We've known for more than a month that the Maine Education Association plans to go to bat to get Libby Mitchell elected governor.

And while the union mobilizes its troops in support of Mitchell, the MEA has also identified its slate of preferred incumbent candidates for the state Legislature. The MEA website identifies those whom it considers "friendly" to the teachers' union's interests.

You can see the Senate list of preferred incumbents here and the House list here (PDF warnings on both). The union says the candidates on both lists (18 for the Senate, 47 for the House) "have demonstrated their support for public education on issues of importance to MEA members."

One can't be sure what all of those important issues are (the union's 2009 legislative agenda, after all, doesn't tell the whole story), but I reviewed all the endorsed candidates' votes on allowing charter schools in Maine and looked at the Senate candidates' votes on an MEA-favored amendment to L.D. 1799 -- the bill that struck down the legal barrier preventing the link between teacher evaluations and student achievement. That MEA-favored amendment, sponsored by MEA endorsee Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, set up the panel charged with pre-approving evaluation models that incorporate student achievement data. The Senate took a separate vote on it; the House did not.

All Senate candidates who received endorsements voted against allowing charter schools in Maine, which the MEA has consistently opposed. The only House candidates who didn't vote in opposition to the independently run public schools were absent for the vote.

On the MEA amendment to the teacher evaluation bill, two endorsees -- Nancy Sullivan of Biddeford and John Nutting of Leeds -- voted "no," but they endorsed the final bill that included the amendment.

All in all, I see no surprises. In the Senate, all but two favored candidates are Democrats (Tom Saviello of Wilton and Earle McCormick of West Gardiner are the Republicans that made the list). In the House, just one Republican, Gary Plummer of Windham, garnered MEA's endorsement.

UPDATE, 5:28 p.m.: Rep. Henry Beck, D-Waterville, tells me he's received an MEA endorsement in his reelection bid. "It was not an early endorsement but I did receive word this week," he writes. Beck opposed L.D. 1799; he also voted in favor of charter schools in the spring of 2009, making him the first MEA-endorsed charter schools supporter on the list of those endorsed.

UPDATE, 6:24 p.m.: A tipster tells me the three Race to the Top bills approved by the Legislature this spring -- the teacher evaluation barrier bill (L.D. 1799), legislation allowing Maine to sign onto the Common Core academic standards (L.D. 1800) and the "innovative" schools bill (L.D. 1801) -- formed the crux of MEA's legislative endorsement criteria.

UPDATE, 10:37 a.m., Aug. 5: Lynne Williams, a Green Independent candidate for the Senate District 28 seat (and formerly a gubernatorial candidate), tells me she, too, has received an MEA endorsement. That would mean the MEA, in that race, is favoring Williams, of Bar Harbor, over Rep. James Schatz, D-Blue Hill, who's looking to switch chambers. "I was very clear on my questionnaire that I support charter schools because the current system fails to serve a large number of children who cannot progress in a traditional classroom setting," Williams wrote in an email. Schatz voted in favor of the most recent charter school bill.

--

One of MEA's political opponents, the Maine Heritage Policy Center, is out today with updates to its repository of Maine public school data, GreatSchoolsforME.org.

The site has information about school district payrolls, test scores, graduation rates and public school spending.

"What visitors may find most useful is that the spending date is right there alongside the outcome data," Tarren Bragdon, the center's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "We face tough budget times ahead, and this is the kind of data that both policymakers and the public need to have if we're going to make smart decisions about how our education dollars are spent."

The data are all there, though the spending information differs from state Department of Education numbers.

The site name, Great Schools for Maine, is similar to an MEA-sponsored site, GreatPublicSchoolsforMaine.com. Coincidence?

UPDATE, 2:11 p.m.:

• Steve Bowen of the Maine Heritage Policy Center tells me the think tank is working on a function that will present standardized test achievement on the same page as school district spending to make the kinds of comparisons Bragdon is hinting at.

• Bowen says disparities between policy center and Department of Education numbers -- particularly on school spending -- have to do with differences in calculation. (We all know the story depends on how a statistic is calculated.) The Department of Education calculation, as explained on its website, excludes certain capital costs, such as debt service from recent construction projects and relies on what's called the resident pupil count.

The Maine Heritage Policy Center, Bowen said, accounts for all spending in its per-pupil expenditure calculations (which tend to be higher than the state-reported numbers) and uses the Department of Education's count of subsidizable students, not resident students. (Explanations of different student counts are available here.)

• Bowen noted that there's also a comparison between school poverty rates and achievement on standardized tests. The trend isn't always intuitive, he said.

Archives