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Heidi H. Sampson of Alfred represents District 136 in the Maine House of Representatives. She serves on the Legislature’s Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs.
Maine’s public education system is in crisis. Our students are falling behind academically, behavioral issues are surging and teachers are leaving in droves, resulting in Maine having one of the worst teacher shortages in the country this fall.
The progressive tactic of incremental change has become an onslaught. Maine has been aggressively replacing traditional, time-tested educational practices with experimental programs. Instead of letting teachers teach, test and manage their classes as they judge best, legislators have allowed themselves to be manipulated by so-called experts from commercial enterprises and academia, inflicting our schools with one experimental program after another.
Politicians often see education as a platform for election promises. Bureaucrats seem to be more concerned with compliance than competence. Consultants push the latest educational trends backed, often by the flimsiest evidence. Too often, decisions are made by individuals far removed from the classroom. Local educators, who are most familiar with the needs and challenges of their students, are too often sidelined from these discussions.
Teachers and administrators have been caught in a revolving door of changing policies every few years. Although for many decades the federal government had been foisting experimental ideas on classroom teachers, I believe the process hit a new level of intrusiveness with the Common Core standards, which focused on the core subjects of math and reading.
Yet, over the last decade we’ve witnessed a steep decline in proficiency in both subjects. What many had believed has now been shown to be true: The rhetoric about rigorous, higher-order thinking skills setting children up for future success was a myth.
Proficiency-based education requirements were another disaster for children and teachers alike. Although the Maine Legislature repealed this law in 2019, I believe it paved the way for social-emotional learning.
Social-emotional learning is allegedly about improving students’ social and emotional skills, like thoughtfulness and self-control. But, in practice, it can inject far-left views and values into every subject and can force teachers to act as unlicensed therapists for their students.
Just look on the Maine Department of Education’s website, where you will find social-emotional learning materials training teachers to essentially encourage civil disobedience in schools and to keep secrets from parents. I believe this must be relegated to the dustbin of history.
There are companies and nonprofits highly energized to promote all manner of new instructional methodologies. They make lots of money selling their bill of goods to Mainers. But what about the generations of children who have been subjected to these untested approaches to learning?
It requires humility to admit failure and face reality. And yet another new initiative, “Measure What Matters,” has been rolled out by the Department of Education while the Mills administration is making payments to the Portland Press Herald to publish positive articles on Maine public schools.
Test scores show that our children are mathematically deficient and barely literate. The solution the Department of Education is offering through “Measure What Matters,” it appears, is to change the metrics by which our children are assessed.
I believe we must focus on creating excellence in education, not ideological programs like restorative justice, social-emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching. Apparently, standards or teaching methods are rarely discussed. Perhaps these should receive more attention.
To me, the solution to Maine’s education crisis lies in getting back to the basics. This means focusing on core academic subjects such as reading, writing, math and science, which form the foundation of a well-rounded education.
These subjects are essential not only for academic success, but also for developing critical thinking skills and a lifelong love of learning. Whatever you think about proficiency-based education, social-emotional learning or any other experimental program, you must admit that they have failed to improve academic performance, mental health and student behavior.
The majority of teachers are not ideologues or activists. They are good people who want to teach. As I see it, the conflict isn’t parents versus teachers or citizens versus schools. It’s people who want education to be about learning versus those who see education as a means to another end — experimentation, radical social change, political agendas or a cash cow for their company.
It’s time to put teachers back in charge of their classrooms, administrators in charge of their schools, board members in charge of their districts and parents back in charge of their children. This approach will likely ensure that education returns to its fundamental purpose: to equip our children with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life.