The event engages students as presenters or participants in a day of science, technology, engineering and mathematics focused workshops, and encourages high aspirations by facilitating what for many is their first visit to a post-secondary institution.

In addition to presentations from conference collaborators including Maine DOE and Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), Apple, UMaine, New England School of Communications and educators from schools across the state, several Maine students will lead sessions, including Yuval Boss, a senior at Orono High School, Julia Bluhm, a freshman at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, Izzy Labbe, a freshman at Waterville High School and those from Reeds Brook Middle School in Hampden.

As the conference celebrates its 10th anniversary, it is exciting to see how technology and more importantly, our use of it to support student-centered learning, has evolved.

MLTI is evolving as well. As you may have heard, this is the final conference where students will have Apple technology exclusively in hand. Under a new MLTI contract currently being negotiated, the Microsoft Windows 7-based Hewlett Packard ProBook 4440 that students are more likely to see in the workplace will be the preferred technology and learning solution paid for by the State. The powerful potential of that Microsoft software will be spotlighted in one of today’s conference breakout sessions.

Schools will, however, have choice in selecting alternative solutions to that HP laptop, including an HP tablet, Apple’s iPad or MacBook Air, or a CTL Windows laptop with the State covering the cost of those alternatives up to the amount of the HP laptop proposal.

Since the State has announced the selection of the new preferred provider as well as the expanded options for local choice, we’ve heard from schools sticking with Apple and those eager to embrace the new devices we’re making available. Regardless of the solution they select, schools are excited about the chance for choice and to see the State’s continued commitment to MLTI which we see as an integral part of the Department’s strategy to achieving the new Common Core State Standards, as well as implementing new proficiency-based learning systems.

Work is already underway to continue the State’s long-standing relationship with Apple and to welcome Hewlett Packard to the MLTI family as we all collaborate to continuing to support schools’ learning goals. To assist schools with their questions and help with the transition, MLTI is hosting numerous district roadshows for school staff to attend in person (more information to follow). Additionally, we hosted two informational webinars last week to share information about the devices, networking, software and professional development offerings. If you missed them, a link to a recording of those webinars is on the MLTI deployment website at www.mlti.org/deployment/.

We look forward to working closely with our partners in the field in making it matter for the students, educators and community of Maine and in helping educators deploy the next generation of the MLTI solution. And, we can’t wait to see what innovative learning our students will have to show us at next year’s MLTI Student Conference.

The Department provisionally adopted Chapter 180, the rules for implementing required teacher and principal evaluation systems, seven weeks ago today. A number of you have been asking me and other Department staff when you can expect the new rules on teacher effectiveness evaluations to go into effect. This is to update you on where that stands and why we have not been able to help you move forward with that work.

The next step in the process is for the Legislature to take up the provisionally adopted rules, modify them as they see fit, and approve them to move forward. I have asked legislative leadership repeatedly to move forward on this because of the requests from you, superintendents, to finalize action on these rules so you can begin your work. To date, they have refused to act on these critical rules.

If I sound a bit frustrated, I am. It is widely accepted that improving educator effectiveness is perhaps the single most important action we can do for students. The educator effectiveness bill was unanimously approved by the Legislature a year ago—not one member of the Legislature voted against it. We worked with all the stakeholders, including the MEA, MSMA, and others, to craft a bill that moved the state forward on this critical issue. School districts are ready to get to work, but for us to provide you with needed guidance, we need the Legislature to act. I would ask that you join me in calling on legislative leadership to move forward with final adoption of the educator effectiveness rules so that you can continue your work with some predictability and so we can provide the guidance you have asked for.

Just by way of background, this legislation, LD 1858, was proposed by Gov. Paul R. LePage and enacted in April 2012 with unanimous Education Committee support and no dissent in the House or Senate. It requires school districts to develop and implement systems for evaluating teachers and principals based on professional practice, student achievement growth and other measures. Systems are created locally and collaboratively among teachers, principals, administrators and others, but they must meet standards that are to be developed by the state. The evaluation systems must make clear what’s expected of educators, offer them constructive advice on improving their practice, and support them in their continued professional growth. The rule incorporates recommendations of the Maine Educator Effectiveness Council, a stakeholder group established in the educator effectiveness legislation, regarding professional practice standards and criteria for the use of student learning and growth measures.

Maine DOE worked with stakeholder groups throughout 2012 and invited public participation in the rulemaking process in November 2012, including through a public hearing, originally scheduled for Dec. 27, but rescheduled due to a major snowstorm. In March 2013, the Department provisionally adopted the rules that would allow districts to begin this work. Because the adoption came after a statutory deadline (due to the snowstorm, which delayed the public hearing), the Department cannot put the new rules into effect until the full Legislature approves them. To date, legislative leadership has not sent the rules to committee for a public hearing, which would set the rules on course toward final adoption and implementation.

We want you to have as much time as possible to conduct this work – the first deadline is to have developed a system during the upcoming school year (2013-14), followed by piloting the system in 2014-15, and fully implementing in 2015-16.

I encourage you to contact and speak with your local legislators to explain the need for quick action so that you can work with your administrators and teachers to develop teacher evaluation systems that support professional development and improvement, and higher student achievement. For more information, please contact the Department or follow the links below.

Sincerely,

Stephen L. Bowen, Commissioner of Education

Resources and Information

• Chapter 180 rules. Provisionally adopted by the Department
• Maine DOE Newsroom: Notice of Proposed New Rule: Chapter 180 (11/27/12) | Teacher eval systems move forward (12/13/12) | Grant to help Maine schools develop teacher, leader evaluation systems (9/29/12) | New teacher eval system means better educator training (6/12/12)
• Title 20-A, Chapter 508: Educator Effectiveness (Sections 13701-13706)
• LD 1858 (125^th Legislature): An Act to Ensure Effective Teaching and School Leadership
• Maine Schools for Excellence
• Guide to the rulemaking process

Last week, the Maine Department of Education rolled out A-F report cards for each school in the state as part of our new Maine School Performance Grading System.

These snapshots of where our schools are today based on existing reading and mathematics assessment data – and in the case of our high schools, graduation rates – show areas where we are doing well and those where we need to improve. No matter where you stand on the new grading system, we believe this is an opportunity to engage educators like you in a positive, productive conversation about our shared commitment to giving Maine kids the best education we can. We want to talk with you about how the grades were developed and how we intend to support schools, especially those with lower letter grades, in the months ahead. We’d also like your feedback on how the Department can help schools improve student achievement.

To facilitate that, we’d like to invite you and your school colleagues to join me, along with Chief Academic Officer Rachelle Tome and Director of the Statewide Longitudinal Data System Bill Hurwitch for an online forum about A-F and how it can be used as an invaluable tool for improving Maine’s schools.

The Department will share how we can be a resource to help you in understanding and putting this data tool to work immediately for you and your students. We’ll also talk about other available resources the State has or is developing to make available to you. Then we’ll open the floor to your feedback as to how we can further support your important efforts in the classroom.

The forum will be held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 16. We encourage you to participate with others from your school so you can pose questions as a cohort and continue the conversation after the forum has concluded.

Register for the webinar: www1.gotomeeting.com/register/631576520.

We look forward to talking with you on May 16 and beyond as together we implement improvement initiatives and reach our shared goal for every school in Maine to be an A school that is preparing our students for meaningful college, career and civic engagement.

Teachers are the foundation of our education system, and this week is Teacher Appreciation Week. I encourage you to take the time to say thank you next time you pass a teacher in the hall or elsewhere. It’s important our teachers are reminded how grateful we are for all the work they do not only this week, but year-round.

Eighth grader Ken Stump shows Commissioner Bowen a solar panel Oxford Hills Middle School students created to heat the indoor greenhouse at Roberts Farm in Norway.

I had the chance visit three Oxford County schools yesterday as part of my Promising Practices Tour, just a day after releasing the new A-F school grading system designed to improve transparency. As a state, we need to move beyond the one-size-fits-all models of teaching and embrace student-centered models like the ones many Maine schools, like the ones I visited in Oxford County, are doing. Governor LePage and I made reference to that Wednesday when we unveiled the new school report cards, which showed a majority of Maine’s elementary and high schools earned an A, B or C.

In RSU 17, more than 60 Oxford Hills Middle School students are enrolled in the school’s recently expanded experiential learning program, which unites learners through student-focused, nontraditional methods of instruction. Administrators and teachers have identified students who may benefit from the engagement of hands-on learning, and students apply to follow particular experiential tracks, from robotics to community service.

Middle schoolers Ken Stump and Chelsey Lavertu showed me around Roberts Farm Preserve in Norway, where they spend part of the school week building leadership and natural science skills in the outdoors. OHMS students have constructed and planted raised garden beds and greenhouses, allowing them to study pollution, temperature, construction, scientific experiments—you name it, they’re learning about it in a real-world setting that’s resonating with them.

At Roberts Farm, students are able to take on adult responsibilities in a career field that piques their interest. In fact, some kids will soon work with older farm volunteers to write new software for their plant-growing system. Let me reiterate—that’s 13- and 14-year-old students writing software programs! Oxford Hills is proving that STEM learning can and will happen outside the classroom walls.

I spoke with another group of Oxford Hills students who spend time at Crazy Horse Racing, learning the ins and outs of the stock car racing business while gradually building their own racecar to compete this summer. Governor LePage visited Crazy Horse Racing last year to witness the students’ progress on this two-year project and to congratulate them on their accomplishments. As the students build the vehicle, they’re also building knowledge of math, science, engineering and teamwork. They understand that if they mess-up the construction, that could be someone’s life on the line—and suddenly it’s a real-world problem that these kids really care about. By allowing students to explore career interests while in middle school, Oxford Hills is introducing them to the concept and many benefits of career and technical schools at an early age.

Students Anthony Whitman (left) and Austin Canning, of Oxford Hills MS, work on their racecar at Crazy Horse Racing in South Paris.

The goal of both the A-F grades and these school visits is to spotlight success stories like this experiential learning program, knowing they can be applied elsewhere with meaningful outcomes for our students. OHMS received a C through our new performance grading system, but I saw firsthand that the school has many promising practices already underway, and I expect the school’s proficiency, growth and ultimately letter grade to improve. This year staff implemented a “Data Wall” to track student progress, and teachers surrender their plan time to formulate intervention plans for individual students. You can literally see kids’ yearly progress as their data cards climb the wall. The high school these students will attend plans to continue the project with next fall’s freshmen, using the same data cards the middle school created. If this works out, you could see a student’s yearly progress from sixth through twelfth grade by graduation time. I’d like to see other schools, as well as our staff at the Maine DOE, using a similar visual model to track progress of all our students and our schools.

I also visited Mountain Valley Middle School, part of RSU 10 in Mexico, to see classrooms that are just starting to apply the mass customized learning (MCL) model. The school was labeled a Continuous Improvement Priority School in 2012, and administrators and faculty have since developed plans for an academic turnaround. Now a boy who struggles in math can learn at his own pace through the MCL model; he doesn’t feel like other kids are waiting for him, and he can focus on himself and how he learns best.

Mountain Valley teachers expressed frustration about their school’s grade, and I assured them that a low grade does not negate all the good work they’ve been doing. Governor LePage and I released these grades so parents and community members have a better understanding of where their schools stand academically. I can tell that MVMS teachers are doing many of the right things to get kids invested in their learning, and over time I believe their grade will reflect that. In the meantime, the Department will be increasing its support to struggling schools while doing more to promote best practices already in place. Additionally, the LePage Administration’s budget proposal includes $3 million to be allocated for improvement initiatives.

As I continue my Promising Practices Tour, I’ll be posting more practices that stand out on the Tour website. Check out our Center for Best Practice website for additional ideas.

More information

• Maine School Performance Grading System
• Education Commissioner’s visit promotes promising practices at Oxford County schools
• Photos from this event

The initiative focuses on continuous improvement through transparency, parent engagement and a renewed focus—not just by those of us in the education community but by all Mainers—on making all of our schools better for all of our students. Just as parents lean in when their child receives an F and encourage the good work to continue when they earn an A, we hope to see the same in response to the grades received by schools. We at Maine DOE look forward to the constructive conversations ahead.

Expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks about A-F and the resources we can bring to bear to help expand the many promising practices we see in action already in so many Maine schools. In the meantime, we encourage you to learn more about A-F grading and visit our new online data center to dig deeper beyond the letter grades.

Our goal is to give you as much information as possible so that when the grades are released publicly you will be prepared to speak about them with your school communities. You should know that our desire is not to make the letter grades a cause for shame, but rather an opportunity for transparency with parents and communities, and a basis for targeted supports to underperforming schools. As one superintendent recently said, most people will not be surprised by the scores. The question is, how do we work together to improve all schools, and especially those that are struggling. By working together, I am confident we will make great strides.

You might also be interested to read Preparing for A-F grading system.

East End kindergartner Antonio Hernandez explains his math journal to Commissioner Bowen.

When I visited East End Community School and Riverton Elementary in Portland last week as part of my Promising Practices Tour, I was blown away by the measures they’re taking to ensure all students are engaged in learning—not an easy feat in such a multilingual district.

East End and Riverton were both identified as underperforming—one in 2009-10 and one in 2010-11—and applied for and received School Improvement Grants. With the help of those grants and technical assistance from the Department, the schools have initiated a number of promising practices. Last week, these schools showed me they’re doing what it takes to get things done.

East End has used its federal grant to fund STEM coaches, design a new assessment system for math, and implement flexible grouping in certain subjects. And no progress would have been made without East End’s all-star teachers, who surrender lunch hours for grade-level meetings and devote two hours to professional development every single week.

It’s the kids who are reaping the benefits. Kindergartner Antonio Hernandez couldn’t wait to show me his math journal, a project launched by teacher Sarah Griffin. She started the journal project so students could make individual resources for math practices and understand concepts in their own words. Not only were the students eager to open their journals, but the project bridges literacy and math—a very sophisticated idea for five- and six-year olds.

Under the leadership of East End’s principal, Marcia Gendron, learning doesn’t ever seem to stop. The school library is open on Saturdays, and teachers take turns bringing books to a local park to read with students during the summer. Staff also lowered student absence and tardiness rates by creating an extended learning program, called Rise and Shine, that makes students excited to come in on time. They offer between 30 and 40 activities per week, from working in garden beds to playing the ukulele—you name it, these kids are engaged in it. And the good news is that East End launched it without additional funding, so schools should be able to replicate this program across the state.

In order to turn around Riverton Elementary, Principal Jeanne Malia focused on relationships. More than half of Riverton’s students are English language learners, and many are recent immigrants. When Ms. Malia became the principal, her number-one priority was to make herself both visible and available to students and their families. With her portable microphone, she greets kids outside in the morning, in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and on their way out in the afternoon. Riverton has also hosted potluck dinners to bring families together and allow them to become more comfortable in the school setting. These kids and their parents know that Ms. Malia and her staff are there for them.

Riverton’s also finding new uses for technology, especially for their ELL students. Kids were using iPads or laptops for hands-on learning in every classroom I visited. English learners use iPad cameras to photograph staff whose names they need to learn. One Riverton student with Celiac disease even takes pictures in the cafeteria to catalog the foods she can and can’t eat. Talk about best practices—this school is really getting creative!

While Riverton and East End currently have SIG funding, those grants will be ending soon. So what happens next? Well, both of these schools have built networks around school improvement using a limited amount of resources—making most of their initiatives cost efficient and sustainable beyond the grant.

On top of everything else, the experiences at both of these schools are evidence that an unfortunate label—in this case, being labeled “persistently low achieving” schools by the U.S. Department of Education—can have its positive side. Both of these schools made a decision to move past the labels and work on improvement, with some pretty impressive results.

As a state, we need to build some support structures for educators to exchange great, low-cost ideas like these. As I continue my Promising Practices Tour, I’ll be posting more practices that stand out on the Tour website. Check out our Center for Best Practice website for additional ideas.

During his State of the State address in February, Governor LePage announced that Maine will introduce a school performance grading system to simplify for parents, taxpayers and others how their schools are doing. Many of you have expressed interest in and concern about how we will generate the grades, and what we will do to support schools that receive low grades.

We’re getting ready to roll out this A-F grading system at the end of the month, and in the coming days we’ll be providing schools with a preview of their data so that they can ask questions and be prepared to speak with their communities about it.

The fears are understandable. No one score or grade tells the whole story of a school. That’s why our grading system will be based on several factors, including student achievement, growth in achievement, and the performance and growth of the bottom 25 percent of students – to ensure that we are looking at all students. In high school, we’ll also factor in the graduation rate.

What we find now is that we have lots of pieces of data that come out throughout the course of the year, including NECAP test scores, science test scores, SAT scores, federal AYP status, AP participation, graduation rates and more. Each of these tells a different, sometimes inconsistent, story. And for each one, unfortunately, there are those who judge a school entirely on that one piece of data.

The goal of A-F grading is to give a starting point, a basic understanding of how a school is doing. When we talk about “priority” and “struggling” or “one-star” and “four-star” schools, it does not really give parents an understanding. For better and worse, A-F is clear. From that point, we hope people will dig deeper. We’ll be unveiling our Data Warehouse, with detailed info about each school, at the same time we make the A-F grades public. We hope people will use both – the letter grade overview, and the details that come with digging into the Data Warehouse.

In addition to sharing your data with you early – and it will all look familiar, it’s public data we’ve released as it came in – we will be holding webinars for superintendents at which we will explain the grading system, and we will tell you what our plan is, what we are going to say, and give you some tools for sharing the information with your communities.

We also have plans to support schools that are struggling. Until now, we’ve only been able to provide that kind of support for Title I schools, because of restriction on federal improvement funds. If the Legislature passes the provision in Governor LePage’s budget to include money for school improvement and support, we’ll pass the vast majority of that on to schools that are underperforming and use the rest to direct technical assistance to those districts.

I know you will all have tons of questions. We’ll be working feverishly over the next few weeks to develop comprehensive materials to support the rollout and support you and your schools.

Commissioner Stephen Bowen reads questions from the audience to the first panel of presenters at the Governor’s Conference on Education.

By all accounts last Friday’s Governor’s Conference on Education: Putting Students First was a great success. Not because everyone agreed with every idea that was presented, but because we were able to hear about innovations and reforms in Florida and elsewhere that have had some real impact on student achievement, and continue our conversation about which make sense for Maine to consider and put into action.

More than 200 superintendents, legislators, principals, teachers, higher ed administrators and others attended the event (a big thank you to Cony High School in Augusta for hosting).

Tony Bennett, Florida’s commissioner of education and the former state schools chief in Indiana, outlined some of the reforms he implemented in Indiana, and also spoke frankly about some things he would do differently to engage teachers and the public more in understanding the proposed changes and the intent behind them.

A panel from the Foundation for Excellence in Education talked about some of the innovations implemented there, including a school performance grading system, similar in aspects to the one we will roll out here in Maine in the coming weeks.

“Education, for me, was a way out of extreme poverty, and I want every child in Maine to have the same opportunity I had to pursue a quality education,” Governor LePage told the audience. “We should not be afraid to look at what other states are doing. We won’t pursue every idea discussed at today’s conference. But we will consider all of them, and we will engage in a conversation with Maine’s education and political leaders on how our work can support children in achieving greater success in education and in life.”

The response was so positive that Governor LePage plans to make it an annual event. We heard some suggestions, too, and will work to incorporate changes into next year’s conference – more time for Q&A, and to get some classroom practitioners into the speaker lineup, too.

This year’s conference isn’t over, though – we encourage you to view the materials from the conference and the videos, which will be posted by tomorrow, at the Governor’s Conference on Education website. Also watch for the questions that were submitted by audience members to be posted by tomorrow. We’ll then work with the presenters to answer those in the coming days. And, finally, we will also open up a discussion forum, linked from the same website, so that we can continue to discuss what we heard at the conference and try to narrow in on some of the reforms that make the most sense for Maine and talk about how to implement them.

Help us keep the conversation going. Comment below, and when we post the questions and answers, weigh in! We won’t all agree on every action step, but we do all agree on the need to make the impact of our actions on students and student achievement our top priority. If we start there, we can surely map out a path that will move us closer to that goal.

Resources

• Governor’s Conference on Education
• Governor’s Conference on Education leads to positive discussions about student-focused reform (press release, March 22)