On the face of it, it would seem reasonable to believe that education policy makers could learn much from successful policies and programs. But they often don't.
Here are two relatively clear examples of policy makers failing to learn from effective policies/programs. In both cases, the policy makers were the members of a state board of education. One is from California, the other from Massachusetts. Both sets of policies or programs were known to state policy makers at the time that the Common Core standards in mathematics and English language arts were being developed.
A retired professor who offered University of Southern Maine students one academic credit for going to Washington D.C. to protest against then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has been barred from teaching in the state's university system.
Susan Feiner, who retired in September 2018 after 21 years teaching economics at the Portland school, can't teach at any Maine state university campus, according to the university's president.
