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A few days ago (on Tuesday) we looked at consolidation through the eyes of superintendents and RPC members frustrated with the process, the law, and the Maine DOE. We linked to some recent articles and featured a number of quotes from an article in the October 20 Bangor Daily News. Today we look at how [...] Yesterday’s post pointed toward a complete change in how Maine goes about testing. Around the same time as we came upon that news, we also came upon an exceedingly useful bit of advice that we’d like to share:
(via Criggo) Back now to our regularly-scheduled post! One question that comes [...] Provided we’re not in the 8th grade! Due to budgetary considerations, several changes to the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) will occur in March 2009: Writing will not be assessed at grades 5 and 8 in either the standard MEA or the Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolio (PAAP). Computer-based assessment, the MEA online, will not occur at [...] A series of recent articles has school superintendents inveighing against Satan school consolidation to beat the band. They’ve got some real issues, these folks (with consolidation, that is), and they’re letting us know. See Consolidation plan not working, school superintendents say (Sun Journal, 10/18), School consolidation’s problems aired by superintendents (Daily Bulldog, 10/17), and SADs [...] Not surprisingly, school budgets are tightening, and tightening fast. Commissioner Gendron late Tuesday issued Informational Letter No. 29, General Purpose Aid in the FY 2010-11 State Budget. In light of the current national economic crisis and its effect and potential effect on state revenues, you are undoubtedly concerned about how state funding for education will [...] The newest MDOE reorganization update is just out; read it here. The updates increasingly read like an account of a horse race, especially in “The Tally”. I suppose it’s the season; the coverage of our elections bears a lot of resemblance to The Daily Racing Form. Be sure to bet the winner! I [...] Maybe you read the article “Lawmakers to look at new requirements for graduation” in Sunday’s Kennebec Journal. It was also listed over on the right under “Current Articles.” A reform of graduation requirements has been a motif over the last few years, with incremental changes occurring everywhere. The effort discussed here is the last big [...] That’s the Hawaii DOE! A great idea, getting the public involved. Click here to see “New DOE Proposed Reductions”. Click here to see the budget reduction proposals. Click here to see the Associated Press article. Click here to see the Maine DOE’s budget reduction proposals (link will be supplied when available!) [...] The Maine Department of Education has just issued an informational letter concerning emergency rules (one has to wonder where the fire is!) for construction of “a Model of Consolidated and Integrated Secondary and Postsecondary Education.” This “model would include facilities for: A regional high school; A fully integrated career and technical high school; A higher [...] The MDI folks are on reorganization like a dog on a bone. At their excellent web site, they stay up to date on everything happening in the State concerning reorganization. Thursday the MDOE issued a new status report. The MDI folks have created a map and a table representing the data in useful ways.
Those rascally right-wingers over at the Maine Heritage Policy Center are up to no good. They’ve developed a web site that allows you, the taxpayer, to figure out what this large enterprise called government — including local school districts — costs! Take a look for yourself: MaineOpenGov.org The site is a little clunky, and a [...] “We’re from the government and we’re here to help!” The Adequate Yearly Progress provisions of “No Child Left Behind” have made some folks unhappy: Many schools in Maine came up short in one of those ways, a fact that has caused some superintendents to question the federal education requirements. Mountain Valley High School has been [...] Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference: Maine has withheld subsidy checks this month for nearly a third of the state’s school districts, delaying a monthly infusion of funds for 91 school systems. Department of Education officials say the districts have not submitted required information about expenditures and student enrollment. District superintendents reached on Thursday [...] on last year’s round of testing. It doesn’t look good for the old home team. Here’s the piece in yesterday’s Portland Press Herald. (Have you noticed they always seem to get the news one day earlier than the Bangor paper? Rather the same way that Portland gets our weather earlier!) Take a look at the [...] They’re doing good work on the education beat at the Portland Press Herald1. Now they’re onto the case of the 8th grade writing exam: More than three-quarters of Maine’s eighth-graders performed below standard on the state writing test for 2007-08, prompting education officials to toss the results and try to figure out why so many [...] As we come down to it, the money…isn’t there! It isn’t there in a couple of ways. First, the State is not delivering the “savings” back to the districts. The greybeards among us might recall that way back in, say, ought six, this was the very reason for “administrative consolidation.” But now the savings, where [...] It’s not a happy time in the land of consolidation, despite brave pronouncements by the State, and, in general, support from the major newspapers. Here’s the latest (today!) update from the State. Through excerpts from this document, we cut to the chase: Reorganization plans (42) Alternative plans (34) Exempt SAUs (11) Unapproved Configurations (9) This [...] From the Portland Press-Herald, State to survey schools for fuel assistance: The Maine Department of Education might seek money from the Legislature to help school districts offset budget-busting fuel prices this winter, a spokesman said Monday. The department plans to survey districts across the state in the coming weeks to determine which ones failed to [...] |
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