Learning Results a complete, disastrous failure

Kennebec Journal, March 14, 2008

(excerpt) In 1997, Maine's Learning Results initiative promised to set standards for promotion within Maine schools. Thousands of teachers across the state embarked on an eight-year journey to identify the standards they were going to insist upon, the tests they were going to use to measure achievement and the system they were going to install to make sure that all students graduated with certain skills and abilities.

By 2005, this initiative had completely failed.

The reasons for this failure were many. Passive resistance from teachers who opposed a standards-based environment, refusal from communities to fund the enormous costs of reteaching students who fail to meet standards, unrealistic expectations from the DOE and most disappointing of all, test results that showed the majority of Maine students either failing or only partially meeting standards.

Statewide test scores in 2003 showed that slightly less then half of Maine's 11th-grade students met or exceeded reading standards; only 26 percent met or exceeded math standards.

By 2005, the benchmarks the DOE had established in the 1990s were all being postponed or watered down to the point of ineffectiveness, and, by 2006, the department was in complete retreat although it were reluctant to admit the failure, and talked of "restructuring" and "redefining" the standards.