things should be, just the way the are. The DOE should have known the MEA had strong reservations about teacher evaluations based on student performance and other areas, prepared accordingly, and reached out to local affiliates more aggressively. Of course local unions may have rejected any RttT application no matter what was in it or how it was presented. This is likely not the case at all. It really boils down to the DOE not making an argument to the affiliates that was more convincing than what the MEA HQ was telling them.
Local school districts who did not sign on likely fall into three categories. Some may have read the application, realized it was DOA, and decided to reject it with the hope of something more substantial coming in the future. Others likely disagreed with the idea of a competition for education money. Finally, there is a possibility district leaders who rejected the application were happy with the way things are going. There are surely as many reasons as there are superintendents, it’s anyone’s which scenario is more prevalent.
Reflecting on the outcome, Stephen Bowen said mediocrity was defended. He believes the state will miss the learning opportunity presented. “So, like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the state’s Race to the Top application will likely be carted off to sit in some repository for government documents deep in the bowels of the state library and will never be heard from again,” said Bowen.
What is the takeaway here? Let’s stop playing lip-service to transparency. Decisions best when those making them have as much information as possible. Not to mention, Maine’s parents and students deserve that. The biggest, however is the lack of communication and collaboration. There is the possibility the DOE failed to properly express itself to Maine’s school districts, local union affiliates, and the MEA. It is a fact they failed to do so with the U.S. Department of Education. There is a possibility the MEA did not provide its affiliates with other sides of the issues besides their own.
We all love a good debate. Honest debate brings about the best sorts of change. That is not what we see at the top of Maine’s education system. There is a lot of arm-crossed huffing from the MEA, but to give credit where credit is due they performed admirably during the stakeholder meetings, which were their idea in the first place. The DOE at times seems to not know how to haggle. It’s easy to imagine these players as a train with engines on opposite ends, both each conductor wanting to go different ways at once. A little more openness and collaboration between parties couldn’t hurt.
I just spent over 1,500 words placing blame for Maine’s Race to the Top failure. The intent of this article was not to find someone to scold or make a scapegoat. As I mentioned before, I am going to hold out hope that someone will see this is a teachable moment. Those in power, at the DOE, MEA, the Legislature, and other parts of the Maine’s education community, may not see it, though I sincerely hope that they do. It may, however, be taken notice of by someone waiting in the wings, with vision and strong determination.
If we want to move forward we must do the hard, sometimes uncomfortable, examinations of our failures. An engineer who is not critical of possibly safety hazards in a bridge could end up killing others. The individual that does not self-critique can slip into a dull pattern of mediocrity, missing out on one of the best aspects of life; discovery and growth. Life-long learning. Imagine that.
Account
Start a blog
Send us your news
Post an event
See it. Fix it.
