WAS LEPAGE KIDDING?

A television news story this morning reported that Paul LePage addressed various school district superintendent at a local area meeting yesterday. At that meeting LePage is reported to have said he advocates two things voters should listen to and consider seriously.

1. Public schools should bring back vocational training programs. LePage's point was that not all students will be going to college. Not all public school children want to go into fields which colleges focus on or fields for which an individual needs a college education. Many students are interested in, and can become gainfully employed in work areas for which vocational training through the high school and community college level can and should be providing.

This writer finds no disagreement with this position.

2. The State of Maine should set its own criteria and standards by which a student has met acceptable education standards, and those standards should not be judged or dependent upon any federal or national standards.

Apparently Mr. LePage has either not read the Maine Heritage Policy Center's Education Committee's Report issued a year ago showing where Maine is spending $3,000. more per student than the national average and achieving a lower level of performance in Reading, Math and Science. Nor has he reviewed this past week's data in the NBC special project, Education Nation - much of which has been posted here on this blog - showing where the 8th grade average of Reading and Math puts Math 35th in the nation (using Maine's current standard for evaluation which is a lower standard than the national standard).

It seems to this writer that a plumber or a car mechanic or any other vocational program student should still be expected to Read and do basic Math. But perhaps this writer's standards are too high. I don't know, but I did graduate from Bangor High School and those were the standards then. Of course those were during the days when an East Coast education was considered to be one of the best in the country. Perhaps Mr. LePage thinks we should all lower our expectations in these days when we're expected to vote for a Bully in the pits of Augusta.

As for me, if lowering our educational standards is the future of Maine's public education and I still had children in the K-12 age range, I think maybe another state would be the place to be paying my taxes. Seems to me I heard Mrs. LePage bought a place in Florida, where there is a state constitutional law prohibiting state income taxes. I think that's where Mr. LePage's daughter is going to college, too, - as a Florida resident.

Does Florida's public education testing standard meet the national standard? Might be something to check out.

Eliot Cutler is looking better all the time.