UPDATE: March 15, 2023: In a March 10 letter responding to the U.S. Department of Education's warning that the Maine Department of Education is at "high risk" of losing a portion of federal funding, Maine Commissioner of Education Pender Makin said the state did not violate federal academic standards and that a financial penalty "would be unreasonable, disproportionate, and unfair, given the fact that no other state has received such sanctions."
The three reasons Makin provided for why Maine should not be penalized include that its new assessments align to academic standards, the state acted in good faith to meet both federal requirements and the needs of students and schools, and the financial penalty would create a disparity between how the department is treating Maine and how it treated other states that failed to assess students in the past.
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The U.S. Department of Education is threatening to withhold a quarter of funding the Maine Department of Education may reserve for its administration of Title I after the state failed for two consecutive school years to meet reading/language arts and math achievement standards required by federal law for state assessment systems, according to a letter sent to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin last Friday.
The state violated requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for school years 2020-21 and 2021-22, wrote James Lane, senior advisor at the U.S. Education Department's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, in the strongly worded letter.
"Specifically, the State did not appropriately set and align criterion-referenced achievement standards on their assessments that would indicate to parents when students were exceeding, meeting, or below the state’s content standards," added a department spokesperson via email.
As a result, the state has been designated as "high-risk" for Title I Part A funds and may lose $117,422 federal dollars for fiscal year 2022 if it does not show cause by March 15 for why those funds shouldn’t be withheld.
For now, "the intended withholding will not impact funding to Maine’s schools," according to the Education Department spokesperson. Maine would be required to distribute the withheld funds directly to local educational agencies in the state.
In an email to K-12 Dive, a Maine Department of Education spokesperson said, "We believe that we have complied with federal requirements and acted in good faith and that this will be resolved soon.”
For the past two years, Maine has not released standardized assessment data, according to Josh Parrish, spokesperson for the Collaborative for Student Success, which tracks assessment issues.
"From our perspective, we hope this represents a commitment by USED to hold states accountable for collecting and reporting out data about student learning during the pandemic and as the nation focuses on learning recovery," said Parrish in an email.
However, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education pointed out that the state has posted on its website 2021-22 data from the NWEA assessment, which it administered as a direct result of the pandemic. These assessment results are not comparable to student data from standardized assessment results prior to the pandemic.
"Unlike standardized tests, MAP Growth is administered periodically during the school year, and it adjusts to each student’s performance, rather than asking all students the same questions," according to NWEA's website.
In 2022, Maine announced it would officially replace its federally required summative statewide assessments with through-year formative assessments, similar to MAP Growth assessments. Through-year assessments are administered multiple times per school year to compare progress within a cohort of students, while summative assessments reflect students' knowledge at the end of the year.
During the pandemic, the state had already suspended its former statewide assessment for formative assessments, according to Parrish.
The new through-year model includes a summative assessment aligned to grade level standards, according to Marcus Mrowka, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education.
The first official administration of the new model was set for spring 2023, according to a notice from the state department.
The state hoped "this transition will allow us to maintain existing interim assessments and the required summative assessment in fewer assessment administrations."
No other state has made this transition, according to Dale Chu, an education consultant and testing expert, and Parrish. And no through-year system has undergone federal review, although ESSA includes an option for states to do so.
All together, 13 states have made some mention of piloting or considering the use of through-year assessments, said Parrish.
Clarification: This story was updated with additional context provided by the Maine Department of Education about the state's new testing model.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the share of Title I funds that the U.S. Department of Education is threatening to withhold from Maine. The story has been updated to address this.
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