The Maine DOE will submit a formal request for flexibility under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to the U.S. Department of Education by Sept. 6. Maine is looking to create a fairer and more constructive system for holding schools accountable and helping them improve.
This new accountability and improvement system considers multiple valid measures in determining the performance of students and schools, and helps struggling schools improve rather than feel stigmatized.
This is our third newsroom discussion on this topic. You can view the previous discussions here and here.
For this final round, we want you to respond to the overview of our proposal, which we will finalize and send to the feds by the deadline.
Add your feedback as a comment at the bottom of this post. Please read the Maine DOE Newsroom’s Comments Policy before you respond.
In particular, we are interested in specific feedback on our plan for each of the three principles:
- Principle 1: College- and career-ready expectations for all students
- Principle 2: Identifying, recognizing, and supporting Maine schools
- Principle 3: Supporting effective instruction and leadership
In addition, we hope you’ll respond to our online survey on the same topic.
Thank you for your feedback! Visit Maine DOE’s ESEA Flexibility page for more information and other opportunities to share your input.
Wondering how the baseline for school proficiency will be established. Will it be based solely on the prior year’s state assessment scores, or an average of scores from several past years? Especially for schools with very small cohorts of tested students, it might be important to create a baseline from multiple years of testing.