Maine ASCD Weblog

Joyce Freeman, 1935-2007

Maine ASCD mourns the loss of Joyce Freeman who passed on September 24, 2007.

In addition to being a teacher and administrator in Brunswick and MSAD 6, Joyce served as President of Maine ASCD from 1988-1989. Prior to this, Joyce served on the Maine ASCD Board of Directors from 1983 and was on the Board during the time the Journal of Maine Education (JME) was founded. During this period, the JME grew quickly to become the high quality publication that it is today winning the Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence In Affiliate Publication from ASCD four times!

Joyce will also be remembered as an excellent Faculty Mentor in the Masters in Education Distance Learning Program at the University of New England.

We are indebted to this fine professional for her service to the Association and to the children of Maine.

More about Joyce's career on the Maine ASCD Board

Joyce's obituary in the Portland Press Herald

~John Brandt

Congratulations Jeanne

Jeanne Whynot-Vickers will be Portland's interim superintendent through June, according to the Portland Press Herald. Ms. Whynot-Vickers was the district's assistant superintendent and has been a teacher and administrator in the Portland Schools for 26 years. Read a message from the Interim Superintendent.

Jeanne is an active member of Maine ASCD and served on the Board of Directors from 2000-2002 and as Treasurer of Maine ASCD from 2002 - 2006.

Congratulations Jeannie!

~John Brandt

Congratulations Mr. McKeon

Maine ASCD congratulates Martin McKeon, the 2007 Teacher of the Year.

The announcement was made last week in a surprise visit to Sanford High School where Mr. McKeon is a history teacher. According to the WCSH-6 website:

"McKeon was a 1975 graduate of Sanford High. He returned to his hometown 23 years ago to teach social studies to freshman students. He'll go on to compete in the selection of National Teacher of the Year, which will be announced next April at the White House."

See a video of the announcement. [requires MS Media Player]

Past Maine Teachers of the Year include Peter Lancia of Congin School in Westbrook and Betsy Wandishin of Crooked River Elem in Casco. Both Peter and Betsy are Maine ASCD Board members.

~John Brandt

Adolescent Literacy is HOT

So says the International Reading Association and reported by blogger Kate at the Center for Leadership in Education. This should come as no news to Maine educators who have been struggling with this issue for several years.

It looks like Maine educators may have been paying attention to the research and guidance that has been offered for the past few years. Our attendance at conference sessions over the past few years on the topic of literacy has been growing and we fully expect that trend to continue. For that reason you won't want to miss Peter Lancia's workshop "Leadership in Literacy: Developing a School-wide Partnership" on October 9th. There are still seats available, but they are going fast.

Next spring we will be bringing in Jim Burke to present specifically on adolescent literacy issues. Information on that program is still in the development phase, but stay tuned.

Also if you are a Literacy Leader in your district, why not consider joining the Maine Literacy Leaders Network, a Network of Maine ASCD. Any Maine ASCD member may join the network and immediately be linked with others in the group via the MLL listserv.

Maine ASCD will soon be adding a Adolescent Literacy resources section to our website that will be for members only. Stay tuned members.

And of course if you are not a member, you can join today!

~John Brandt

Capitol Hill

The New York Times and Education Week report two stories about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that should get a lot of educators' attention.

The Times piece reports that during Monday's public testimony on the reauthorization of NCLB, not too many people were happy with the draft of the legislation that has been proposed by the committee. Criticism appears to be coming from all directions. Congressional Republicans are not happy with the draft, and Secretary Spellings has also voiced disapproval. Testimony from several leading civil rights groups including the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the National Urban League, the Center for American Progress and Achieve Inc., were all in opposition to portions of the proposal. The Times reports:

"All protested that a proposal in the bill for a pilot program that would allow districts to devise their own measures of student progress, rather than using statewide tests, would gut the law’s intent of demanding that schools teach all children, regardless of poverty, race or other factors, to the same standard."

Also criticizing the draft were representatives of the two major teacher unions. Again from the Times:

"Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, and Toni Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers — told the committee that they would not support the bill in its current form and that they objected to a proposal to count student test scores in granting pay bonuses."

In an unrelated story reported in Education Week "...a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests that at least 6 percent of the 2,790 schools facing the severest sanctions under NCLB took none of the law’s prescribed actions to initiate improvements." And apparently the Department of Education isn't checking to see if the states are doing anything about these schools either. In a study conducted last year by the American Enterprise Institute, researchers reported "that most schools in the law’s corrective-action and restructuring phases had chosen to make few changes," according to the Education Week story. Here is a link to a "highlights" review of the GAO report plus links to the whole report.

This weekend, ASCD members from around the country are descending on Capitol Hill as part of the 3rd annual Leadership for Effective Advocacy and Practice (LEAP) Institute. The Institute is "designed to bridge the divide between educational policy and practice through effective advocacy," according to the ASCD website. LEAP prepares leaders to advance ASCD's advocacy goals through its legislative agenda, strengthens the leadership skills of emerging and diverse leaders, deepens knowledge and perspectives about ASCD positions, and enhances understanding of ASCD's positions with policymakers.

Carol Marcotte (immediate past president of Maine ASCD) and Deborah Baker (President Elect) are attending the LEAP conference this year and have scheduled meetings with several members Maine's Congressional delegation while in Washington. I'm sure NCLB will be on top of the discussion list. If you have specific ideas or comments on the NCLB legislation, feel free to comment here and we'll pass that information along to Carol and Deb.

~John Brandt

More Future Thinking

A colleague of mine recently invited me to “meet him” in one of the virtual rooms of an on-line community called Second Life. If you have never heard of Second Life, you will have to read up on it here and experience it yourself – or simply skip ahead five paragraphs.

This had been the second request in a week’s time to participate in something in Second Life and since my first experience left much to be desired, I was hoping my colleague would serve as a mentor/guide in this experience.

Sadly, my second Second Life experience was not much better than the first. I admitted that I simply “didn’t get it” and have subsequently felt that I was truly a “digital immigrant.” I would be forced to turn in my iPod and the keys to the wiki, banished back to a world of broadcast television, vinyl records and 8-tracks.

Fortunately, someone posted something on YouTube that captured my sense of frustration with the Second Life experience. So, perhaps it’s not just me. Again, if you have not experienced the “real” Second Life, this video will make no senses.

This all got me to thinking of the future of education, the Gen X’ers and the Gen Y’ers who might more readily be described as the Barney Generation or the Video Game Generation; soon to be displaced by the Broadband and GPS Generation. It occurred to me that these young adults had engaged with digital toys as youngsters that were not available to me in my youth and that these “acculturations” had shaped appreciations and competencies that I did not posses. I’ve come to believe that perhaps the “critical period” for absorbing these acculturation may have passed for me and that I may never understand Second Life.

<For those unfamiliar with Second Life – START HERE>

Well this stuff has all been spinning in my head recently when I came across a fabulous on-line resource that everyone who cares about the future of education needs to visit and investigate. Called simply the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education it is an interactive display of ideas, trend analyses, critical issues and dilemmas. Built by two organizations, the Knowledgeworks Foundation and The Institute for the Future, the map is…

“…a forecast — a credible, internally consistent view of how future forces will affect the components of public education. It is not a prediction; it does not claim to be a certain statement of what will happen. As a result, the map is most helpful if users do not quarrel with the forecast. Since the future as spelled out in the map might plausibly happen, you can make use of it to spark your thinking about education, regardless of whether or not the map turns out to be a perfectly accurate prediction.” – cited from the Knowledgeworks website.

Everyone who is interested in the future of education needs to look at this. While not exhaustive in content, the map encourages interaction and discussion and should provide many hours of healthy debate. I could see setting up an entire semester’s course on the topic and use this map as the starting point, but adding it to one of your professional learning community topics would be a grand start. Check it out!

~John Brandt

NCLB Reauthorization

I just finished reading ASCD’s comments to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. I guess my reaction is, if the “comments” to the “discussion draft” of the reauthorization legislation are this complicated, I wonder what the draft legislation looks like?

I can remember the good old days when I was able to quote chapter and verse from PL94-142 – the Education of All Handicapped Children Act – the first national special education law. Perhaps I was young and more vigorous, but it did seem simpler in those days.

The New York Times and Washington Post are reporting that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings thinks the draft of the legislation is “just too darn confusing…” According to this source she states, “To make it more complex, less transparent, more obfuscated I think would be a huge mistake, particularly when we’re on the run, we’re on the move.”

Information about the review process is also reported in eSchool News online which describes how the draft of the law emphasizes the importance of "21st-century skills and the wider use of data."

In ASCD’s comments to the Committee, they note concerns about the addition of several new layers of record keeping, reporting and data collection. The ASCD comments state:

"While it is necessary for school districts to engage in some of the record keeping, especially in view of the extensive new flexibility around multiple measures of assessment, use of growth models, indicators of achievement and more, the new requirements in this draft appear onerous. Each of the prospective changes in the draft include more reporting requirements. These new requirements run the risk of making this new proposed Title I almost unworkable at the local level. What is certain is that more resources will be required to comply with requirements outside the classroom. We urge you to keep this in mind as alterations are made. The overwhelming goal of this proposal is to improve education, not to place undue stress and burdensome record keeping on schools in order to meet numerous state and federal requirements affiliated with this proposal."

So, it appears we have a long way to go before this process will be finished and there is still plenty of time for input. If you are interested in this topic, you are encouraged to get involved and become one of ASCD’s Educator Advocates and if you would like to read the ASCD comments and learn more about the process, visit the ASCD Action Center.

~John Brandt

Trends and more trends

I just read Ron Bancroft’s column in Tuesday’s Portland Press Herald. In it he talks about teacher motivation, student achievement and the general trends of education in Maine. He notes that he has seen “little documentable improvement in performance” as measured by the Maine Educational Assessment in the last 15 years. He also talks about “Maine’s commitment to local control and to an endless participatory process that has given those with narrow interests the opportunity to extend the process at will.” And, he reminds us of Ted Sizer’s book Horace’s Compromise, suggesting that perhaps Maine schools have fallen victim to the compromise of “just getting along.”

Adding to this exchange was a revealing article, also in Tuesday’s Portland Press Herald, entitled “Maine braces for rise in elderly population.” The article notes that Maine now has the oldest population in the nation with a median age of 41.2, “almost five years above the national median and about 13 years higher than Utah.”

None of this is news to those of you who attended the two Future of Maine’s Economy Conferences that Maine ASCD co-sponsored last year and the year before. The inverted age distribution chart showing Maine’s demographics was quite shocking to me when Charlie Colgan of the Muskie School of Public Service showed it to the audience two years ago. It means that unless we get a rapid infusion of young people into Maine we will soon have very few people working here to support and care for all our senior citizens and a workforce that will not generate enough to support the Maine economy or generate enough tax revenue to keep state and municipal governments operating.

One has to wonder if these trends are connected and if they are leading us to ruin.

~John Brandt

What We Can Learn?

I have not contributed to the discussion about the recent events in the Portland School District partially because it really is something the people of Portland need to deal with and partially because I could not think of something constructive to say - until now.

For those of you far from Portland, or having been “away” this summer, the story is simply this. At the beginning of the summer the Portland School Department notified their school board that there was a deficit in the FY06-07 budget. As time passed the amount of that budget skyrocketed to something in the $2.5 million range (the exact amount is still to be determined but is commonly believed to now be less).

Meetings were held (some in secret which contributed to the general level of suspicion) and editorials and news accounts of the issue clogged the local media. Quotes from school officials appeared to demonstrate a general lacking of understanding of the basics of the budget and why and how there was a deficit. This eventually led to the resignation of the district’s business manager and general calls for the resignation of the superintendent. This was followed by more meetings and discussions including one where the superintendent’s role would be limited to curriculum issues and not financial ones. More editorials, more confusion and ultimately the superintendent, Mary Jo O’Connor resigned.

While this is clearly not the end of the story, there has been a collective sigh of relief palpable in the media and perhaps some sense of satisfaction.

The Portland Press Herald who has been leading the parade calling for the superintendent’s departure had an editorial Friday which details most of this process and offers something of a “lessons learned” theme. In the title of that editorial – “Lack of skills, not funds, hurt city schools chief; A talented educator, Mary Jo O'Connor lacked financial acumen and political savvy” – you can see two important lessons.

But I think there is one additional lesson to be learned which is not spoken about in this editorial. It is an issue which came to a head last year during the TABOR debate and then repeated itself in the legislative session which ultimately resulted in the school district consolidation requirements that is now consuming Maine educators.

The issue/lesson to be learned is the cost of education and the perception of the general public of the value of that cost.

There are many pieces to this issue – far too many for me to articulate clearly or precisely in this blog entry. But, this issue is not going away and I expect it will get more contentious in the months and years ahead.

The simple facts are school enrollments in Maine are going down, budgets are going up, and no one is quite sure if the kids are learning. I add this last part since there is no common rubric by which we can accurately measure this, so in my mind it is still a bit of an unknown. But it is clear that the general public’s patience in all this is growing thin and events like what just happened in Portland cannot be helpful in instilling confidence.

This summer’s events may have been a “teachable moment” for Maine’s school boards and senior administration. I hope they were paying attention.

~John Brandt