After Maine lost its bellwether status in 1936 by leading only Vermont in supporting Alf Landon, FDR campaign manager James Farley quipped: “As goes Maine, so goes Vermont.”
Unfortunately, the saying has more than one meaning. Vermont is currently following Maine down the “proficiency” path in public education. No more grades as we’ve known them — and your state might be next.
In 2012, Maine’s state legislature passed a law requiring proficiency-based graduation requirements. School administrators up and down the state accepted the Great Schools Partnership (funded by Bill and Melinda Gates) model of proficiency-based learning.
One-hundred point scales would become four-point scales. A score of 4 would mean “exceeding proficiency.” A score of 3 would indicate being “proficient.” A score of 2 would be “approaching proficiency.” And a 1 would signify “getting started.”
Deadlines for papers and projects would be scrapped because it doesn’t matter so much when a student becomes proficient, only that the student becomes proficient at some point. For this reason, teachers are to allow unlimited retakes on quizzes and tests (now called “summative evaluations”). Homework (now called “formative evaluations”) is not to be graded at all.
This is not what the Maine legislators mandated. This was the Gates-Great Schools Partnership version of it. Parents generated a backlash. They were confused. Their children were confused. There were inconsistencies everywhere. For instance, a 4 meant different things to different teachers. Many formerly straight-A students found it nearly impossible in some classes to attain a 4.
A group of Maine parents and citizens concerned with the involvement of well-funded, out-of-state, and unelected non-profit groups in shaping the state’s education model started a Facebook Group called “Mainers Concerned About Proficiency Based Learning.” They swapped horror stories, discussed funding sources, and coordinated lobbying efforts to repeal the law.
The legislature indeed repealed the law in 2018. But the Gates-GSP model continues anyway. Schools in the process of adopting it are going ahead with it. Schools that have adopted it are sticking with it.
In Vermont, a set of regulations adopted in 2014 by the Vermont State Board of Education mandated proficiency-based graduation requirements to be in place for the graduating class of 2020. But again, it did not specify the Gates-GSP plan that is overwhelmingly supported by school and district administrators.
Some schools have rushed to meet the deadline. Others have lagged, prompting Education Secretary Dan French to say: “From our standpoint, we portray districts being on a journey, just like everyone in the world is on a journey, and we don’t see 2020 as some sort of hard and fast date.” This only invites the question of whether proficiency-based learning is really that important after all.
In St. Albans, Vermont, there has been a rush and a struggle. Overly complex transcripts have left parents feeling that college admissions counselors will simply reject them. The principal has resigned over the controversy. Maine has had its personnel casualties, as well. Scarborough, Maine’s, principal resigned in 2018 amid turmoil over proficiency-based learning.
Many high schools are finding it necessary to convert 1-4 scales back to 100 point systems for their transcripts. The exercise seems to many teachers to have been a waste of their time. And it raises many questions. Is a 3 an 85? Is it an 88? A 90?
A particular concern with the PBL model is its perceived negative effect on student motivation. In a Vermont-NEA survey of 1000 teachers, 47% said content knowledge had suffered. (That no doubt reflects the standards’ emphasis on skills over content.)
And a startling 72% said student motivation had fallen off. As powerful as the teachers union is in Vermont, however, it doesn’t seem poised to take strong action on the issue.
This despite the increased workload that teachers report from implementing proficiency-based learning. The union president himself testified to the House Education Committee that “one of my colleagues, a math teacher, has calculated that she spends four times as much time calculating her grades [as] she did in previous years.”
The Gates Foundation has a long reach. Proficiency-based learning, often in different places called “competency-based learning,” may be coming to a school district near you. In contrast, private schools in our area have actually advertised by pointing to their adherence to traditional grading. But in the world of school reform, traditional is sometimes a dirty word.
Curtis Hier has taught high school for 32 years. He lives in Fair Haven, Vermont.
