Maine’s K-12 Education Once Ranked 1st, Is Now 36th
Academic learning takes a “backseat” to political ideology
Photo courtesy of Maine Policy Institute’s Press Release.
Jacob Posik, Director of Legislative Affairs at Maine Policy Institute has provided a damning, 77 page report of Maine’s K-12 educational woes. A state that used to be first, or second in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math and reading, today ranks a distant 36th. Maine’s academic learning has taken a “backseat” to a host of items being pushed on children that have nothing to do with the basics of education. This analysis is the best advertisement for homeschooling, or Christian school that we’ve ever seen and I hope parents spend the time to review it.
The report goes into great detail about the decline in Maine’s K-12 educational system over the last 38 years. My personal observations are only from the last four years, but the amount of concerning items documented during that time are quite substantial. It seems like in the last few years that radical school administrators and teachers have decided to “dial it up to eleven” with their far-left political push inside the brick walls of our once great public schools. This has had a tremendous negative impact on the quality of education.
Posik states that “Maine is the second most ideologically liberal state in the country, with 33 percent of Mainers self-identifying as liberal.” That stat blew me away, given that New York (30%) and California (29%) are lower than Maine. But, I’ve said we are the California of the east coast for a few years now. As the saying goes, “go woke, go broke.” Maine’s K-12 public education system is certainly “broke(n)” and Maine taxpayers are paying a heavy financial burden.
Behavioral issues, struggles with mental health, political ideology and the Covid-19 school shutdowns all have had negative impacts on education here in Maine, as detailed in the report. The Covid situation as bad as it was, provided a wake up call for many parents about how far Maine’s education has fallen. For the first time many parents were able to see and hear radical teaching methods on their child’s laptops from home, which raised alarms. Most students have yet to recover from this disruption however.
A key area of this report where one can see a real concern is a rise in teacher resignations and retirements, due to dissatisfaction here in Maine. This report provides the other side of the coin with teachers having to deal with “students’ disabilities, behavior and mental health issues,” where nearly 20% of Maine students are receiving some type of special education. That number also blew me away. One in five students!? It must be so hard on the decent teachers remaining.
The report points out that teacher pay is not on par with the other neighboring states. But, I fail to comprehend how throwing more taxpayer money at this is a viable solution. Maine schools are now the worst run business in your town. Why the constant need for more taxpayer money for declining student enrollment and declining academic performance? How about just knocking off the woke nonsense in school and spending that time getting back to the basics?
My personal belief is that the underlying, root-cause of teacher dissatisfaction and the claim about pay issues still centers on two things, 1) lack of discipline in the classroom, with “Maine teachers restraining and secluding students more than any other state,” and 2) woke, political teaching being pushed on children which is referenced more in detail below. It may be easier for teachers to say it’s a pay issue, rather than point out the root-cause dynamics inside the schools that are driving teachers crazy. But, this report does document many of those issues.
My understanding is that many of the older, more experienced teachers are simply unwilling to put up with these two things anymore. They’ve left the profession for good and there isn’t enough money in the world to get them to come back. It doesn’t help that Maine is one of the oldest states in the nation either. But, what is backfilled with these resignations of experienced teachers who actually came into the profession to teach is often a “woke” teacher, straight out of a liberal college who is already drinking the far-left Kool-Aid.
Chart from The Maine Monitor, included in the report, showing the massive resignation numbers after the Covid-19 school shutdowns.
Part IV of the report, starting on page 54 is where I really zoomed in. The pushback on political neutrality inside Maine schools was ramped up in 2017 when Trump was sworn in. The “political bias” was in full swing with classrooms being weaponized by the democrat-led left. “MAGA” is now seen almost as a political terrorist group in schools. Political discrimination became commonplace with only liberal values being acceptable in the classroom. The report does a great job pointing out the overall political ideologies that have infiltrated Maine’s K-12 schools.
The death of George Floyd in 2020 was the spark many schools needed to run full speed into the “equity lens,” which is a divisive model often claiming that “America is a systematically racist country” and a concept that we may never recover from. BLM led walkouts and protests by teachers and students certainly didn’t help the academic situation in Maine schools. Critical Race Theory praxis, which I define as color of skin, over content of character has also had a negative impact. No one “teaches” CRT, but it is embedded into the curriculum.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (aka DIE, or “Didn’t Earn It) and the rise in equity consultants and equity audits which has been a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) which had potentially good intent gone wrong, is now transforming these children into how they fit and feel in an oppressed/oppressor power dynamic which includes more gender ideology, identity politics and a constant push in regards to sexuality.
“Time which could be spent improving students’ knowledge and skills is increasingly allocated towards inculcating students and teachers into a farleft worldview in which racial, gender, and sexual minorities are sacralised.” That is a very good quote from their analysis. The time Maine schools have dedicated to SEL by teachers who are unprepared or underprepared in understanding these complex theoretical and psychological issues dramatically reduces the time and energy spent on teaching real academic skills. SEL is becoming the woke bible of sorts, pushing this generation of students into collectivism (Marxism) to create little activists. Anytime you hear things like “transformative, or systematic change,” run the other way as fast as you can.
The report documents the massive rise in LGBTQ+ students. Any sane person should be able to rationalize the extreme social contagion coming from inside these Maine K-12 schools. The report states, “...in 2021, 31 percent of Maine high school girls identified as lesbian, bisexual, or some other sexual identity, and 4 percent identified as transgender. Among high school boys, 11 percent identified as gay, bisexual, or some other sexual identity, while 2 percent identified as transgender. This is a substantial rise from a decade prior, in which only 8 percent of girls and 4 percent of boys identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and transgenderism among teens was such a rare phenomenon…” These schools are incubation centers for sexuality, sexual narcissism and often feed upon comorbidities such as sexual abuse, assault, ADHD or underlying mental illness. Schools are creating the most confused generation America has ever seen.
Graph on page 72 of the Maine Policy Institute report on the decline of Maine Education.
The report provides details about the dramatic increase in sexually explicit books in Maine schools, along with the LGBTQ+ posters being hung in classrooms and hallways. The Gay Sexuality Alliance clubs inside the schools (they refer to them as Gay Straight Trans Alliance clubs) are also mentioned. All part of the hyper-sexualization narrative in an effort to normalize sex with minors. The report ends with information about Out Maine, a taxpayer led LGBTQ+ effort sponsored by the Maine Department of Education to push sexuality in the classroom. The report also touches on the school facilitated gender, or sexual transitions taking place on students, often done in secret so the parents are unaware. Complete insanity.
The report is long and so packed with info, it was hard for me to try and summarize. But it is an amazingly detailed recap into the world of how Maine schools once were at the pinnacle of providing taxpayers hope with our next generation. Now Maine is racing their way to the bottom of the pack, in only a few decades. I hope parents and taxpayers read this comprehensive report and start to hold their local schools more accountable. Better yet…pull your kids now!