Maine Voices: Make public education work for future

More than anything else, what is missing from today’s political discussion is the belief that we can solve our biggest problems. We don’t dream big enough, we don’t propose bold enough, and we don’t reach far enough.

It is perhaps not surprising then that the Press Herald dedicated an editorial last week to supporting a very minor change in No Child Left Behind about how states calculate their school dropout rate. But any discussion of reauthorization of NCLB must begin with the fact that the law has failed Maine students and that it must be repealed and then rewritten to better serve students here and across the country.

As a member and chair of the Legislature’s Education Committee in the 1990s, I worked to create educational standards and establish high expectations to ensure that every high-school graduate in Maine would have certain skills and abilities as a thinker and learner upon graduation.

Unfortunately, NCLB swept into Maine shortly thereafter and compromised our effort at the state level. Rather than statewide standards that were focused on developing skills among our students, teachers and administrators now had to worry about a one-size-fits-all national directive to force their students to become good test-takers. The alternative was to have their school labeled “failing” and face the consequences.

That is why I sponsored a bill in Augusta that limited Maine’s financial obligation to NCLB, as well as legislation authorizing the attorney general of Maine to sue Washington for imposing an unfunded mandate on the state in the form of NCLB.

That’s also why I want to go to Washington and rewrite the law as the next congressperson for Maine’s 1st District. We need federal legislation that focuses on acquisition of knowledge and the development of critical thinking skills instead of test-taking and that also supports the career development of teachers.

But we also need to stop thinking of public education as simply running from kindergarten through high school, when it is critical for our young people to begin their education earlier than kindergarten and continue it later than 12th grade.

Research has shown most of the brain’s development happens from the ages of 0 to 5, and yet the patchwork of public support for early childhood education does not reach most families of young children. Many parents have to work extra shifts just to afford child care, let alone child care that has a focus on child development. We need to make early childhood education affordable and accessible to all.

We also need to take serious and bold steps to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so in America.

For more than a decade, the state of Georgia has provided free tuition at an in-state public college or university to all high-school graduates with a B average or higher through its HOPE Scholarship Program.

More than 900,000 students have benefited as a result. If they can do it in Georgia, I believe we can do it in Maine and across the country - and that’s why I have proposed a National College Tuition Program that will pay the tuition of all students who are admitted to public universities or colleges in their state.

For less than we are now spending per year in Iraq, this program will ensure that Maine and our country have the educated work force we will need to compete in the increasingly competitive global economy.

Going to college changed my life. And as critical as a college education has been for me in my life, it is only going to be more important for young people in the future.

The same is true of K-12 education and early childhood education - and if we really want to leave no child behind, we’ve got a lot of work to do.