Comment on How we can reform Maine education

The Legislature earlier this year effectively emasculated proficiency-based education by making it optional as a graduation requirement. Had legislators asked older teachers who worked through a nearly identical initiative called the “learning results” in the late 1990s, which failed under the stress of its own weight, they might have saved themselves the time. Certainly, the Department of Education will trudge on and insist proficiency-based education is not dead, but how lively can any law be when the Legislature votes to make it optional? Having spent 25 years owning, running or working in private businesses and 25 more years as a public school teacher, I have insight to offer. The fundamental problem that killed both efforts to hold students accountable for what they know and teachers for what they teach was the fact that thousands of students were not working at their grade level.