PORTLAND (AP) – State officials are trying to figure out what went wrong with Maine Learning Results, the state’s decade-long effort to raise academic standards in the schools.

The ambitious and comprehensive program, which set high standards in eight subject areas and required school districts to create assessment systems to determine whether students mastered the material, has failed to produce higher scores on student assessment tests.

Massachusetts, which created lower standards and required students to pass a state exam to get a diploma, saw a big improvement in national test scores.

Gov. John Baldacci is calling for a yearlong moratorium on local assessments so that officials can come up with ways to mend the system.

Over the past decade, most states have seen improvement in national test scores while Maine’s have remained stagnant. Among the leaders is Massachusetts, which last year had the nation’s highest proportion of students at or above the “proficient” level in reading and math in grades four and eight.

Some in Maine wonder whether Massachusetts’ success demonstrates that simpler is better when it comes to education reform.

Learning Results was too ambitious, and the state failed to provide school districts with adequate support and clear guidance, said Robert Shafto, executive director for the Center for Educational Services in Auburn.

“We overwhelmed people,” he said. “We got 10 pounds of reform in a five-pound bag.”

The reforms were an outgrowth of a nationwide call by education experts to establish rigorous academic standards and hold students and schools accountable for meeting them. At the time, Maine’s students were outperforming students in Massachusetts and the rest of the nation in reading and math.

Since then, Massachusetts’ scores have surged. For example, between 1992 and 2005, its eighth-grade math score climbed from 273 to 292 on a 500-point scale. The comparable scores in Maine during that period inched up from 279 to 281.

Massachusetts’ improvement was third-best in the nation, while only one other state – Iowa – improved less than Maine.

Maine’s eighth-graders’ improved a bit in reading, but most states saw larger gains.

Spending does not appear to be a factor. Maine in 2003 spent $9,521 per pupil when adjusted for regional cost differences, the seventh highest in the nation and about $1,000 per student more than Massachusetts.

Maine Education Commissioner Sue Gendron said the trends in Maine’s test scores are alarming.

“I want Maine kids to be competitive with the rest of the world,” she said. “We are losing ground, and that is not acceptable. As a state, we have not changed, and other states have.”

The 1993 reform law in Massachusetts reduced local control over education and gave the state a greater role. By 2003, all students had to pass an exit exam in math and English to graduate.

As policymakers pushed for reform in Maine, local control won out.

In 1995, Gov. Angus King proposed that high school students pass an exit test before they graduate, but many local school districts said they didn’t want to give the state that much power. There were fears that “high-stakes tests” would be unfair to students who know the material but struggle with tests, and that teachers would simply teach to the tests.

King acknowledges that it may have been a mistake to succumb to political opposition that forced him to compromise and abandon the idea of exit exams.

“If you want to measure kids in math, why does Brunswick have to have a different test than Windham?” he asked. “Isn’t long division the same in both places?”

Gendron said about a third of the state’s school districts have created systems that are working fine, a third are still in the process and a third are struggling. Small school districts, she said, are having the biggest problems.

She plans to appear before the Legislature’s Education Committee on March 15 to discuss Baldacci’s proposed moratorium. Her intention is to create a task force that will report to the Legislature next year with a plan to fix the assessment system.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-02-26-06 1029EST