The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results for 2024 were released on Wednesday and the results are nothing short of disastrous for Maine’s public schools.
The NAEP, which measures the reading and mathematics proficiency of 4th grade and 8th grade students in American public schools, is one of the few nationwide standardized tests policy makers can use to evaluate the efficacy of public education systems.
By any standard, Maine is failing relative to its peers, though almost no state in the Union can boast a meaningful return on the higher-than-ever rates of per pupil spending.
Per the NAEP results for Maine, one-third of 4th graders and less than a quarter of 8th graders are proficient or advanced in math. In reading, just 26 percent of students in grades 4 and 8 are proficient or advanced. Relative to other states, Maine now ranks 43rd in 4th grade math, 27th in 8th grade math, 43rd in 4th grade reading, and 35th 8th grade reading.
If those results weren’t shocking enough, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy has compared NAEP performance in every state with the state’s growth in per pupil spending. According to the University’s Edunomics Lab report, Maine students’ test schools have dropped even as per pupil spending has skyrocketed.
Since 2013, the state of Maine has increased per pupil education spending by 71 percent. At the same time, NAEP test scores in reading and mathematics have fallen by roughly 15 points for 8th grade math and 4th grade reading.
Although the researchers observed a similar trend nationally — i.e. higher spending per pupil but worse performance on NAEP testing — Maine’s gap between increased funding and diminished results was far more severe.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="34741 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=34741">26 Comments
Come on, anyone who has been paying attention or hired a student is not surprised by this at all.
Elect Socialist Democrats and you get this dumbing down of the young, because Socialist Democrats need dumbed down voters as adults! They are growing their voter base!
There is NO wonder why Maine s GDP is 46 out of 50
Mainers are dumb as rocks, and it should be of no surprise given the Marxist infestation of our public education system
All of my 12 th grade daughters “teachers” are unabashed, unapologetic commies, except her amazing band teacher
We get what we pay for, and we ain t paying for much
Absolutely no one is surprised by these horrible numbers, teachers and administrators that want to pals with the students, they dress the same, come to school showing off their new tatoo or new blue hair. The worst place for a Maine youngster is a government school. No joke, C’mom man!!
Morons teaching morons, what could go wrong. Mills says if we could pay em more we could at least have a higher class of moron, maybe even reaching the level of legislator.
That graph tells you EVERY thing you need to know about how good a job Augusta Democrats and The Maine Teachers Union are doing .
They are doing a lousy job .
The job they are doing is UNACCEPTABLE.
NOW they want to change the entire focus of their “:educational “ goals .
NOW they want to scare our kids to death with fears of Global Warming – Climate Change and The Green New Deal .
They want AI to do the work and all the thinking …kids don’t need to know how to read , how to write , or how to do simple math . AI will do it for them .
AI can do all the teachers ‘ lessons plans . Teachers will teach nothing . The kids will listen to the AI show on a video monitor .
Teachers will oversee the teaching of whatever the State deems important .
The State will require that the local school boards require what the teachers teach in order to qualify for the FUNDS the State can provide .
It is the PERFECT PACKAGE of State Control on your schools and YOUR kids .
Janet Mills and the Augusta Democrats want to control the entire process .
if YOU have never read the George Orwell book 1984 , you need to do it now .
Do it now before it is too late .
Vote Republican before it is too late .
This has everything to do with our fiat money system. If the money wasn’t broken we would get results for spending. Fiat combined with fractional-reserve banking creates this mess we are in. It all started in 1913 and went parabolic starting in 1971. Until we have a deflationary currency we will see everything our lives touch worsen. From quality of products (planned obsolescence), housing, food and education. Fix the money fix the nation and world.
And yet demoKKKrats just want to keep throwing $$$ at the problem.
“Democrat lawmakers in Augusta have introduced a bill that would impose a three percent sales tax on hotel rentals in order to increase the amount of state funding available for public schools.” MAINE WIRE
There’s been to much time spent on Social Engineering in Maine’s classrooms. Lots of teachers aren’t holding the students accountable. Sometimes because they lack the backing of the school administration to enforce policies. For the most part it’s safe to say the students run the show these days.
Some of this dumbing down started with Common Core which was developed and financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya to do just that.
Then, along came the Commissioner of Wokeness, Pender Makin, to further the cause with her statement, “Academic learning takes a back seat to social-emotional learning and programming on race and gender.”
The Teacher Union’s solution: Give us more money to fix the problem that we created. F’them!
Maine teachers are lazy. They don’t enforce the curriculum and they have 1 or 2 half days per month.
I believe teachers are the most important position in any state. They should be well compensated, among the highest in each town. However we need to see results. No union BS, children must learn and prove it. Get rid of the woke BS. Teach STEM, reading, writing. Less emphasis on computers.
I thought ( that when established ) the Maine State Lottery was going to generate money to pay for school education . Was I wrong ?
What happened to THAT idea …..
Somebody refresh my memory ….wasn’t that how we were sold the lottery in the first place ?
Where does the lottery money go now ?
Was that a lie also ?
11.2 billions should fix that.
I believe in calling a spade a spade. How many illegals are participating in our educational system? No amount of money is going to “fix” our failing DOE especially when the focus is on “social-emotional learning”. I blame the governor for appointing Pender Makin as Commissionner of Education, I blame Pender Makin, I blame individual school districts for not fighting back against this pathetic excuse for educating our children! Money is not the answer, getting rid of the people in charge of state government is the answer! RECALL, RECALL, RECALL every politician who supports this DOE!
Thrown out food. Thrown out education. Buy from local maine farms….have good food…not garbage… whos in control here?
Maybe if they taught math instead of gender and racial studies the kids would be smarter. And maybe if the kids read an actually good book that makes them think and not a book about a boy and his two moms. This is the same tactic that Communists have used many times, for instance in Cuba. When you teach the kids the ideology when they’re young and don’t teach them the thinking skills, it creates a dependency on a source aligning with their ideology. They will then only listen to the ideology that they agree with and only use CNN and therefore be practically brain washed.
Then when the kids go out into the real world not only will they not be able to think for themselves, they’ll also be incapable of understanding why things don’t align with what they want. This creates whiny adults who never grew up and became responsible.
You can see this clearly in gen z…
“social-emotional learning” is the job of the FAMILY to teach. A good foundation should have been installed in a child long before school has started. Teachers teach subject matter. Families teach social skills. but with the loss of the family unit social skills are lost and education follows. You do not need a PHD or an EdD, which our Com. of Ed does not have, to figure this one out. Social skill should be tough by the family long before school time.
But our government has supported “wham bam, thank you mam” now take your abortion pill! We do not need a family life.
Over the past 50 yrs there has been a call for more and more woman be moved in to leadership roles in local schools systems, with increasing numbers in Superentendentship, secondary principales, and cridical State leadership roles, While men have moved in increasing numbers to the elemantry levels . This trend has been supported by the liberal left.
BUT the test scores are still going down!
The fact which has held over the years in Education of childern is the work of Mother and Father do in the suces of their childern’s education is #1.
Public schools, IMVHO, are on par with the most egregious forms of child abuse out there.
I dropped out my soph year of high school (those very many moons ago), and to date still consider it the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.
And have yet to come across even one, single instance where I found myself needing that piece of paper.
If you have a good work ethic, and can converse with a potential employer in an intelligible way: you can accomplish anything.
And I do mean anything.
For the Maine progressives, the primary purpose of our public schools is to serve as a platform for indoctrination in their dogma. They have discovered that a rational adult human being will reject their values–as per the latest election–so they have to apply their propaganda to our children.
A chart that shows how Despicable Maine is. Interesting…
Civil servant labor organizers. There is nothing civil about them.
The drop in scores for the “covid kids” is apparent. In other words, Maine school policies were idiotic in comparison to other states.
We were close to #1 in education world wide…till 1979, when the dept. of Education was created and our children’s education crashed! It’s all about DEI, WOKE, new buildings, smaller classes……listen, you can teach children in a field, under a tree, you just need to give them the tools. Time for DOE to go away and let the state and local resources take over.
he Department of Education began in 1979.
In 1978, America was ranked #1 in education.
Today, America is ranked 22nd in Education.
The Department of Education is a FAILED experiment.
SHUT IT DOWN.
The cost is all related to pensions and interest on debt that the districts do NOT make public. It’s not used for education.