Roundup: Reports We Have Known

There have been a goodly number of reports issued in the last several months, all having as a focus, or as a major component, school administration reorganization.

We all learned a long time ago, of course -- you did learn this, right? -- that just because "everybody does it" or "everyone agrees", that that thing that everyone is doing isn't necessarily right, nor is that brilliant idea on everyone's lips automatically, of course --how could it be otherwise? -- the best idea. In fact, an examination of human history suggests that mass delusion has played a more prominent role than we all might care to admit!

Be that as it may, here's the crop of them. The Baldacci plan is most closely patterned after the Brookings plan.

We heard Tuesday night that the muckety-mucks met at the Department of Education on December 11th and cobbled together the plan and the legislation by January 1. The resulting work shows many signs of having been assembled in haste. (What comes before the Legislature is not actually not a piece of legislation per se, but is a section of the Governor's budget. The significance of this oddity may relate to ways in which the proponents hope to get it through the process.)

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, University of Maine, Philip Trostel & Catherine Reilly
Improving Educational Resource Allocation in Maine: A Study of School District Size, February 2005
link

Maine Children's Alliance
A Case for Cooperation: Making Connections to Improve Education for All Maine Students, August 2006
link (registration required; squirrely, but not quite impossible)
(top page: link)

Select Panel on Revisioning Education in Maine
The Learning State: Maine Schooling in the 21st Century, September, 2006
link

Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation, University of Southern Maine, David L. Silvernail & Ida A. Batista
Fiscal Analysis of the Report of the Select Panel on Revisioning Education in Maine, August 2006
link

Brookings Institution
Charting Maine's Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places, October 2006
link
(top page: link)

College of Education and Human Development, University of Maine, Gordon A. Donaldson, Jr.
Pursuing Administrative Efficiency for Maine’s Schools: How Our Past Can Inform our Current Decisions, Fall 2006
link

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

- "Everybody Knows", Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man, 1988
(lyrics, mp3 -- 7.7 MB)