Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
This past month, I attended the annual conference of the Council of State Governments (CSG) in Kansas City, Mo. Since all of you generously sent me there, I'd like to share some of what I learned.
While there, I attended “Education Reform and Transformation: Fact or Fiction,” presented by two state superintendents of instruction, one from Idaho and the other from Maine, and two Teachers of the Year, one from Kentucky and the other from Kansas.
The fellow from Maine, Don Siviski, blew me away. His state seems to have reinvented its education system based on the work of education innovators, including Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators.
As a result, Maine is transforming its state and local school system into a learner-centered practice, where time is the variable and student learning is the constant, all leading to proficiency-based diplomas for all Maine students by a date certain.
Two bills that directly impact the Education Fund are moving through the Legislature - bills that, acting together, seem to cancel each other out and are therefore most troubling to me. One is “An Act Relating to Making Miscellaneous Amendments to Education Funding Laws” (H.538), which through several strategies...
Before I get into the details about the spending and revenue bills that were just passed in the state House of Representatives, I'd like to explain how my beliefs informed my decisions during the process that evolved into the legislation that I supported. Let's start with capitalism, the very...
