Munjoy Hill Observer - October 2009
October 1, 2009 -
Hello Munjoy Hill!
With the passing of Labor Day, students begin a new school year. As Chair of the Education Committee, I am hopeful that our students, teachers and parents are ready for the challenges and work ahead. As many of you know, most of my work in the State Legislature revolves around school funding and identifying the many challenges our kindergarten through college education system faces.
Are you ready for a tough stat? Did you know that almost one-third of our ninth graders statewide will not graduate? Put another way, Maine loses over 3,000 students per year, or about eight students every single day!
In addition to the dropout rate, other issues in our educational system include: relevance of school curriculum, the low rate of students enrolling in post-secondary school, and inadequate teacher recruitment.
When faced with a number of problems, the State tends to apply small changes on multiple fronts with hopes of fixing everything. More often than not, we end up putting a bandage on the problem, but don't address the core issues that cause these challenges.
In order for Maine to positively change our schools, first we must identify what we really want our kindergarten through college education system to look like. In Maine, we have identified four ambitious goals for our system:
1. Increase four-year, on-time graduation rates to 90% (currently at 65%).
2. Decrease the annual dropout rate to less than 1% (now at 35%).
3. Increase the percentage of students enrolling in two or four year college degree programs to at least 80% (currently about 50%).
4. Reduce the number of students required to take remedial courses during the first year of college to 5% or less (now at about 40%).
To bring Maine schools into the 21st Century, we must flesh out the core mission of our public education system, have a clear vision for how we want to see our schools, and create a reasonable, actionable plan on how to get there. I have been working all summer attending conferences and educating myself on how to better serve as Chair of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. I hope my hard work will pay off by helping solve these problems.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and any solutions you may have to these issues. As always, please feel free to contact me at justin@justinalfond.com or 828-0277.
