LIVERMORE — During the board comments period at a brief Regional School Unit 73 board of directors meeting Thursday night, March 23, Director Holly Morris of Livermore expressed concern over comments state Education Commissioner Pender Makin made during a recent legislative hearing.

“Janet Mills’ Education Commissioner Pender Makin announced last week that academic learning is definitely going to take a back seat to all these other pieces: social-emotional learning; gender and race; and diversity, equity and inclusion,” Morris said. “I find this very concerning.”

Makin made the statements while providing an update on Maine’s student assessment to the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee March 15. Earlier this month a letter from the federal Department of Education warned Maine was in danger of losing funding for low-income students because the way student achievement is measured does not comply with federal law. The issue arose near the end of the session.

Maine is seeing a huge increase in mental health, a huge increase in a crisis of disengagement, students aren’t showing up, are otherwise occupied, Makin said. They have missed at least one and a half years development, critical skills for life and learning in the classroom, she noted. There is a lack of practice, a lack in routine, she added.

The prefrontal cortex in the brain is where short term memory information is taken in, Makin said. When kids are under stress, they aren’t able to develop the brain architecture to support academic learning until they feel safe, until they are healthy, until they are engaged, she noted. In order to be successful academically, space in the brain must be freed up, she added.

“As [an educator], I know the time restraints,” Rep. Sheila Lyman, R-Livermore Falls, who serves on the committee, said. She worked with many children who had huge emotional needs. Awesome ways to get children to move forward must be found while leaving the parenting to parents, she noted. There are a lot of parents concerned with the academic piece, the social piece and what is going to be the priority, she added.

In a phone call after the meeting, Lyman said, “This falls under the umbrella of feeling safe in school. We are talking about some serious issues on the direction of education. As a teacher of 36 years, I had students who had major behavior, emotional challenges. I had to do whatever I could so students could move forward. My job was to teach, teachers have limited time.”

Lyman said she never had issues expressing to parents what her training was. “I always respected my parents, that they wanted to know about what their children were learning,” she stated.

During her campaign for the Legislature, education was what parents were concerned about, Lyman said. Public education can be quality, municipalities pay for education, folks should be able to weigh in, she stated.

Social-emotional curriculum is a priority, addresses what a learner needs to feel safe and be able to learn, Lyman said. There are a lot of emotional things on both sides, she noted. She doesn’t think the federal government should be involved, parents need to be involved, she stated.

“We are in a very difficult world, YouTube, TikTok, etc. have more impact on students’ lives, they are being brought into the classroom, Lyman said. Her message is to respect and honor parents’ voices on their children’s education.

“I do believe it is the parents’ job to look out for their children’s education, it is their right,” Lyman stated.

Regarding the assessment situation and potential loss of Title 1 funds, Makin said $117,000 is the amount that might be lost. If that were to happen, those funds would come from administration and no programs for children would be impacted, she stated. The state receives about $55 million in Title 1 funds, she added.

In a letter sent to Makin in February, the U.S. Department of Education said Maine’s student testing in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years violated federal law that requires state education departments to measure student achievement against specific criteria and standards. It said the state has therefore been designated “high-risk” for Title I part A funds for low-income students and may lose $117,442 if it does not show by March 13 why the funds should not be withheld.

When her administration was new, at meetings held with educators, parents, advocacy groups and others, it was repeatedly asked to change the spring assessment, Makin told the Legislators. The testing was glitchy, didn’t measure what it should, used a lot of internet bandwidth so many schools had to shut down their internet during the testing, took a great deal of time, and results from the May tests weren’t available until late fall rendering the results useless for supporting instruction program policy, she noted.

In 2020 spring assessments were not given and waivers granted as schools had moved to remote learning due to COVID-19, Makin said. That fall she received an email from Betsy DeVoe, stating there would be no waiver for assessments in spring 2021. Makin said in the same email DeVoe noted, “Assessments will look very different from past years. Necessity is the mother of invention. I urge state leaders to rethink their assessment systems and try to take some risks.”

Maine was faced with a choice: take the risk of signing another contract with the same vendor [for an assessment already deemed to be not valid by the federal government], or using one that would give educators data in real time with results available the next day, that parents are already familiar with, and took less time away from classroom instruction, Makin said. Makin said she knew the new assessment wouldn’t pass peer review standards but did meet the letter of the law so decided to take DeVoe up on her challenge.

During a meeting with the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., Makin asked about the two-thirds of states not meeting peer review approval status and was told the DOE had never sanctioned anyone and that states not giving assessments got a letter of warning.

Over the years, many bells and whistles have been added to requirements needed to pass the peer review process, Makin said.

If the federal DOE does decide to sanction Maine, Makin said during the appeal process she will unleash information she has found. In 2017, [the most recent year with available information] the 30-member peer review committee was made up of three or four retired state agency people, four or five university researchers, with the remainder staff members or contractors who work for assessment companies.

“Somehow, they have come up with a lot more processes we need to come up with and pay for,” Makin said. “I feel there are some fundamental issues with the way it is playing out.”