The Problem:
Even broaching the topic of Education in Maine I understand I am walking on dangerous ground. Education is a very contentious topic in our country today. In general, our country is extremely divided and I’m not sure there’s a place we’re more divided than when it comes to education. Our education system in America is headed in the wrong direction. Regardless of whether you’re following standardized testing or simply using the eye test the American education system is underperforming and by all measurements is getting worse year by year. Within the United States, the State of Maine is not only underperforming relative to most of the country but is headed in the wrong direction moving from being in the top 20 as recently as 20191, and top 5 in the early 90s2, to being ranked somewhere between 343 & 434 depending on which report you’re reading. I understand this data is based on standardized testing which isn’t perfect but if you’re paying attention, you can clearly see that our students have not graduated with the knowledge, problem-solving skills, etc. they need to get hired, thrive, and succeed in this world, especially when compared to past generations. This is a trend we need to reverse. Our children are our future, and we owe it to them to do better for them which is something we can all agree on. Where we tend to disagree is on how.
My Approach:
Before I get into how to best interpret what the main problem is I think it’s important to let you know how I approach solving any problem. In simple terms, I am using a pragmatic, or practical, results-based approach. I’m interested in the facts. I’m interested in what is going to work in the real world. I am also not trying to produce a comprehensive list of all the problems and all the solutions here but to hit on what I believe are the most significant actionable problems to be addressed and solutions to those problems.
Many politicians are focused on parroting the speaking points of their party without thinking through the real-life implications of their policies. I am not going to do that. I am also not going to simply read a book filled with emotive language about how this approach or that approach makes a child feel and allow the short-term feelings of students to be the primary driver in making my decisions. This is not because I don’t care about how children feel while they’re going through school but instead because I am more interested in how able they will be to cope with life and engage as productive members of society when they get out of school.
The Root Of The Problem:
As I have researched this to best understand the problem I started by asking the question: What is the single most significant deciding factor in the success of a child both now and in the future? After asking current and former teachers as well as reading numerous articles5 the answer I found is having involved and engaged parents. This is the single most important factor. There are better and worse schools and things that can be done within the school system from approach to curriculum to having access to state of the art technology, but all these things pale in comparison.
In today’s world however our school systems seem to have taken a posture of seeing parents as the problem. When parents are seeking to know the curriculum that is being taught, they find that the administration would rather keep them in the dark. Parents are forced to learn through their children what is being taught at school and many are finding that they don’t approve of the curriculum. What parents expect to be taught are things like reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and the sciences. They don’t expect to hear that the school systems have decided to take the lead in sex education, gender identity, and a rewritten history of America which paints all white children as bad because of what “their ancestors did” regardless of whether their ancestors did anything. Many of these issues it turns out are built into the curriculum through something called Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL).
SEL is “the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success.” My problem with this approach is partly what I am seeing from its results. One of the problems with many young adults today is that they are too soft, they can’t take criticism, and they have such a hard time dealing with difficult situations even though they’ve been practicing much of the principles of SEL for years at this point so it doesn’t appear working. On top of this SEL claims to be focused on helping children cope better there is more to SEL than meets the eye. There were a couple of moms in Utah6 who fought to see the SEL curriculum being taught in their children’s schools and they found that in addition to failed attempts to teach children better coping mechanisms, they were sprinkling in forms of sex education that many parents don’t want, and elements of Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is a form of Critical Theory that has its roots in Marxism, Socialism, and overthrowing the established order. Critical Race Theory has many of the same elements of Critical Theory but incorporates issues of race into the equation such as the idea that America is systemically racist today against people of color in favor of white people, especially white men. Any time a parent or other concerned citizen claims that CRT is being taught in schools the education system and the news media come out and say that CRT isn’t taught in schools but only in higher education. Granted CRT itself isn’t generally taught overtly in the school system but the core elements are. I was talking with a parent who lived in Portland in the first year of the COVID19 pandemic and she was telling me how the neighborhood children were saying that all White people are racist and the only form of racism is White on Black. This is evidence that at least these elements of CRT are being taught in schools and seemingly as part of the SEL curriculum.
When it comes to the issues of SEL, DEI, CRT, Socialism, Systemic Racism, and Sex and Gender education, we as a culture are divided. Some parents have no problem with their children being taught these subjects by schools, but many parents believe that when it comes to these topics they ought to be taught by parents. Given this divide, and the fact that the American Public Education System is a joint venture between parents and government, we ought not to be spending time and taxpayer dollars teaching something that is not agreed upon by the majority of Americans. This appears to ring even more true when we consider that we’re failing to produce well-adjusted contributing members of society, while at the same time, we’re failing to keep up with other developed nations7. Parents need to be at the center of their child’s education, and we need to do more to keep parents engaged and involved while giving ALL parents a say in what is and what is not taught to their children.
The Cost of Education: Why are we losing our teachers?
As I’ve stated parental involvement, or lack thereof, in education I believe to be the root cause of the decline in Maine Education but it’s not the only issue at hand. One of what I’m calling the secondary concerns is the mass exodus of teachers from the education system. The current teacher shortage in Maine is a huge problem. For years the education system made it easy for people with knowledge of Math, Science, and Foreign Languages to be able to teach even if they don’t have all the requirements because of the need in those areas given that there is a shortage of students who enjoy those subjects and those who do tend to have many other career opportunities that pay much better and tend to be less difficult than teaching. However, subjects such as Social Studies, English, Health, and Physical Education have always graduated more teachers than positions available but currently, the Maine Department of Education is experiencing a shortage in these positions as well and what we’re hearing from the teachers fleeing the system is that they need more money to be able to live and work in Maine. We’ve all experienced a substantial increase in the cost of living since the Pandemic and most of the private sector has sought to address this by increasing pay for employees however the Education System hasn’t kept up. Maine teachers rank 33rd in income even though Maine is the 12th most expensive state to live in at 15% higher than the national average8, especially if you’re living in Southern Maine. This is a problem but before we conclude that we need to spend more money on education we have to look at the whole picture. Maine is ranked as the 9th in average spending per student at over $20,000/year per student so where is all the money going? We as a State and at the local level need to get to the bottom of why we’re spending so much per student while so little of the money is going to our teachers.
One of the causes of increased spending is the increase over time in Administration in Maine. The cost to build, maintain, and heat our schools has itself affected the cost of education in Maine and while I’d love to see students have access to the latest and the greatest it’s much more important that they have quality teachers. One of the bigger costs is the transportation costs and though I think there are probably some creative ways to reduce this I think it’s mostly part of being a rural state and having some of our school districts be more spread out.
In my post on the Housing Crises in Maine9, I also noted that immigration, legal and illegal, is having an impact by increasing demand. Here too in education, we have rising costs related to the number of students that on top of needing to learn Math, Science, & history arrive often not being able to speak or write the English language and we’ve got to foot the bill of getting them caught up in that area. It’s also possible that aside from the cost because these students require more attention to get up to speed and address the communication gap, they’re affecting the progress of the overall class and thus hindering the other students.
The Solution:
How do we solve problems together when we’re so divided as a country? We must start by finding middle ground and focusing on academics. While our society is divided on certain social issues, we need to set those aside and teach those outside of the classroom. Within the classroom, we need to return to a focus on academic excellence, not Socio-Emotional Learning because it isn’t workings and the social issues imbedded within it are issues on which we’re divided as a country. We need to focus on ensuring that parents are involved and engaged actively in their children’s education. We need to give parents more control over their child’s education including parental choice similar to what’s happening in other states where parents can redeploy the state funds to pay for private schools, charter schools, or homeschool materials. This also helps keep schools in check because they don’t want to lose those dollars and as such will be working harder to create a better learning environment to retain students. We as a state need to recognize that while we need to be people of compassion there is a limit to the resources we have in Maine and for every immigrant we make space for there’s someone else in Maine who’s not getting the resources or attention they need, it’s a sad fact but it is the truth. If we are going to be a landing place for those the federal government has allowed into our country, then the federal government needs to kick in some funds to assist those coming to this state so we don’t let our native-born Maine children fall through the cracks. Lastly, we need to work to attract and retain teachers by redeploying the financial resources at our disposal, stop spending unnecessary resources on buildings and administration, and spend more of our money on our teachers. We may also need to allocate more state funds to the school system but that should only be considered after we look at tightening up our budgets at the local level.