Maine high schools will now have a little more time to transition to awarding diplomas earned by demonstrating subject matter proficiency. A 2012 law made it mandatory for all high schools to begin handing out proficiency-based diplomas by the year 2018. But many districts have told the state that they need more time to make the teaching, curriculum and school culture changes that come with a shift to proficiency-based education. The state Department of Education decided this week to give it to them.
If there's a proficiency-based education guru at the Maine Department of Education, Diana Doiron is it. Doiron joined the department 14 years ago as a language arts specialist. Then, in 2008, her bosses asked her to develop a new specialty. She did special training in proficiency-based education in Alaska, returned to Maine and began working with districts across the state.
Her work took on new urgency in 2012, when the Legislature passed a law requiring all high schools to move to a proficiency-based diploma by 2018.
"It's a transformational shift," Doiron says. "Right now, in most of our high schools across the state, diplomas are awarded to students who earn passing grades."
At many high schools, students aren't mastering key subjects. But they're still getting diplomas because they manage to get Cs or Ds instead of Fs. To earn a proficiency-based diploma, simply passing isn't enough. Students, instead, will need to show mastery of the state learning standards in eight content areas, including math, reading, science and social studies.
For high schools to get there, says Doiron, there are "three key kind of categories of effort. There's policy work that needs to be done. There's practice, which includes not only instructional practice, but the whole instructional infrastructure. And then there's the community engagement components."
High schools are basically being asked to change their entire approach to teaching and learning. What kind of support and coaching will students and teachers need to move to away from a system that emphasizes seat time as the path to a degree? What tests, projects or alternative forms of assessment will high schools use to determine whether students have mastered different subjects?
"Maybe that one math standard that I wasn't able to meet - I'm going to be able to do that in my CT Engineering course," says Bill Webster, superintendent of schools in Lewiston. Webster says his district's path to a proficiency-based diploma depends, in part, on increasing the amount of extra help that's available when kids struggle to master different subjects.
"We will be expanding our afterschool programming. We'll be expanding options within the school day. And we'll be providing more summer opportunities for those students to be successful," Webster says.
Lewiston is on track to begin handing out proficiency-based diplomas by 2018. But in recent months, districts across the state have told Diana Doiron that they need a little more time get there. This week, the state gave them the breathing room they were looking for.
"All the options hold districts accountable to awarding diplomas based on proficiency in all eight content areas and the guiding principals. What it offers is when they'll be ready to do that. That's where the latitude is," Doiron says.
Districts can now apply to extend their deadline for implementation of the proficiency-based diploma to July of 2020, provided they meet certain criteria and show the state they're making progress toward this ultimate goal.
David Ruff runs the Portland-based Great Schools Partnership, which is working with as many as 30 high schools on their moves to proficiency-based diplomas.
"From our perspective, educators and schools and districts are working pretty hard to move this agenda forward," Ruff says. "But it's a pretty big lift. It's a complex lift. It has a lot of different moving parts."
Giving them a little bit of extra time in order to be able to do it right, says Ruff, makes a lot of sense. The last thing the state should want, he says, is a poorly-implemented change to an approach that could drastically improve the kids readiness to enter college and the workforce.