Through its work to investigate how room-scale virtual reality can be used as an instructional technology, UMaine’s IMRE lab recently installed two HTC Vives at the East Grand School in Danforth, Maine.
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Since 2015, the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) and the University of Maine System (UMS) have worked in partnership to support schools through Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS).
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By nature, new curriculum standards such as Common Core or the Next Generation Science Standards have the appearance of being well established ideas for education. Often, however, standards are more visionary, projecting past what is now achievable to what could be achieved in future.
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Without a stable economic base, greater numbers of Maine children encounter adverse or challenging circumstances in their lives outside of school, including a lack of access to safe and affordable housing, food insecurity, and growing numbers of adults struggling with substance abuse.
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The Rural School and Community Trust (RSCT) publishes a biennial review, entitled Why Rural Matters. It rates the 50 states on five “gauges” describing characteristics of each state’s rural schools. The most recent report, Why Rural Matters 2013-14, identified Maine as the one state nationwide where addressing the needs of rural schools mattered the most.
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In 2012, Maine joined the majority of states in the effort to upgrade professional quality through better performance evaluation of teachers and principals. The Legislature, in passing LD 1858, required all districts to develop Professional Evaluation and Professional Growth (PEPG) systems, part of the federal government’s Race to the Top. All districts were to create their own systems and pilot them in 2015-16. This year, some districts are implementing these systems while others are taking a second year of pilot-testing.
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Five years into Maine’s experience, what have we learned about the state’s unique brand of public charter school?
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The turning of the new year prodded us to look back in time for some perspective on Maine schools in 2017. The annual “state of the schools” report for 1915-16 offers a few perhaps useful observations.
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Bus rides are one of the “givens” of public schooling. Without them, many if not most U.S. children would not have access to a free, appropriate education. But transportation is also one of the more intractable challenges facing educators.
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In September, Educate Maine, a “business-led education advocacy organization” and the Maine State Chamber of Commerce issued a policy brief, “College and Career Readiness for Maine.” The brief calls for “full, statewide implementation of the college and career readiness strategies outlined” in its pages. And it goes on to stress that the recommended seven strategies and 15 actions be applied particularly to Maine students from low-income families, noting that they are less likely to be proficient in math and reading, to graduate from high school, or to go on to college.
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