During a visit to the Hancock County Technical Center in Ellsworth, Gov. LePage repeated his previously stated belief that Maine has placed too much emphasis on preparing students for 4-year colleges and not enough emphasis on career and technical education.
“What we are trying to do is make career and technical education mainstream instead of second-class education,” LePage said during yesterday’s visit. Beefing up the academic offerings at the state’s 27 vocational and technical centers so that students do not have to travel back to their regular high schools for the academic portion of their program is one way LePage hopes to accomplish this. He also cited the need for the state to show more flexibility in terms of vocational students and the state’s general graduation requirements.
LePage’s proposal makes sense on several levels -- including the common sense one. Maine has and will probably continue to have more jobs for those trained in trades and technical skills over jobs for those with a liberal arts education.
However, this proposal seems to fly in the face of other concerns previously voiced by LePage. His proposal also seems dramtically inconsistent with other current state and national education initiatives.
(1) LePage kicked off his recent focus on education with a complaint that the test scores of Maine students have been stagnating. However, any initiative which places an emphasis on technical education is almost certain to result in backsliding in terms of the core academic subjects of English, math, science, and social studies.
(2) The technical schools themselves have stated a preference for receiving students who have a solid base in the core academic subjects over students who are weak in reading, writing, and / or math but know, for example, how to write a computer program or how to frame a roof.
(3) National movements including No Child Left Behind and the increasing emphasis on standards-based education make it difficult for schools to clear time in a students schedule for extended blocks of vocational and technical education.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
LePage Caught in Lie About Welfare
Paul LePage stated that Forbes Magazine had identified "welfare" as one of Maine's structural problems that needs to be cleaned up on Wednesday during a town hall-style meeting at Mt. Abram High School.
LePage's statement comes at a time in which he is trying to convince the legislature to cut more than a two hundred million dollars from MaineCare, Maine's medicare program. LePage has not only been undeterred by claims that the cuts will eliminate everything from HeadStart programs for impoverished kids to assisted living programs for low-income elderly people, he has taken his campaign to the streets --- and has been misrepresenting the facts.
One misrepresentation is that a major cause of the current budget shortfall is welfare fraud. The governor provided no facts or statistics to back up this claim that is clearly designed to appeal to the emotions of those who already feel their taxes are too high.
The more recent lie is LePage's statement implying Forbes Magazine told him that Maine had to reduce the size of its welfare program in order to improve from its current last place ranking among the 50 states in terms of climate for business.
Adrienne Bennett, the Governor's press secretary, raised the lie to the level of the absurd by suggesting her boss was referring to"Mainer's welfare" and not to the specific welfare program.
As reported in today's BDN, the conservative magazine took the rare step of correcting LePage for his mis-statement. "“I certainly didn’t say anything about welfare costs, which has nothing to do with the ranking that we do,” said Forbes senior editor Kurt Badenhausen. “I didn’t tell them they needed to reduce energy costs. I told them, basically, the best thing they could do, and that any local government could do, was just to try and create more jobs.”
The reader comments below the article show that Mainers are more than fed up with this kind of dishonesty from their governor.
Read more about LePage's campaign against welfare at: www.appalledbylepage.com
LePage's statement comes at a time in which he is trying to convince the legislature to cut more than a two hundred million dollars from MaineCare, Maine's medicare program. LePage has not only been undeterred by claims that the cuts will eliminate everything from HeadStart programs for impoverished kids to assisted living programs for low-income elderly people, he has taken his campaign to the streets --- and has been misrepresenting the facts.
One misrepresentation is that a major cause of the current budget shortfall is welfare fraud. The governor provided no facts or statistics to back up this claim that is clearly designed to appeal to the emotions of those who already feel their taxes are too high.
The more recent lie is LePage's statement implying Forbes Magazine told him that Maine had to reduce the size of its welfare program in order to improve from its current last place ranking among the 50 states in terms of climate for business.
Adrienne Bennett, the Governor's press secretary, raised the lie to the level of the absurd by suggesting her boss was referring to"Mainer's welfare" and not to the specific welfare program.
As reported in today's BDN, the conservative magazine took the rare step of correcting LePage for his mis-statement. "“I certainly didn’t say anything about welfare costs, which has nothing to do with the ranking that we do,” said Forbes senior editor Kurt Badenhausen. “I didn’t tell them they needed to reduce energy costs. I told them, basically, the best thing they could do, and that any local government could do, was just to try and create more jobs.”
The reader comments below the article show that Mainers are more than fed up with this kind of dishonesty from their governor.
Read more about LePage's campaign against welfare at: www.appalledbylepage.com
Monday, December 12, 2011
LePage-Speak -- A New World of Vocabulary
Conservation is a Ponzi scheme. Political dialogue is "bullshit." Our governor flew to Virginia to lay wreaths at the graves of the dead in the same week that he stated his intention to cut access to medical care to the still living. This and more at www.appalledbylepage.com
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