AUGUSTA, Maine — A group of Maine GOP leaders held a press conference Tuesday to announce they were forming a state education coalition with a goal to come up with strategies to better support students and teachers and ultimately to improve education in the state.
Rep. Heidi Sampson, who is a ranking member of the state's education and cultural affairs committee, said she and others are seeing a steady decline in the state's education system.
"We in the state of Maine were No. 1 and No. 2 academically in math and reading throughout the 1990s," Samspn said.
The nonpartisan 2024 Kid's Count national data profile ranks Maine 37th in the country when it comes to education.
Statistics from the profile show increases in the number of fourth-graders who are not proficient in reading, the number of eighth-grade students who are not proficient in math, and the number of high school students who are not graduating on time.
It also shows that younger children ages 3 and 4 are not enrolled in pre-kindergarten learning programs.
"Teachers are now being told what they need to do, and they keep changing things." Sampson.
Maine's education curriculum is currently based on the Common Core State Standards, which is a group of learning standards that are said to approach education with a focus on critical thinking and real-world problem-solving skills.
From Sampson's view, mandating learning standards like Common Core is ineffective, and she said she believes allocating more funding to the Maine Department of Education is a waste.
"The Department of Education isn't teaching children. I'm saying the money needs to go into the classrooms," Sampson said. "The Department of Education is a bureaucracy."
Other state Republican leaders, including Sen. James Libby, have a different view. Libby supports more funding for the department and for tutoring in public schools.
"Funding should be passed through to the state's Department of Education," he said.
Libby also said he believes graduation curriculum requirements for math and reading should be increased, modeling Maine's standards after states with higher education system rankings, like Massachusetts.
"There you get for years of mathematics. In Maine, in Title 20A, the minimum requirement is two years," Libby said. "There's just a lot of specific things about Maine law and a focus on curriculum matters that are just not being done."
But while their views on what strategies should be implemented and how may vary, the end goal to improve academic performance is the same.
"Math, English, science, reading, fine arts—we need to be able to go down that list and make sure we're pushing out quality there," Libby said.
NEWS CENTER Maine reached out to the Maine Department of Education and the Maine Democratic Party for comment, but neither responded.