I'm admittedly late to this story, but Maine's political blogosphere is abuzz about an instance of plagiarism by GOP gubernatorial candidate Les Otten. Credit Matt Gagnon of Pine Tree Politics for breaking this story first and following up on it here and here. There's also been one mention in the MaineToday Media newspapers.

The story started with an excellent education policy questionnaire sent out by the blogs Augusta Insider and Dirigo Blue. Question 2 asked candidates their thoughts on the federal Race to the Top competition and their assessment of Maine's chances in the competitive grant challenge.

Otten's response, almost word for word, reiterates the testimony of Steve Bowen of the Maine Heritage Policy Center in early March when the Legislature's Education Committee was deliberating three bills aimed at bolstering Maine's Race to the Top chances.

(The Otten campaign says the questionnaire response was an oversight by staff members, and that the intent was to credit Bowen.)

Gagnon and Bowen have already done the word-for-word analysis to determine that the Otten response was plagiarism. Now it's time to take a look at the content of his response:

• In Bowen's early-March words, Otten discusses the "innovative schools" proposal legislators approved meant to serve as a compromise toward adopting the Obama administration-favored charter schools. However, his response describes initiative as simply a proposal, without bothering to update the fact that legislators approved the bill, Gov. John Baldacci signed it, and it's now law.

• Otten, via Bowen, says, "Maine is doing nothing to intervene in chronically underperforming schools," without mentioning the fact that, since Bowen delivered his testimony, the Maine Department of Education has identified the state's "persistently lowest achieving" schools and offered them the opportunity to take advantage of federal School Improvement grants.

• Otten also charges that "Maine is doing nothing to see to it that highly effective teachers and principals are given opportunities for additional compensation." That may have been mostly accurate on March 4, but since then, the Maine Legislature approved a bill meant to strike down the legal barrier preventing the linking of student achievement data and teacher evaluations. That bill set in motion a specially appointed panel charged with identifying teacher and principal evaluation models that incorporate student data. The panel's work could lead to some revamped compensation systems that allow teachers to be paid more for boosting students' academic progress.

• Otten's response (like Bowen's testimony) points to reforms Michigan and Massachusetts undertook to raise their Race to the Top standing. But, since Bowen testified before the Education Committee, only Delaware and Tennessee have claimed Race to the Top awards.

The fact is, not only did Les Otten and his staff plagiarize a questionnaire response, but they didn't bother to update the response to reflect the most recent data. Bowen delivered his testimony at the beginning of March. Augusta Insider published its questionnaire on April 27. A lot happened between those two dates.

By the way, this isn't the first time Otten was caught spreading a factual inaccuracy as part of the Augusta Insider questionnaire. As I pointed out last week, Otten's response to a funding-related question contained claims that were less than precise.

Update: One more Matt Gagnon item on the Otten plagiarism, and more from Steve Bowen.

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