Can Maine’s Schools be Saved?

This is the time. Maine, in a dark spot educationally, economically, and on public safety, was once top of the heap, and had the best schools in the United States. That was 1992 – strong outcomes for decades before that. Can Maine’s educational system, now 50th of 50, be restored to its former glory?

The answer, of course, is yes. As in other blue states, educational outcomes, teacher morale, and student prospects for prosperity have been eclipsed by non-scientific, non-traditional, ultimately corrosive Democrat policies, real learning replaced by faux (fake) learning, activism, and indifference.

The mission of educating the state’s youngest citizens – giving them the best possible chance for success in life – was never about, and should never be measured by, how much money is spent.

How much money is spent on education is an “input,” just a measure of what is pushed at the system, not an “output,” or “outcome.”

An output would be how many kids are headed for college, working at a good salary, or starting their own business two years out of Maine’s high schools. An outcome –  in accountability language – would be scored against a national average. Are kids reading well, able to do math, know history, and science, how to write, and how to think for themselves? Are they confident in their decision-making?

One important outcome – real data – is the annual assessment of Maine’s 4^th graders and 8^th graders. Are they learning what will give them good lives, or not? They are not.

Widely reported, the 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) delivered a shock to Maine – one that seems only to have shocked those not in government. Once tops – best school outcomes – Maine is now at the bottom.  

In reading, 61 percent of 4^th graders are either unable to read or below level, while 72 percent of Maine’s 8^th graders cannot do basic math. Bluntly, this is a mass failure, a moral obligation punted.

If our kids cannot read and do math, how do they get a good job, succeed in that job, learn over a lifetime, and gain the confidence to be successful – read instructions, balance a checkbook, plan, set goals, and achieve? And how many childhoods do they get? Only one.

If we do not teach them the skills that we were thoughtfully taught, we are failing them – all of us. If we think dollars equal success, as kids keep failing, we are using the wrong measure of success.

Truth is – let’s just say it out loud – Maine’s Democrat governor, legislature, many administrators, and education unions care more about themselves, spending without any accountability than kids.

Some will say that is an overstatement. It is not. Kids, parents, and teachers are struggling – as the political education machine grinds hopes to dust, high-paid unions and administrators are failing.

While Maine teachers start at $40,000, the top eight staff at Maine’s teachers’ unions get over $200,000 each in pay – five times what a starting teacher makes, no excuse for that.

The average Maine superintendent makes $118,000. Is one superintendent worth three teachers? Is the average union staff worth five teachers? No. So, how do we fix the system?

First, Mainers have to recognize that public schools are failing, with outcomes so far off that we have to act.

Second, Maine citizens need to get involved personally and elect a governor who has the heart, resolve, and experience to put this right. We need to unify in reclaiming school boards, widening options for parents, and ensuring kids graduate with skills, compassion, and appreciation for hard work. The goal is not to get by, it is to restore excellence.

Third, objective performance standards need to be put on superintendents, administrators, and schools  – no more looking away from outcome measurements. Teachers need freedom, more pay for good performance, and less bureaucracy and reason to fail.

Fourth, tracking where dollars are spent, which generates greater learning, higher confidence, mental strength, and life outcomes – and which do not, is key. Cutting what fails is part of success.

Fifth, restructuring the state’s Department of Education from the top, elevating people, programs, and ideas that feed accomplishment, firing, ending, and removing what has failed is key.

Lots of flow-down ideas are worth exploring, to put Maine back at the top in education. To those who say, we cannot catch up after COVID, I say 50 states suffered COVID, and 49 are ahead of us. We can retool this state’s education system to regain the strength we had and have lost.

To those who say, not everyone has to go to college, I say right – that is why we need industrial arts, shop, back in schools –to promote those with skills the state desperately needs, welding to homebuilding, woodworking to machinists, mechanics, electricians, 100 other trades.

To those who say, we are too rural, too poor, too far from businesses, I say stand up, walk, then run toward goals that reinforce each other. If the next governor can cut wasteful spending, lower taxes, and bring businesses back to Maine, kids will have great jobs. If he can also restore public safety and motivation by ending the run of foreign drug traffickers here, we can rebuild it all.

Bottom line: We need to envision great schools, believe we can restore our schools, and then work with every ounce of energy we have to make that vision and belief real. This is the time.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).