Work by Matthew Stone

Dec. 19, 2010

A tight budget has forced Maine's Department of Education to scale back its introduction of a new educational model statewide, slowing the pace at which schools will adopt standards-based education.

The department won't renew the contract it holds with the Alaska-based Re-Inventing Schools Coalition, or RISC, when it expires June 30, said Diana Doiron, who oversees the department's effort to transition to standards-based education. The contract is the last of three the state has signed with RISC that total nearly $1.2 million.

It's also unclear whether an education commissioner appointed by Gov.-elect Paul LePage will embrace standards-based education as enthusiastically as former Education Commissioner Susan Gendron, who left her job in April.

"I do not believe it's something that we're looking at," LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt said.

Department of Education staffers have touted the standards-based approach for nearly two years, and have relied on the nonprofit RISC to train educators in six Maine school districts -- including Hallowell-based Regional School Unit 2 and Oakland-based RSU 18 -- to transform the way they deliver education.

Under the standards-based approach, students advance once they've mastered the required skills, rather than on a prescribed time frame.

Some standards-based schools have done away with letter grades and traditional grade levels, grouping students instead by performance level.

But whether the movement toward standards-based schooling continues is an open question.

"We still want to transform the experience of learning for students," Doiron said.

Districts' responsibility

The onus of demonstrating, spreading and sustaining the standards-based model will now fall largely to the six districts serving as pilots for the RISC education model: RSU 2, RSU 18, Jackman-based RSU 82, Gray-based RSU 15, Waterboro-based RSU 57 and the Milford School District.

Had the funding stream that bankrolled Maine's RISC contracts not dried up, Doiron said, Department of Education officials planned to identify a new set of districts each year, and to sponsor statewide training for those interested in adopting the RISC approach.

"We've got districts right now who are asking to be part," Doiron said. "We just don't have the funds."

The Department of Education funded its RISC contracts from a pool of federal money received to pay for work on standards and assessments. As the department's operating budget has shrunk, Doiron said, it's devoted a larger portion of that money to paying for annual standardized tests.

The state RISC contracts paid for on-site staff training sessions where RISC staff members visited the six pilot districts; ongoing assistance; the development of a software system that tracks student progress; and visits by RISC staff members to a Maine superintendents' conference and training events throughout the state.

The state signed a five-month contract in February 2009 for $171,000; and two, 11-month contracts, in August 2009 and August 2010, for $729,000 and $299,000 respectively, Doiron said.

Training wheels

Those contracts are lapsed or lapsing, but Doiron wants to figure out how to grow the standards-based model nonetheless.

The six pilot districts have pooled their own professional development funds to sponsor a training this winter, and they plan to contract independently with RISC as needed.

"We are hoping to be weaned from RISC," said Christine Chamberlain, RSU 2's curriculum coordinator. "Their framework is always with the intention that you're going to be standing on your own."

But the state support is phasing out at a critical time for the Maine districts adopting RISC, said Rick Schreiber, one of three RISC co-founders and the group's operations director.

"In the initial stages is where it's so vulnerable, but that's where we are right now," he said. "Our work is really heavy in the beginning stages."

RISC's start

RISC got its start in Alaska's Chugach School District, where Schreiber and co-founders Wendy Battino and Rich DeLorenzo worked as teachers and administrators.

The organization officially formed in 2002, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation issued a $5.8 million grant to help the organization spread its model to a number of Alaska school districts.

The founders had already worked with five Alaska districts that received Gates money to adopt the standards-based model. The second round of Gates funds allowed RISC to work with nine additional districts.

"RISC was an early innovator on competency-based education," said Tom Vander Ark, who was the Gates Foundation's executive director of education when the RISC grant was awarded. "Over the next 10 years, I think the whole U.S. system will shift to that model."

But the model hasn't stuck in all the districts that worked with RISC.

"We've had mixed results," Schreiber said.

As RISC gots its operation off the ground, he said, the group hadn't perfected its method of selecting partner school districts.

"It was literally sitting down at a table, saying, 'Are you guys interested in this?'" Schreiber said.

North star

But the districts where it's stuck have seen some positive results.

Between 2005 and 2010, Alaska's Lake and Peninsula district, for example, doubled its overall math proficiency levels -- from 33 percent of students to 67 percent -- on Alaska's Standards Based Assessment. Reading and writing proficiency levels also rose, by 37 and 47 percent respectively, over the same period.

"It is hard to fathom doing anything else when you see this model meeting the needs of each individual student," Superintendent Ty Mase said in an e-mail.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435
mstone@centralmaine.com

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