Education: The Gateway to Opportunity

Our young people are our state's greatest asset. We can provide an alternative to leaving Maine to find better opportunities by developing a world class education system for our state.

As with the issues of healthcare, government reform and energy costs, Maine cannot move forward until we deal comprehensively with a system that has become high-cost, unfocused and mediocre. We can make important investments for Maine's future by investing in our education system, but first we must ensure that efficiency, accountability and transparency are firmly in place at all learning levels. Moreover, we must find a way to "innovate in the institution charged with teaching innovation" to create a sustainable, efficient and results-oriented education system for the long term.

Here's how we will implement these essential core values with long-term educational reforms when I am Governor: 

1. Efficiency: We must make fundamental structural changes to produce improved academic outcomes, and for long term savings.

• Bring our K-12 student-teacher ratios and special education program costs in-line with national averages and accepted standards. Two recent studies have identified potential savings approaching half a billion dollars annually in these two areas alone. We'll make strategic investments out of these savings that will ease our transition into a more efficient and, most importantly, a better performing system.
• Shift away from the punitive and unevenly applied approach to school consolidation. Maine's next Governor must finish the job that was well intentioned but ineffectively started. I will stay the course by incentivizing districts to continue consolidation. I will re-examine the hodgepodge way the law was applied to only some districts and not others, and I will draw the line on compensating school districts that refuse to fully cooperate for their excessive expenses.
• Freeze the hiring of new teachers and school administrators to stop the problems from getting worse, and establish a program to assist employees whose jobs are made redundant by consolidation, in making the transition to other work. A consistent policy of early retirement eligibility, health care insurance continuity, relocation and retraining expense reimbursement, employment preference in new programs, and other severance benefits should be an integral part of any long term restructuring initiative and can be paid for by savings from consolidation.
• Provide a standardized statewide template for how to merge various components of a district's operations, and providing expert advice, perhaps from school leaders in districts that have already gone through the process especially successfully.
• Examine the many other cost drivers for unrealized efficiencies, including the number of school buildings we finance and maintain, and the way we structure fringe benefits and retirement plans through a top-to-bottom best-practices audit of our entire education system.

2. Accountability: Maine spends well above the national average per student, yet our graduation rate and test scores are behind those of our neighboring states, and are declining.

• Establish a fund from program savings to support ongoing research on the actual financial and academic performance changes in districts that have recently merged, to encourage benchmarking and adoption of best practices.
• Tie teacher pay to performance. Maine ranks 42^nd at $44,731 in teacher salaries, significantly behind the national average of $53,910. To me that indicates ample opportunity for incentivizing our teachers to excel and to attract talented teachers to our public schools.
• Balance the higher reimbursement rates for special education services, which pays school districts to push as many kids into these programs as possible, by requiring state-wide eligibility criteria and consistency of diagnoses.
• Hold the state accountable for its failure to comply with the requirement to fund 55% of state public education costs. Bringing down the overall cost through structural reforms, while holding the level of state funding steady will improve the current funding ratio of 44%, but we have to find more ways to improve this measure and take some of the burden off of local property taxpayers.

3. Transparency: Performance data on our education system ought to be the most thoroughly examined and easiest to access of any area of state government. Instead, the best and most comprehensive information is most easily found on a private website run by a partisan think-tank.

• Establish a comprehensive, non-partisan and consumer friendly website to disseminate information on Maine's education spending, school and district performance, district consolidation status, special education program performance and a wide range of guides on Maine's various program initiatives like School Choice and GearUp.
• Commission an independent study of the numerous changes in recent years of state testing methodologies, for the purpose of making it easier to compare year to year and with national data.
• Adopt a system of metrics and benchmarks that we can use to consistently measure our inputs and results against other states over time.

4. Innovation: According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Maine gets a D (45^th in the nation) for School Management. The report states that "Maine does a poor job managing its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation."

• Pass charter school legislation that will help Maine qualify for Federal Race to the Top funding. We can't afford to be one of only fourteen states nationwide still clinging to just one way to deliver services to students.
• Establish a free statewide Pre-Kindergarten grade for 4 year olds. The long term benefits of early education are nearly universally accepted and the estimated costs of this new program would be paid out of our savings from efficiencies.
• Make the school year longer. Innovative programs like the KIPP School have found a clear connection between time in the classroom and learning results. Cutting school days to save money is an irresponsible gimmick that our kids will ultimately pay dearly for through poor outcomes.
• Use technology to advance not just our ability to effectively teach, through distance learning curriculum for example, but also to realize further cost savings, through innovative applications like using virtual textbooks.
• Create a system-wide ‘culture of excellence' where our school staff are incentivized for professional development and performance and applying best practices learned both here in Maine and nationally.

5. Do the Same for Our Higher Education System: We need to restructure the higher education system in Maine to address inefficiencies that have resulted in both higher costs for students, less availability of courses, and reduced access to higher education.

• Eliminate inefficiency, lower tuition costs and competition between university campuses by reducing overlapping courses and redundant administration. There is ample opportunity to centralize common functions such as admissions, marketing, purchasing and human resource management. Yet, each campus should have a clearly defined and unique strategic academic focus, ideally drawing on regional strengths and resources.
• Standardize core curriculum to facilitate transfer of credits between campuses.
• Increase collaboration between the University and the Community College Systems.
• Align our universities and community colleges with Maine businesses to ensure students are getting the skills and training employers need, and to make sure our graduates have the knowledge and skills we need to grow our economy.