School committee suspends state graduation requirements
The Westbrook School Committee suspended a portion of the Maine Learning Results program last Wednesday night.////The School Committee has the power to suspend the state program?////
The committee retracted the Learning Results assessment requirements for graduation while the state works out kinks in the program.
While they wait for the Maine Department of Education to revise the assessment system in response to concerns from educators across the state, school board members have decided to go back to the old way of doing things for now.///What revisions are being made?////
Under the Learning Results program, public school students must successfully complete a series of assessments in addition to having the required number of credits before receiving a high school diploma. While they may acquire certification of completion showing they did indeed finish their schooling, they cannot receive a diploma until they have met the standards of the program’s assessment system.
The intention of the state program is to ensure that Maine’s high school graduates are sufficiently prepared for college or life after high school. While all Maine students have been assessed in the past, the Learning Results program is the first program to attempt a standardization of these assessments.
The revision of the program by the state is the latest in a series that has put the Westbrook School Committee as well as school boards across the state in an awkward position. Once again the board has to tell its prospective graduates and their parents that they are not sure what the students will have to do to get their diplomas.
“We’re sending mixed messages because the rules keep changing,” said Westbrook Assistant Superintendent Jan Breton.
The Maine Department of Education has said it will complete this latest, and hopefully last, revision some time before the summer, although the state originally said it would be completed by the spring. As it stands right now, students expecting to graduate next June will not have to complete the extra requirements. However, they will have to wait and see whether the state reinstalls the program before then.
In other business on Wednesday night, the committee elected a re chair and vice chair ////who?//// and approved the Healthy ME program directed at developing physical fitness for students not involved in school sports. It also approved a new English class focusing on movies as an integral part of popular and literary culture in the 20th century.
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