This is a great story. For eight years, Maine had a hot-headed Tea Party zealot as Governor. Paul LePage appointed a homeschooling parent as Commissioner of Education. He made racist remarks. He followed Jeb Bush as his idol.
In November, Democrat Janet Mills was elected. Competence, intelligence, sanity. Wow!
The educator she chose as Commissioner of education was stunned. She is amazing!
BRUNSWICK — The Saturday morning after Janet Mills won the gubernatorial election in November, Pender Makin sat in bed with her computer, sipping some coffee and preparing to compose a letter to whoever would be the next commissioner of the state Department of Education.
“I was on the one hand so filled with hope for a much better future for Maine, and also filled with exasperation due to some significant issues that I was concerned about at the department,” she recalled Dec. 28.
“‘Dear new commissioner,’” the Scarborough resident’s letter began.
Then, she said, “I basically laid out what I thought should be the most immediate strategic goals for that post.”
Makin, Brunswick’s assistant superintendent of schools since 2015, had no idea she was writing a letter to herself.
Even though she never planned to send the letter, deeming it just a way to organize her thoughts and feelings, Makin had started to establish a platform of issues and priorities that would serve her well in the weeks ahead.
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The state Senate and Education and Cultural Affairs Committee are due this month to confirm Mills’ nomination of Makin as Education Department commissioner. She would replace Robert Hasson of South Portland, who former Gov. Paul LePage tapped for the role in March 2017…
Makin said she was asked out of the blue in early December to attend an interview in Augusta with a cabinet screening committee.
“I said, ‘of course I will,’” she recalled. “How would I ever not? … I wake up with a sense of urgency; I consider it a complete mission, public education across the board.”
Makin saw the interview as a chance to share her beliefs about education with “a bunch of smart, powerful people,” but didn’t imagine herself much of a contender for the post…
Taking the reins of the department at the dawn of a new administration, “I see Maine as being in a prime position to be influencing national education policy, rather than reactively responding to every little whim that’s happening (at the federal level),” Makin said.
“We have the most unique demographics, we have innovative people in our classrooms all across the state,” she added, plus “a lot of passion and determination, hard work, and all the things that make Maine a real leader educationally. I feel that we maybe have squandered every opportunity to highlight that at the national level.”
Makin also said she sees Maine striving to achieve a world-class education for its students and pushing back against federal policies with which it doesn’t agree, instead of “absorbing blindly whatever gets handed down to us.”
She recalled implementation of the “No Child Left Behind” initiative in 2001, which launched a period of externally driven policies that created a culture of fear-driven accountability. Non-educators were telling educators how to teach, she said, and using sometimes punitive methods to try to bring about success.
But educators “don’t respond to carrots or sticks,” Makin noted, pointing out that the new teachers she meets each year come with a passion and idealistic desire to do the best for their students.
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“They arrive pre-motivated,” she said. “… They don’t need to have their professionalism stripped away and replaced with something to implement.”
“Government’s role should pull back, and focus on bills and initiatives that provide infrastructure,” Makin said. “Let’s look at innovative ways to provide … universal (pre-kindergarten). How can we raise up teacher bottom pay so that they’re recognized for the amount of education and work that they do to become teachers? How do we create equity across the state?”
“These are great, big things,” she continued. “I think government should stay out of the classroom; I think government should stay out of the transcripts,” and retreat from “micromanaging the actual operations of our schools.”
“When you take leaders, and you strip from them their leadership and you replace it with stuff to manage, you’re not fostering leadership,” Makin said. “So I think we need to just have a different lens.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is how women manage….. love it.
Love this!
Well done, Pender Makin!
Well done, Governor Page!
Very much worth checking entire article. Fantastic story.
Maine went all-in on “personalized learning”, led by national ed reform lobbyists and think tanks. They literally turned the entire state into an experiment, and the experiment failed.
I wonder if this (good) appointment is a reaction to that massive overreach by ed reformers. Going back to basics- a return to sanity, because it is CRAZY to turn your entire state over to a gimmicky, faddish experiment. Who does that? Not one district or one school- the whole state.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/10/18/maine-went-all-in-on-proficiency-based-learning-then-rolled-it-back-what-does-that-mean-for-the-rest-of-the-country/
Paul LePage, Gov of Maine, did what Jeb Bush told him to do
exactly
“But educators “don’t respond to carrots or sticks,” Makin understands this issue so much better than Bill Gates. The whole carrot stick notion is based on the assumption that teachers are holding back in terms of effort or commitment. That is a childish absurdity. Carrots and sticks do not work because the vast majority of teachers are already trying to best serve their students. However, there is so much in a student’s life that a teacher cannot control. Teachers cannot control students’ poverty or the daily family dysfunction that many students face. Many teachers are doing their best to meet the challenges of their jobs. What they do not need is the hostile, disruptive impact of testing, punishment and continuous austerity budgets. They do not need uniformed business trained fake administrators micro-managing their every move. They do not need computer instruction imposed on students for no other reason than to make money for hardware and software companies. Computers are useful tools, but teachers should be deciding how and when to use them, not corporations.
Paul LePage, good riddance, a far right wing regressive reactionary troglodyte. Here’s hoping that he retires from politics forever. Bravo to Maine for coming to its senses. LePage is even worse than Christie who was pretty horrible for 8 long years in my NJ.
From the article: Makin graduated from Thornton Academy and earned degrees in English literature and school leadership from the University of Southern Maine, followed by teacher certification from the University of New England in 1996.
She and husband Mike, a middle school science teacher, have two rescue dogs.
Makin started her career in 1997 at the Fred C. Wescott Junior High School in Westbrook, where she taught the full spectrum of subjects to at-risk students.
She said she sought a job teaching English, but took the difficult-to-staff role by default. “I fell so madly in love with working with those kids,” she said, “that that’s what I did for the bulk of my career.” End quote
She and her husband are teachers, that is very good news!
Side note: LePage was term limited as was Christie.
and the Catherine Ricker, an AFT Vice President, was chosen as the Commissioner in Minnesota …a national union leader becoming a state commissioner …. a real WoW!!!
“Inside Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time”
Zuckerberg has created a “cult-like” organization where dissent isn’t tolerated – ed reform’s response?
Let’s hand him K-12 education policy! Give this man a school system! He can work his magic with 7 year olds.
The one and only reason these people run US education policy is that they are rich. They bought it. They paid everyone involved and purchased it.
Here’s Fordham’s “prediction” for 2019:
“Fordham Institute OH
We should expect school funding to be a top priority in 2019 because of governor-elect DeWine’s campaign promises, the recurring ghost of ECOT, and Ohio’s charter school funding inequities.”
In the ed reform echo chamber, “school funding” means “funding charter schools”
It doesn’t mean that the for the vast, vast majority of people in this state, who actually attend the public schools that ed reformers pretend don’t exist, but in the echo chamber that’s what it means.
These are the people who have captured my state legislature and governors office- people who literally DO NOT consider public schools at all.
Is it any wonder 90% of what comes out of Columbus is relevant ONLY to charter and voucher students? That’s the only constituency ed reform politicians recognize. About 8% of the public. The other 92% have no representatives at the state level, with the possible exception of teachers union lobbyists- and thank goodness for them. Without them every single session would focus on exclusively on the schools ed reformers support.
Ludicrous. A ridiculous situation. But that’s where we are in this state after 20 years of ed reform dominance. Our kids cannot even get a hearing.
Chiara,
I remember back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, when charter schools were just getting started, charter advocates made three promises: 1) they would be more accountable than public schools because they would close if they didn’t meet their promised academic goals; 2) they would be more innovative than public schools because they would be free from the rules and the unions; 3) they would cost less because they would bypass the bureaucracy of public schools.
They failed on all three promises. When a charter school fails, it gets more time. If it continues to fail, it is turned over to another charter operator, not returned to the public schools. It is not accountable, and many charter schools are shielded by purchased legislatures from accountability. The charters’ idea of innovation is to get children to conform without question, to stand in line silently, to follow rules without hesitation. It’s like going back in a time capsule 120 years. Last, far from costing less, charters demand at least equal funding, and many get extra funding from corporations and foundations and billionaires and hedge fund managers.
Such scary How To Build Our Future logic: “…innovation is to get children to conform without question, to stand in line silently, to follow rules without hesitation….”
And all the time this process is going on, the potential for a school to serve a neighborhood is being undermined by various programs broug down from distant lands.
Diane, is it just my computer monitor(s), or is the blue on the banner of your blog a darker shade of blue than it was before?
FLERP,
I don’t know. I write, I push the button that says “SCHEDULE” OR “PUBLISH” OR “REPLY” AND THAT’S THE ONLY THING I KNOW ABOUT WHAT APPEARS ON THE OTHER END. JUST THE WORDS. I HAVE A FRIEND WHO POSTS GRAPHICS. I ONLY DO WORDS.
On my computer, the banner is gray but when I hover the mouse pointer (mouse cursor?) over the banner it turns orange.
Figured it out. I forgot that I view the blog using the WordPress reader. WordPress must have changed its color scheme. Duh by me.
They arrive pre-motivated,” she said. “… They don’t need to have their professionalism stripped away and replaced with something …”
Bravo. Someone who knows teachers. Amazing.
I was in the hospital a few years back. I got good care in spite of some of the annoying micromanagement efficiencies. It was rare during certain times of the day for medical personnel to be able to concentrate on my care without being repeatedly interrupted with cell phone communications that they were expected to answer immediately. While computers helped them document my care, it didn’t stop them from giving me so much fluid that the technicians couldn’t get a needle in to draw blood, nor did it keep them from overdosing me on pain medication. It took someone taking the time to look at me and note my symptoms to go back to their data charts and find the errors. They have been trying to do the same thing to education over the past few decades, much to the detriment of the public education.
“I see Maine as being in a prime position to be influencing national education policy, rather than reactively responding to every little whim that’s happening (at the federal level),” Makin said.
Did that make heart go pit-a-pat! Relative smallness can be used as an excuse for going along and getting along or it can be an opportunity to experiment with innovative ideas that put students and teachers at the center of policy making. I’ll be excited if Maine becomes a beacon of the latter. The first step was certainly encouraging.
There are many Pender Makin’s in the pipeline. Vermont’s and New Hampshire’s former state leaders are cut from the same cloth and there are, I am certain, other state level leaders who could lead public schools out of the “culture of fear-driven accountability” if they were given the chance. But… as long as Democrats buy into the neoliberal “reform” agenda we can expect the likes of Arne Duncan and John King being chosen to lead at the national level and testing will continue. I hope that Ms. Makin is successful in leading her state and that Maine IS the template for the future. As those of us who value public schools look at the Democrat candidates for 2020 their position on “reform” should be a litmus test. If we get another six years of test-and-punish it will mean two full decades of carrots-and-sticks. Ugh!