Maine’s Commissioner of Education, Susan A. Gendron, noticed that high school students lacked incentive to do well on the state’s test of requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, but the results meant everything to the state. She also noted that while Maine had one of the highest high school graduation rates, the college-going rates did not reflect this. The answer was the SAT®, a test on which Maine students would be motivated to do well and one that would send the message to more students that they were ready to go on to college.

In March 2006, Maine began administering the SAT to all of its high school juniors. To accomplish this, the SAT Program established test centers in all 140 Maine high schools and arranged for a special bulk registration process. Also required was a substantial increase in the processing of requests for accommodations for students with disabilities and figuring out a way to test students who might not be motivated to take the SAT for college admission purposes. The second year, the College Board developed a separate set of mathematics questions for Maine to augment those on the standard SAT, so that students would be tested on all of Maine’s mathematics standards. 

When the agreement was signed in fall 2005, the College Board and the Maine Department of Education staff carried out a series of workshops for counselors around the state to inform high schools about all the new processes. Another series of workshops trained high school staff on the eligibility process for students with disabilities and a third series of workshops prepared the 140 test center supervisors who would be running the test administration at their high schools that spring.

College Board staff who worked on the Maine Initiative traveled there in March 2006 to observe the testing. Some high school staff expressed concerns about administering a college admissions test to students who had no intention of going on to college, fearing that these students might cause disruptions or not show up. To increase student motivation, the Department of Education declared the testing Saturday a regular school day, giving everyone who showed up that day another day off. They also provided regular bus service, and many high schools offered students breakfast before the SAT and lunch afterward. One high school even raffled off a used car to one lucky SAT taker that day. 

Now in the third year of the Maine Initiative, the process has been streamlined, based on what worked the first two years, and the College Board continues to train high school staff as needed. Those juniors who took the SAT in March 2006 ended up applying to college in record numbers in 2007. That year, Maine’s public colleges saw increases between 13 and 77 percent in the number of students sending SAT scores to those institutions. The increase is a strong indication that the commissioner’s idea is working.

VP Arthur Doyle

A number of exciting activities are under way in New England, as we all enter the new year. The New England Regional Forum will be held Feb. 3-5 at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, and registrations are coming in rapidly. Thanks to the Regional Forum Planning Committee — chaired by Gail Berson, dean of admission and student aid at Wheaton College — for preparing an outstanding program. The forum will begin Sunday afternoon with a timely and important opening keynote address, "Athletics and Education," by Derrick Z. Jackson, award-winning op-ed writer for the Boston Globe. Also addressing the forum will be Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University. The link to the program for information and registration is www.collegeboard.com/nero/forum.

Of special note, this year's program will include the Community College Convocation, which is open to participants from all levels of education. Attendees can join state, regional and national leaders — including U.S. Under Secretary of Education Sara Martinez Tucker — in a meaningful dialogue on such critical contemporary issues as access and success, knowledge and innovation and repositioning the community college.

The Academic Division Advisory Committee has issued a call for proposals for the first Regional Academic Symposium on Advancing College Readiness, which will be held in Worcester, Mass., April 25. This symposium follows the New England Board of Higher Education Summit on College Readiness and will address rigor, relevance, curriculum alignment and the P-16 collaboration. Nicholas C. Donohue, president of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, will address the symposium between the program's best practices sessions and the Meeting of the Minds plenary session, in which participants identify and prioritize courses of collaborative action to be pursued across New England to advance college readiness for all students.