Fix America’s Schools – Starting with Maine

Maine’s education system – like that of much of the nation – is in a free-fall, maybe even has already crashed, and must be rebuilt. Serious studies confirm the state’s schools, like schools nationwide, are in extreme distress. In this grim scenario, Maine kids, parents, and teachers have been horribly betrayed.

Start with the studies. One by the Maine Policy Institute, from mid-2024 entitled “The Decline of Maine K-12 Education” illustrates how Maine schools went from being some of the top-rated in the nation to the among the lowest. What it describes could be seen in Oregon, Maryland, or New York, or really anywhere else in the nation. But the problems it details are regrettably our own.

Maine – like much of the nation – has also suffered a breathtaking collapse in the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores over the past 30 years. From scoring at the top in 1992, Maine has since plummeted more to dead last. This same decline is seen specifically in 4th and 8th grade math and reading, where Maine now ranks rock bottom.

Other studies too confirm the heartbreaking collapse of Maine’s schools. We do not get two chances to educate our kids, they do not get two childhoods.

If a child misses critical lessons, the chance for fundamental learning – in math, vocabulary, reading, languages, history, biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, critical thinking, and shop skills – they miss out on much more. At these early stages, a child’s brain is either wired for lifetime success or failure. Our schools must prepare students for success.

Instead, the reverse has been happening. Deliberately, the teachers unions, progressive Democrat ideologues, moral relativists, excusers of childhood failure on the basis of gender, race, economic position, national origin, and raw prejudice, have promoted a redefinition of public education.

Pushing teachers to abandon traditional learning, or the pedagogical practice of a competent teacher passing forward knowledge with accountability – the national push has been to drop hard topics, moral compass, love of country, and mental toughness for Marxist ideology.

The average Maine high school student has not read one book cover to cover, and the same holds true nationally. Three out of four Maine 4th graders, cannot read properly yet.

In place of hard learning – a focus on achievement, how we think (not what to think), what it means to be free and why freedom maters, reading books, fours year of math and science, literature, moral lessons, languages, writing creatively and analytically, kids get taught who to blame.

Instead of correcting bad behavior, excuses for it become institutionalized. Students are taught poor grades are “not their fault,” and that these can be compensated for by grade inflation, lower standards, claiming a disability, or personal prejudice. Sometimes it seems the lesson is that winning and losing are bad, and crying time is good.

Rather than celebrate a family’s history of achievement, service, hard work, lifetime faith – the divine beauty of the universe, sacrifice, family values, gender, and God are dismissed. Children raised with these values often face merciless and insidious discrimination.

Today students are being taught at face value leftist notions of class warfare, political hate, diversity (measured by skin color not ideas), “equity” (Marxism), and “inclusion” (non-conservative, non-traditional, non-merit), critical race theory (which Martin Luther King would resent, since it undermines his dream), environmental hysteria, anti-capitalism, and how to redefine gender, or celebrate its “fluidity.”

It’s not just the students who are suffering. Teachers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied, hundreds leaving Maine annually, leaving the profession. Freedom over lesson plans, how to impart wisdom, how to teach is gone. Paperwork is endless.

Making matters worse for teachers, pay in Maine is near bottom, while the requirements for conformity and reporting are endless. Discipline problems have tripled, lawsuits are constantly threatened, and morale is now among lowest in America.

The real question: How do we fix all this? The answer is simple: go back to what works. Admit failure. Shelve the Marxist agenda. Get progressive Democrat activism out of the schools, and prioritize basic learning, and do a better job rewarding quality teachers and teaching in Maine’s public schools.

We need to re-empower parents, value quality teachers, and promote administrators, who see value in outcomes not ideology.

The bottom line is that Democrats have reshaped Maine’s education system and the nation’s – by any standard – into a rank failure. They own that failure. They did this to our kids and schools. There is no more time to waste, we have lost enough childhoods. Now is the time for results-based reform, not apologies or excuses.

[DISCLAIMER: The Maine Wire is a project of the Maine Policy Institute.]

Robert B. Charles, a Maine attorney who lives in Leeds, worked extensively in Washington, DC in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. He has served as assistant secretary of state, as a reserve naval intelligence officer, and has written two books on Maine.