The federal government says parts of Maine’s educational assessment system, including giving all 11th-graders the SAT, don’t comply with the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act and is giving the state 20 days to show it’s making improvements.
If the state Department of Education misses that deadline, it could lose $114,000 in administrative funds, which would then be distributed directly to the state’s school districts.
Education Commission Susan Gendron said Friday she was “very confident” Maine would be removed from the “non-approved” list and get its full funding restored. The penalty represents 25 percent of the state’s No Child Left Behind administrative budget.
The commissioner believes “it’s the wrong strategy” to take the administrative funds and divide them among all the school districts because they then can’t be used to specifically help the districts that need it most.
Gendron said the U.S. Department of Education has not yet had time to review all of Maine’s support material and the state is doing more work to prove the assessments it gives actually measure annual improvement, as is required under No Child Left Behind.
The most controversial area is the state’s use of the SAT – a college preparatory exam – to measure student achievement in the 11th grade. This is the first year the SAT has been given to all 11th-graders as the state’s standardized test, instead of developing a test of its own.
“We believe we made the right decision by using the SAT as our high school assessment,” Gendron said, but admitted it would give fuel to critics, who said the state made its decision too quickly and without adequate review.
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