Educate Maine aims to spotlight benchmark indicators in quest to improve outcomes for students through 2019
Business leaders working to improve Mainers’ educational outcomes said Thursday that keeping a steady spotlight on key education indicators and explaining to leaders in business, education and political circles why education is important will lead to significant change in the coming years and decades.
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“This is not about new policy,” said Colleen Quint, interim executive director of Educate Maine, as the group released its second report on Maine education indicators. Quint noted that many education laws and policies, such as ones aimed at improving test scores, graduation rates and expanding pre-kindergarten, are already in place. “We need to continue to pay attention to make sure the vision of those policies continues.”
Educate Maine board member Yellow Light Breen agreed.
“We’re in the really hard work phase of where the rubber hits the road,” said Breen, executive vice president of Bangor Savings Bank. “It’s going to be long, hard work.”
The report tracks 10 key education indicators, and the group added 2019 benchmark goals this year. Among them:
• Full-day kindergarten is offered at 88 percent of school districts. The goal is 100 percent.
• The rate of high school graduation is 86 percent. The goal is 90 percent.
• Forty-nine percent of Maine 11th-graders are proficient in reading and mathematics. The goal is 70 percent.
• Maine residents pay 32 percent of the average per-capita income for college. The goal is 26 percent, the same as other New England states.
The report collected existing statistics from a variety of sources on public pre-kindergarten enrollment, availability of full-day kindergarten, reading and mathematics proficiency in fourth and eighth grades, graduation rates, number of students going to college, college completion rates, student cost and debt, and the number of Mainers with postsecondary degrees or credentials.
Making sure students are career- or college-ready has a significant effect on the business community and Maine’s economy in general, said board member Chris Hall, chief executive officer of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce. The fact that fewer than half the high school juniors were considered proficient in reading and mathematics was a big red flag, he said.
“They stand to be disenfranchised from the economy,” Hall said. “This is fundamental. I can’t think of anything more important.”
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