Disclosure: The Maine Wire is a project of the Maine Policy Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works to expand individual liberty and economic freedom in Maine.
Maine ranked dead last on a list compiled by U.S. News comparing the quality of public high schools between states.
[RELATED: New Report Analyzes the Decades-Long Decline of Maine K-12 Education…]
The U.S. News compiled a list of public high schools and assigned the majority of them scores based on a variety of factors, only leaving out public schools without a grade 12, or with extremely low enrollment.
Each school was then assigned a score between 1-100, with states being ranked based on the proportion of their schools in the top 25 percent nationwide.
Maine, which had 103 ranked schools, had only a single school ranked in the top five or top 10 percent, and only two schools in the top 25 percent.
Only 1.9 percent of Maine schools ranked among the top 25 percent of schools nationwide.
Maine fell slightly behind Oklahoma, which ranked 50th with 2.5 percent of its schools in the top 25 percent.
Massachusetts made its way to the top of the list, with 43.9 percent of its schools ranking in the top 25 percent.
Maine’s highest ranked school was the Greely High School in Cumberland, which ranked as number 566 in the nation, scoring 96.79 from the U.S. News.
U.S. News does not display specific information for any schools which ranked in the bottom 25 percent of schools nationwide, so it is unclear which Maine schools were the worst.
The news outlet ranked schools based on six metrics, including college readiness, which is weighted heaviest, student performance on advanced, college level classes, performance on standardized tests, and the graduation rate.
The outlet also used one Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) metric to measure schools, ranking them based on the performance of “underserved students” meaning low income, black, and Hispanic students.
Maine’s last-in-the-nation score from U.S. News follows a steady decline in the quality of Maine’s public education.
Last year, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Book ranked Maine 34th in the nation for education, basing the ranking on the number of young children not in school, the percentage of fourth graders unable to read proficiently, the number of eighth graders failing at math, and the percentage of high school students who fail to graduate on time.
That study showed that 71 percent of fourth graders in Maine could not read proficiently.
Although that study, which was not restricted to high school, shed a more favorable light on Maine education than U.S. News’ list, it nevertheless shows a rapid decline in the quality of education.
In 2018, Maine ranked 18th in the nation for quality of the education in the same study, marking a significant drop in quality over a relatively short time period.
In another 2024 report from the Maine Policy Institute, “The Decline of Maine K-12 Education,” the non-profit found that Maine has dropped significantly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) ranking, which measures math and English proficiency among students.
During the 1990s, Maine typically ranked first or second on the NAEP, but in 2022, Maine had dropped to 36th in the nation, with reading and math proficiency continuing its downward trend.
And the City and Town Councils will continue to throw more money at the schools without demanding results.
Well, crap schools make Maine an official blue state
It appears that the score had been in decline since the 90s but in 2017 Lepage was able the right the ship and things were looking up. Now look at the chart, see there in 2019 when the bottom falls out? Janet Mills dumbing up future democrats.
Taxpayers need to start showing up to vote on school budgets!
Anyone who encountered a Gen-Z cashier realizes that they must have missed 4th grade math
…Maine needs another hundred superintendents! 😂
I left teaching in 2000 I am so sad the prior 32 years for nothing I could see the decline coming. And more is coming due to the lack of good leadership at the top.
Ranking of states is not useful or helpful to evaluating the quality of public education. Measurements of outcomes, e.g.; reading and math proficiency, graduation rates, etc. against agreed upon standards of success and excellence is critical. It is impossible to fix a problem unless you identify the cause. Clearly Maine’s rank has fallen across a number of measures of education outcomes (e.g.; reading and math proficiency), some or most of which could be due to improvement across these various quality metrics by other states; this article does not say. How does the statistic 71% of fourth graders cannot read proficiently compare to prior years? If there truly is a decline in educational outcomes for students we need to determine why so that a plan to reverse that trend can be devised and implemented.
Take a moment to read the current Maine Board of Education 5-year Strategic Plan
https://www.maine.gov/doe/sites/maine.gov.doe/files/inline-files/Strategic%20Plan%202022-2026%20F.pdf
There is very little focus on education quality and outcomes. Until that changes Maine students will lag or fall further behind.
An under educated populace, the dream of the socialists in office.
Just maybe, Janet Mills and the Democrats should concentrate on improving Maine’s public school educational rank, rather spending untold millions of our tax dollars on bringing 75,000 illegal immigrants into the state and loading them all with free benefits? Whaddaya bet Mills and the Democrats believe the children of those illegals will already be better educated than Maine children and will raise Maine’s ranking? Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Unfortunately, dumb begets dumber.
Maine, the way life should be. We’re the best at being the worst.
Based on the priorities espoused by Mills’ new idiocracy hire – Education’s equivalent of Nirav Shah- it s only going to get worse.
As a retired teacher asking my youngest daughter about her day -every day- as a junior in the western Maine town known for its fair, l can attest with equal parts certainty and disgust that Maine public ed is every bit as bad as the article suggests. Given Mainers’ propensity for apathy, and displacing all blame on people from “away”, it’s not a surprising result
Weren’t this way when LePage was Governor. How fast things change. Should have blocked off the Kittery Bridge years ago. It has only dragged Maine downward into transland.
Shameful, shameful, shameful!!!
This state “secret” has been going on for as long as the Democrat run legislatures and school systems have been in power, asking for school bonds year after year, wasting,wasting, wasting our money. The illiteracy rates have been hushed for ages, buried deep so you won’t discover the truth. There used to be a site called The Report Card, ranking Msine schools by name, now obsolete. Gee, I wonder why? But here’s where http://www.maine.gov/doe/dashboard. Why do Mainers keep voting pro schools?
Here’s an atrocious example, just this week, Boothbay Harbor/Boothbay just voted YES for $30mill for their school. They originally asked for$99mill! Their population is only about three thousand, mostly elderly and retired. This is a time of overall very low birth rates and teacher shortages. Parents are leaving public schools for Christen schools or homeschooling by the droves, a plain fact. Such a reckless vote means property tax increases in this BadBiden/MiserableMills economy.
Mainers, make your future vote count against Democrat Marxists who, like the schools they’ve decimated, destroy anything good and wholesome, especially for children, in their unhealthy paths!
when we have 270 illegal grow houses and OUR LEADERS turn a blind eye driving their shiney cars with the words WE PROTECT by the boarded you homes every day and turn a blind eye as the courts filled with political hacks with the growth moving up while test score go down. Shooting up our Main St with no acconitablity do not blame our schools do not blame our kids, but do look at our leadership. Replace them!
“Maine’s highest ranked school was the Greely High School in Cumberland, which ranked as number 566 in the nation, scoring 96.79 from the U.S. News.” Well, then I question the survey’s accuracy with Greely being a leader in DEI and “wokeness”. Whatever the actual numbers are, they’re trending downward and the rot starts at the top with Commissioner Makin.
My father was a high school principal in this state for nearly 30 yrs and very active in statewide education issues. Before he died in 2007 he said that public schools in Maine had gone totally into the toilet. He said the teacher’s union needed to be disbanded and the state’s public educational system needed to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. I served over 10 yrs on a Maine school district board, mostly as chair, over 4 decades ago. The rot that I have seen set in since I last served in that post is profound……and just terrible. The youth graduating from these wretched places. many with diplomas they did absolutely nothing to obtain, have no idea of how to work or even that they should work. Not many are in the labor force under the age of 40. It comes from never being held accountable for their work or their actions, either by their parents or the public school. This is a very expensive disaster being foisted on Maine taxpayers……and sadly on their children.
The education situation is just one element of the cultural devolution cycle. Our republic can only exist with moral, ethical–and educated!–citizens. We just keep on devolving…will we wend our way back to the cave even without being “bombed back to the Stone Age”? Our time is marked by the refusal to let go of centralized power. We did away with a king, sure, but now we have bureaucrats and elected officials taking the king’s place! We have got to stop centralizing, and therefore growing, huge power structures. We’ve forgotten Lord Acton’s advice: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. More private schools, more home schooling! Less governmental intrusion into every aspect of life by evolving, ever-growing power structures that manage to be authoritarian at best and totalitarian at worst. More recognition that the individual citizen is the foundation for freedom. This emphasis on group identity is wrong! Focus on the the individual, along with maximum freedom to be is the cure. The force of government power making us all go down it’s chosen path will lead to more devolution. Education, therefore, needs to be decentralized and the number of administrators reduced. Teachers we need. People who know how to think we need. Let real teachers do their jobs! Get rid of “indoctrinators”.
At least kids can change their genders and learn about all the new sexual styles. That’s important right? They also know the colors of the rainbow as they are forced to stare at the pride flag in every school system.
Worse than Baltimore public schools? (where the Chick-fil-A, cows learned to spell)… We in Maine are in uncharted territory.
One has to see the priorities. The people’s republic of Maine has shown them in so many ways that are bad for this state. Pay more and get less. I can’t wait to see the big push for E V school buses.
Blame the parents.
Keeping your child in Maine public schools is child abuse!
The solution is to BOYCOTT Maine schools all together! Why send your child, in the first place, to a rotting system where, as a parent, you know your child will be indoctrinated with all sorts of meaningless, socialist crap and pushed through to a ridiculous, unearned graduation without hope of having accomplished anything of importance to help mature them towards life preparedness and skill sets. I know having worked on the school insides, the school administration just pushes your child through the corrupt system, as a money stat. That’s it folks!
Alternative? Homeschooling or cooperative learning, Christian schools…be creative, gather your like minded friends to curriculum plan and demand your money back from the state for defective goods!
Head up xsnake
You re not wrong
Maine courts just validated vax mandate
That will surely help with current teacher shortage
No end of stupid in Augusta
Covid mandated school shutdowns had a devastating effect on all school grades. 4th grade reading deficiency could have a direct correlation to the shutdowns.
Just send your kids to private schools. Kents Hill comes to mind, at +$60,000 per year.
time to go back to the slate and chalk era because spending twenty two thousand dollars per student per year isn’t getting the job done
Another product of Democrat policies.
The three toughest essay questions on a Princeton University application.
1) You’re stationed in your 30-meter guard tower with a 50-caliber sniper rifle. A filthy terrorist sow approaches your kill zone: approximately 80 pounds, 13 years of age. Do you shoot out her eyeball or her kneecap? Explain your reasoning based on your personal perspective toward your relatives who perished in The Holocaust.
2) If you could have dinner with one famous genocidal Jew-supremacist torturer, which would you choose to meet? What would you ask him, her, or them?
3) Think back to the last time you let a goy die in agony on the sabbath. What were your feelings and emotions? Did the experience evoke any of your deviant paraphilias? Did you masturbate to climax?
Leaving out schools with low enrollment excludes religious or charter schools which likely would have increased the Maine score.
The DIE metric likely lowered Maine scoring as the schools are still white and jew dominated overall so Maine was probably penalized for not having enough Sunni Muslims. .
That being said, the entire nation has become dumb thanks to zionist jew indoctrination. Amazing that cops did nothing when blm and antifa were burning down cities and now are cheered on by genocidal jew lovers for violently suppressing mostly jewish students practicing the right to assembly peacefully on a private college campus because they are speaking out against zionist jew mass murder.
Americas greatest satanic ally continues to kill women and children terrorists in Gaza with 2,000 lb American precision ordnance. Like that great American cia lapel pin wearing patriot Sean Hannity said, if they don’t kill the women and children over there, pretty soon we’ll have to kill them over here.
Muh, freedom fries.
If the phrase, “you get what you pay for,” then the schools next to slash their budgets, and owe Mainers a refund.
Must need more DEI to improve maine schools. Maybe they’ll try that.
Well, when Earth Science curriculum includes a perverse idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then critical thought training is expecting too much.
A lot of RSUs have handcuffs on because of this stupid state’s mandates. If the idiots in Augusta and southern Maine would stop pouring their Liberal wacko ajenda into our education system, we would be a lot better off!!!
Next, Mills will be coming forward claiming all the schools are underfunded.
Trump has given in to homosexuals.
Apparently, even Islam has too. Who the heck calls a million man march against trans freakism a million person march?
Human
Man. Woman
Million man march
Canadian Muslims organize “Million Person March” to banish gender ideology and child mutilations
Natural News
30 Apr 2024
If we replaced all of the childless liberal women running our schools with married men who are fathers do you think our schools would get better or worse?
YEAAAAA! We’re number 1. We’re Number1. Highest taxed and worst public schools IN THE NATION. Lowest gun crimes of all 50 states, yet these democrats and Janet Mills who run the state want every stupid anti-gun laws from EveryTown USA to pass. GO JANET AND CRONIES GO. Turn this state into something worse than California. YEAAAAAA!
From the supposed, vaunted #1 school in the state…..my son had one class on WWII history. One. Horrific.
RSU40 has abysmal student proficiency. All the school board and liberal loons in town care about are special rights for the trans kids and getting more money for the buildings they have neglected for years. No accountability for anything. Pathetic!
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson