A few school districts have begun the school year already. The rest will soon follow. Last spring, the Department of Education identified Maine’s ten lowest-performing schools. Those ten schools had low levels of proficiency in math and reading over three years and showed little improvement, under NCLB guidelines. $12 million in federal grant money was [...]
Continue Reading
Yesterday we looked at the pre-school, charter school, and magnet school elements of Eliot Culter’s education reform blue print. Today we will dissect the rest of Cutler’s plan. Teacher Compensation Few issues are as hotly contested in education reform as teacher compensation. Mention charter schooling and you might be in for a lively debate. Mention [...]
Continue Reading
While you may disagree with him, Eliot Cutler has been open with his various initiatives for Maine. Cutler has released plans on government reform, healthcare, and energy. Early in the campaign, Cutler made education policy a priority. The candidate stumped for charter schools last November. Cutler took swipes at what he sees as the status [...]
Continue Reading
Something is happening over here. It appears that some one out there has decided it is time to target Independent Eliot Cutler with an attack site and oppo dump. Cutlerfiles.com was brought to my attention yesterday by a high level staffer in the Maine Democratic Party, and buzz about the site has been circulating since [...]
Continue Reading
Congress may have ended their session before they were able to pass job-killing energy regulations, but the EPA is taking up the slack, gearing up to begin enforcing it’s “tailoring rule” starting in January, the EPA will begin issuing “permits” designed to “allow” carbon emitters like power plants. In return for receiving this gift from [...]
Continue Reading
By most objective analysis, we are headed for what is known in politics as a “wave” election. The concept shouldn’t be too unfamiliar to us, as we just experienced two successive wave years. In 2006, largely in response to voter dissatisfaction with the Iraq War as well as a Congress seemingly plagued with ethical problems, [...]
Continue Reading
Now that we have the comments from Maine’s Race to the Top application why we did so poorly is clear. In the coming weeks there will surely be some finger pointing and “It wasn’t me” going around. Some of it has begun already. So who deserves to wear the dunce cap? I wasn’t impressed by [...]
Continue Reading
The Memorial and Sarah Long bridges that connect Kittery to Portsmouth, New Hampshire are crumbling, and need to be repaired or replaced. The lifespan of the two bridges has ended at the same time, creating an unusually expensive problem. Libby Mitchell and her fellow Democrats in Augusta have ignored critical infrastructure like this for decades, [...]
Continue Reading
In the reverberating corridors of Portland’s City Hall this morning, the Maine Heritage Policy Center (MHPC) and Matthew Rand, a summer resident of Peaks Island, threatened litigation if the City Council chooses not to annul a recently enacted amendment to the City’s Transportation Ordinance. The amendment in question would require Rand, a 19-year-old college sophomore [...]
Continue Reading
The second round results of the federal Race to the Top are in. We knew Maine wasn’t a finalist. It was unclear until now, exactly how Maine compared to other applicants. So, after all of the work put into Maine’s RttT application where did we finish? 33rd out of 36. Matt Stone is reporting that [...]
Continue Reading
- Republican Primary Poll #2 – Who Do You Support?
- Republican Primary Poll #3 – Who Do You Support?
-
Bruce Poliquin Steps In A Hornet’s Nest On Guns
-
Maine Republican Platform Becomes Political Football
-
Two Maine Democrats Endorse Cutler
-
Rufus: I unfortunately live in in a town that participate...
-
Derek Viger: I've probably said this before, but I don't have a...
-
Bob: Newest installation: http://www.cutlerfiles.com...
-
Nathan D.: The entire concept of rating school systems, and b...
-
RMida: To round our the debate, I would recommend visitin...