Author: Heidi Sampson

If there was a trap set for you, would you want to know how to identify it? Homeschoolers and those considering educational options should know: not all that glitters is gold. Likewise, just because a bill falls under the umbrella of “school choice” does not mean it’s in the best interest of homeschoolers. “Fund Students not Systems” and “the Money follows the Child” are appealing slogans promoting school choice efforts. But homeschoolers must understand that the policies connected with those slogans sometimes come with catches. The students who participate in some of these school choice options will actually become part…

Dear Governor Mills, Many Mainers are facing desperate times. I would like to offer my thoughts for consideration so together we can move this state into a healthy, positive direction. It’s vital we exercise wisdom and insight as we go forward. I believe you desire the best for the people in this state. In that light, I will communicate the struggles facing many of my constituents. If they were to speak to you, they would share their struggles in a much more blunt manner. When people are denied the right to earn a living to support themselves and their families,…

A few short weeks ago, could you have imagined what you’d be doing now: Homeschooling? Do you want to homeschool? Do your children want to be homeschooled? If the answer is “No,” you and your children have a challenge ahead of you. Rest assured, however, because there is hope and you can do this! A few well-placed suggestions will help smooth out some of the bumps in the road on which you now travel. Overnight, your world turned upside down. You, your children and your children’s teachers have had your daily routines seriously altered. You were all forced into this…

Every child is unique. What may work for one, will in many cases not work for another. When it comes to education, one size certainly does not fit all. In Maine this is being realized and options are expanding. Maine has had a long history with education possibilities. We have had and still have public schools, private schools and a combination of both, known as town academies unique to Maine. Religious schools have been a part of that landscape as well and thankfully, still are. Several decades ago, the homeschool movement began to take hold, now it boasts nearly 6,000…

Every state in the country that has claimed to have “repealed” the Common Core Standards has in fact done no such thing. Instead, they have cynically re-arranged a few standards, moved a few commas, changed the wording here or there and then just slapped on a new name in order to sell the same scam to a public that wants desperately to believe something significant has occurred. This is what will happen under the so-called “revisions” to LD 1492, “An Act To Establish a Protocol for Review of State Education Content Standards of the System of Learning Results,” which the…

On behalf of our children, Maine has made a major positive step forward by initiating the removal of the Smarter Balanced Assessments. Monday, May 18, 2015, the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee unanimously voted to eliminate the Smarter Balanced Assessments. It will be hopefully be codified in the legislature in the next few weeks. We have shaken off a $900,000 annual membership fee as well as $2.7 million price tag for implement these tests. Let’s keep a close eye on what is used to replace it. These assessments and others like them are highly problematic on many levels.  Specifically, this…

Mark Twain said, “Don’t let school get in the way of my education.” This is profound. Consider the two issues: schooling and education – the two are not the same. The former is the institutionalized mechanism that is intended to facilitate, or at least encourage, the latter. All too often, this doesn’t work well and in reality, the two are polar opposites. Schooling is about conformity and uniformity to increase community and groupthink, marginalizing individualism. Education on the other hand is about dreams, desires and passions, as individual as the person engaged therein. In today’s heated public schooling arena we…

It was with reserved optimism that I accepted a post on the Standards Review Panel. I was informed that this process would only look at the standards to make sure they are of the highest quality for Maine students. I was also assured by the commissioner we would be bringing in outside experts.  Those things did not happen. In the end we looked at the standards in the narrowest, ineffective way and we never heard from a single expert. We now will have standards that are not any better than what they were and the entire effort was a total…