Liveblogging the Education Committee meeting today – no Charter School bill from the DOE this year
According to Commissioner Gendron, there will be no charter school bill from the state Department of Education this year.
Her reading of the federal “Race to the Top” regulations suggest to her, she said, that Maine’s failure to adopt charter schools will have little effect on the state’s chances of winning federal RTT funding. In the long list of things the U.S. Department of Education is looking for, she said, charter schools is, in her mind, at the “bottom of the list” of things Maine needs to work on.
Since the charter school bill was killed last year and no new charter school bill will be taken up this coming legislative session, the Baldacci administration’s refusal to put forward charter school legislation itself means there is no chance whatsoever for charter schools to even be considered by the legislature this spring, much less enacted.
So, until we have a new governor and a new legislature, Maine will remain one of the few states in the nation that refuses to adopt what has to be one of the most promising and innovative education reform approaches being used in the United States today.
Our state motto is what again? “I Lead?”
Hardly.