Morning Sentinel from Waterville, Maine • 7

Central Maine Newspapers Opinion riday November 7 2003 A7 xu Xi Blethen Maine Newspapers si consider their position EDITORIAL: OUR VIEW Patricia Ammons eatures Editor David Offer Executive Editor Glenn Turner News Operations Editor rank A Blethen Chairman of the Board DOT responded well to Monday traffic mess VIEWS Gilliam Johnston Sidney hopeful LePage and the City Council will set aside their party affiliations and any disputes from the past The same goes for relations between the new mayor and city department heads Reasons to disregard failing schools listings were made from the cell phones of stalled drivers with lots of time on their hands It is tempting to use this space to question the wisdom of the state officials who decided to $87 billion could help US schools When he was trying to con vince Congress and the Ameri can people that we should invade Iraq President Bush claimed that Iraq had tried to import ra dioactive material from Nigeria have been We are impressed that city and state officials recognized their error and quickly changed things The repair project was halted ing lie outside of the school In opposition to this Maine has chosen to provide support and resources to schools that have been identified as needing assistance More seri ous consequences may come into play sever al years down the road but only after assis tance is first provided to needy schools model believes that teachers ad ministrators and parents hold the answer to improving schools and that they do this with time and support 3 The No Child Left Behind guidelines for identifying failing schools list 84 different ways a school system can be identified as not making adequate yearly progress One half of these criteria is based on student per formance while the other half is based on participation and whether a student com pletes all sections of the test In the next sev eral years testing will be expanded to all grades 3 8 and grade 11 in reading math and science The criteria for not achieving ade quate yearly progress will then expand to 294 ways of not making the grade This unre alistic system is interfering with ef forts to implement more reasonable and fair criteria for identifying schools that need as sistance What makes this tug of war between state and federal legislation ironic is that although funding for the No Child Left Behind Act ac counts for only about 8 percent of funding for schools it is dictating to Maine what it should be doing You would think the state of Maine and local school systems which ac count for over 92 percent of their funding would be setting the agenda for school re form Also it is very difficult to accept the documents that the CIA knew to be fake Now we learn that after a Chi nook helicopter was shot down recently troops tried to confiscate news photogra digital camera We i seem to have come a long way Even though no Waterville schools were listed among the 140 Maine schools that did not make adequate yearly progress it is just a matter of time before Waterville schools and all schools across Maine join the ranks of these so called failing schools What started as reasonable goals to pro mote federal policy (No Child Left Behind) for improving student achievement and rais ing accountability for schools has eroded in to a misalignment between state and federal educational initiatives to improve public schools Because of to unrealistic rules and regula tions and a top down one size fits all federal mandate for improving schools a collision course now looms between state and federal initiatives about how to measure student achievement and how to take subsequent ac tion to improve Maine schools This misalignment results from differ ences in philosophy and legislation which in clude: 1 The No Child Left Behind legislation uses high stakes testing as the measuring stick for student performance How students perform on a one day test will determine whether they and their schools are making adequate yearly progress in meeting state standards based on federal rules This is contrary to Maine legislation that requires a variety of evidence of student learning (tests samples of work student work projects student performance etc) over a period of several years to determine if students are meeting state standards Al though system for measuring stu dent progress is more complex and is still being developed by each local school system most educators believe that it will be a more accurate fair and valid method of measuring student learning 2 No Child Left Behind Act consequences for schools identified as failing focus primar ily on increased a reduction of resources for schools and heavy handed provisions for re moving teachers The federal model believes that the problem is the school and that any viable solutions for improving student leam change the role of the Legisla ture in deciding how funds are allocated to fund programs It will Simply ensure that this money is no longer tapped to help balance the state bud get We have already lost near ly 40 percent of this money to the general fund We af ford to lose more Setting the tobacco settle ment funds aside for programs that promote healthier living and disease prevention is not inappropriate considering that this money comes to the state fact that federal legislation is dictating the direction of state educational policy consid ering that constitutionally education is a state not a federal responsibility Maybe those individuals responsible for making the laws should review the US and the Maine constitutions Because of this tug of war between state and federal regulations schools and policymakers are placed in an awkward posi tion with some interesting options such as: Option A Accept the No Child Left Be hind rules and regulations and label most of its schools as not meeting state standards even though Maine has the highest gradua tion rate in the United States and its scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have typically placed stu dents at the top of the ranking of states Option Lower state standards so that fewer (or no) schools or students are identi fied through the No child Left Behind process as failing Of course this option provides short term relief but does not prepare students with the knowledge and skills they will need for fu ture employment and post secondary learn ing opportunities Interestingly the state of Arkansas did not have any schools identified as not meeting state standards This begs the question high are the standards in Option Pay little attention on the No Child Left Behind identification of schools not making adequate yearly prowess and fo cus the attention and work on sys tem for identifying and helping schools and students meet the learning stan dards Needless to say we (educators students parents and communities) need to hold our selves more accountable for helping all stu dents meet higher standards of achieve ment However No Child Left Behind legis lation is not the answer My vote is for option LePage council should find ways to work together Joseph Mattos is assistant suntendent of Wa terville Public Schools from the policy of embedding re porters within the American mil itary All of which raises the ques tion: if the Bush administration had to use false documents to get America to go to war in the first place and now the military wants to prevent reporting on the situation in Iraq perhaps It has since been learned this is an exercise in nation building that the American peo ple realty want I for one have been thinking a lot about what $87 billion (and counting) could do for the public schools in our own country Megan Hannan American Cancer Society New England Division Topsham Morning Benftnel A Blethen Maine Newspaper John Christie President State should protect Healthy Maine und This letter is in response to the article on Oct 31 regarding the Und for a Healthy Maine abou(t our state's share of to bacco settlement funds I was disappointed to see that Republican House leader ship is opposed to LD 1612 the bill put forward by the gover nor to constitutionally protect the Und for a Healthy Maine and that they do not see the value in ending the tug of war over the tobacco settlement funds The Republican House lead ership believes that protecting the fund with a constitutional amendment will restrict future Legislatures from ing funds in the manner they deem best for the This is incorrect A constitu close the ather Curran bridge tional amendment would not Surely they should nave naa somt idea of the mess that would cause We belabor the point Those involved certainly have heard it from others But people are human and announcement of dramatic de clines in youth smoking rates In just six years the high school smoking rate has dropped 48 percent and the middle school rate has dropped 59 percent Not pro tecting the funding that has contributed to these results would set a dangerous prece in Inknmn Ion! IU LUinucuoaiG 1VL vuc luwavvu uvuv related illness that has cost I strongly encourage Repub the president based this claim on Maine thousands of lives and lican House leaaersmp to re millions of dollars Thousands of Mainers bene fit from the Ymd for a Healthy Maine and the successful pro grams it funds This success was just re cently demonstrated with the January I will have as sessed the city Tomorrow I will get contract ahd job descriptions so I can study them from now to Those words from Waterville Mayor elect Paul LePage are characteristic of what to expect from a LePage ad ministration: hard work determina tion and a com manding presence Republican LeP age narrowly won the seat from two Democratic chal lengers: Charles Kellenberger the official party nomi nee and Daniel Dufour a forced to run as in independent when Kellenberger got the party nod Running local elections on the De mocrat vs Republi can model is anachronistic and divisive A proposed charter change a few vears ago which LePage supported would have created non partisan city but it narrowly failed That was too bad Running municipalities has a lot more to do with competence and being a lower case democrat than it does with political ideology or party politics Charles Cochrane Publisher and Chief Executive Officer A Member of The Seattle Times amily of Newspapers ments It was a mess Augusta City Manager William Bridgeo said he received more calls about this monumental traf 1 fin fam than anv sincrlp issue since he took office six years ago error we commend the solution Some of the calls undoubtedly Good job We suspect that if Kellenberg er and Dufour had not split the Democratic votes LePage would have lost But glad he did no matter what the reason LePage said he will be in in clusive mayor setting hours that he will be in his office and avail able to any cit izen a great idea also hopeful that he and the City Council will set aside their party af filiations and any disputes from the past and the same goes for rela tions between the new may or and city de partment heads who were around when LePage was on the council This is a time to look forward Wa terville has some interesting po tential going for jt from the Hathaway building to Head of the alls to downtown and retail development Paul LePage ap pears to have the skills the ex perience and the attitude turn these what is a maybe into reali ty If this editorial had been writ ten by the drivers trapped in traffic as they tried to get into Augusta Monday it would be far different from what read ing now We have a hunch some of the words would not have been ac ceptable in a family newspaper Traffic was backed up for hours some as far as Winslow on US Route 201 and Vassal boro on Route 3 because the cfaln Donartmpnt nf Transnorta tion closed the ather Curran they make mistakes and this one Bridge in Augusta for repairs was not nearly as bad as it could Drivers were tunneiea to Augus notorious rotaries which pushed traffic back for miles Some drivers gave up and went home Others sat inched forward and cfowpH Workers were late to work so traffic could flow again and Students were late for school the Department of Transporta People were late for appoint tion developed a new plan involv 2 A ma a A Mix MA ing Higiiiuiiic wuin auu hu bridge closure to keep traffic moving what should have hap pened and it did So rather than condemn the ww IMW ww A Jt kEitJTW A 1 MlWW lul rirk HY ll Ml tG 102903 cats Tit Madia Sancaa me 4 Ta raaanad ATataaaRADLCOH A stranger named Jeb may BOSTON It the volume of mail that surprised me when I protested After all the case of Terri Schiavo a lorida woman back on a feeding tube had been put before a national jury The vast majority of my mailers seemed to believe that the few minutes of edit ed video represented the 247 reality of her last 13 years Nor was it the villain that surprised me What prompted most writers to put fingers to keyboard add vitriol and send was the certainty that her husband Michael was an untrustwor thy unfaithful would be killer As a Hotmail correspondent said you think that fathering a second child with a woman other than his wife has anything to do with his actions? What surprised me rather were the people who simply sided with parents over spouses often go on with their lives parents cannot the wrote one Another said a parent I cannot imagine not having a say in the care of my Of course much of the sentiment A view from Boston Ellen Goodman was loaded by lopsided coverage Ter parents and an entire industry of supporters have told and sold their side Michael to his credit and debit has made only one national appear ance before a woefully unprepared Larry King Unlike most of my correspondents I pretend to know the real family story except for the enmity between husband and parents The much de monized Michael was tenacious in her care and for many years in the search for a cure His refusal to di vorce her and give up guardianship as more than one reader suggested make him less loyal in my view As for his portion of any leftover malpractice money is nearly all gone to lawyers But the story was cast as a set of opponents: parents desperate to save their child versus a husband eager for her to die It was not cast as a set of questions: Would Terri want to live this way and who gets to speak for her? Nevertheless what intrigues me most is the debate prompted by the Schiavo case about which family should hold sway over our life and death: the one we were bom into or the one we chose? Each of us can cite someone who married away escaped the fami ly that never shared their point of view Each of us has a friend whose husband or wife never understands them There is no one size fits all families answer The law around this issue grew out of the tragic fate of two other young women Karen Ann Quinlan and then Nancy Cruzan whose case went be fore the Supreme Court the very year that Terri Schiavo began her long or deal In 1990 parents fought the control your fate state of Missouri to remove a feeding tube from their daughter The justices ruled that a person has the right to refuse therapy Then they went fur ther Realizing how few young people think about these matters they ruled that if someone is incompetent the right to refuse treatment goes to a legally authorized surrogate Since then every state has a passed a law saying in general that the deci sion making passes first to a spouse then to an adult child then to the par ents This is the ruling the lorida Legislature overturned so casually wheii it made Jeb Bush her judge doctor and guardian said that the Schiavo story is the perfect lesson for a living will If Terri had written down what she wanted we have families squabbling over her fate But that simple Medicine these days as ethicist George Annas says get ting better at resuscitating and bring ing people part way back better at starting than No Jme can craft a personal state ment to cover every possibility So in tune with a living will we need a health care proxy to pick the person we trust to make the decisions we would make And we have to talk about it story pricks our end of life anxieties or me the terror of years in a state of without surpasses the fear of death And while as a mother I whol ly understand the desire to decide a fate as a wife I chose my husband as my proxy It may be differ ent for others But the irony of the lorida debacle is that a dispute over which family member decides husband or par ents has ended up with a governor deciding A governor who never even met her Let everyone who has mailed or just wondered about biology or matri mony take health care proxy and pick your own decision maker Other wise it could be a stranger named Jeb Ellen mail address is ellen goodman0globecom EDITORIAL: OUR VIEW VIEWS EDITORIAL: OUR VIEW VIEWS.