LEWISTON — Despite almost 11 months of working on new learning standards, a committee’s presentation to the School Committee on Monday night left parents, teachers and students confused.
Middle School Principal Jake Langlais, High School Principal Shawn Chabot and a number of vice principals presented the work they’ve done on Proficiency-Based Learning over the past year.
But even they aren’t fully clear on how it works.
Langlais said they are running into barriers because different standards are not always clearly measurable. They are working on taxonomy right now, which is the level of complexity for each grade. He said a committee is working to improve scoring criteria.
The School Department hopes to fully implement the measure by September for all grades.
Parent Eric Beauchesne said the report cards of fourth-graders, one of the few grades with PBL fully implemented, are inconsistent among the different schools. He said he’s not sure how his daughter is performing.
“I have no way to translate how she’s actually doing,” he said. “These numbers aren’t standards. I don’t know what she’s learning and she doesn’t even have a clear idea about what she’s supposed to be doing.”
Parent Jenny Watson said she moved here from a school system that already used PBL.
“I’m a believer in it,” she said.
But she isn’t a fan of how it’s being run in the Lewiston school system right now, she said, adding that there isn’t a lot of clarity about how it works. She doesn’t know anything about what her child is learning or how they’re being graded.
Student representative Thomas Jumper agreed, and said that all levels of students are being affected by PBL.
“(It’s) impacting a lot of different students in a lot of different ways,” he said. “I’m glad to see it being discussed.”
Among the other big issues is the continuum, or how the standards will grow and change as students go from kindergarten to 12th grade. The goal is to have a steady increase in requirements and difficulty, but the trouble, according to Langlais, is defining these requirements.
“I’ve learned a lot in this process,” Langlais said. “We need an anchor, a foundation, to be able to explain to students and parents why that standard is there. How do we authenticate that process?”
Committee member Paul St. Pierre said, “One of the problems built into PBL is the ambiguity of the explanation of what we’re doing.”
Seth Hutchinson, a junior at Lewiston Academy, said he has been negatively affected by the PBL changes.
“I had to take summer school because of this, even though I know the material,” he said.
He said 40 percent of his sophomore class at Lewiston High School also had to enroll in summer school. He said he was devastated when he learned that half of those classes won’t even go toward his GPA.
“The standards are just not working,” he said. “I started to slack because homework didn’t count. Part of that’s on me, but it needs to count. Let’s not rush this process. We have time.”
Committee Chairwoman Linda Scott said she wants the committee to be able to confidently and accurately answer question from the community about the new standards.
“We need a full-balloon understanding of where we’re at,” Scott said. “I need this simple, simple common sense.”
The School Committee proposed to hold another workshop soon to further discuss the intricacies of Proficiency-Based Learning.
The next committee meeting is scheduled for 6:45 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, at the Dingley Building.
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