Earlier this month, Maine’s flagship public university received another failing grade for how it teaches reading instruction in part because it did not provide public records to a national group looking to analyze how well it prepares future elementary teachers in reading instruction.
The National Council on Teacher Quality, which reviewed more than 700 teacher preparation programs across the country, said it analyzed a program at the University of Maine in Orono by using course materials that it had from 2022 because the university did not respond to a public records request despite being required to under Maine law. Three other Maine universities also did not respond to the council.
If schools do not respond, the council uses information it has collected from within the past five years to assess programs, as it did for UMaine, which received the same grade three years ago, according to Lane Wright, a council spokesperson. If there are no usable materials, the council labels a program’s grade as “could not be determined,” as was the case for the three other public universities: the University of Maine at Farmington, the University of Maine at Presque Isle and the University of Southern Maine.
Ezekiel Kimball, UMaine’s dean of the college of human development, said in a statement to The Maine Monitor that the analysis was “misleading” and that he is “fully confident” that UMaine’s curriculum aligns with the science of reading.
“[W]e did not submit materials in response to the request,” Kimball wrote. “While the University of Maine’s educator preparation programs share similar goals to the [National Council on Teacher Quality] report card process related to the use of evidence-based approaches to reading instruction aligned with the science of reading, the [council] has assigned our programs an ‘F’ on the basis of our non-engagement in the process.”
The council, a Washington, D.C. think tank that collects data on how teacher prep programs and state policies prepare educators, began reaching out to undergraduate and graduate education programs at universities across the country last spring to gather information about how they teach reading instruction to future teachers, said Ron Noble, the council’s chief of teacher prep. Staff with the council first asked higher education programs to voluntarily send them their course materials for all required reading courses.
If programs did not respond to a couple of attempts to get the materials, the council then filed public records requests with public universities. On May 7, 2025, the council filed four public records requests with the Office of General Counsel at the University of Maine System — which oversees Maine’s public universities — for information about teacher prep courses at UMaine, the University of Maine at Farmington, the University of Maine at Presque Isle and the University of Southern Maine.
But the system didn’t respond as required under Maine’s public access law.
About a month after the council’s request, Katelynn Ronan, associate general counsel for the system, responded to acknowledge that the system received the inquiry, according to emails reviewed by The Monitor. Under Maine law, public institutions must acknowledge receiving requests for records within five working days.
The university system never followed up to provide records or to deny the request. Maine law requires public officials to provide a nonbinding estimate of how long it will take to provide records within a “reasonable time” of receiving a request. Then they are supposed to make a good-faith effort to hand over the records within that time frame.
“Upon review, it appears that the University of Maine System did not fully respond to this request last year, but we have since improved our process for receiving, reviewing, tracking, and responding to public records requests,” Samantha Warren, a spokesperson for the system, wrote in an email to The Monitor.
Warren said that part of the reason the system did not issue a final response to the council’s request was because the system was weighing whether the course materials, which she said contained faculty “intellectual property,” could be released as a public record.
If public records contain some confidential information, Maine law allows public institutions to redact sensitive details.
The council reviewed 721 undergraduate and graduate programs across the country, and found that more than half of them follow scientifically based reading methods for teaching kids how to read. More than 460 additional programs did not respond.
Other public universities in New England participated in the analysis: the University of Vermont received an A+; the University of Rhode Island got an A; and the University of New Hampshire got a B. The University of Connecticut and the University of Massachusetts in Boston received F’s. Some private schools also participated, including Boston University, which got a B. Boston College received an F.
Maine had the lowest participation rate in the country for the nationwide assessment, which Noble said raises questions about how transparent Maine universities are about their course content for reading instruction. In addition to the four University of Maine schools, the other programs in the state that did not provide documents for the council’s analysis were from Husson University and the University of New England, both of which are private institutions and therefore not subject to public records laws.
“I would find it deeply concerning if I were a parent of school-aged children in Maine or an aspiring teacher in Maine, wondering where am I going to go to get access to scientifically based reading instruction,” Noble said.
‘Accountable to the very thing that it’s putting in writing’
The council reviews syllabi and other course materials to assess how schools teach educators the five pillars of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency and vocabulary. The National Reading Panel, which was formed by Congress in the late 1990s, established these five skills as necessary for children’s success in reading after reviewing scientific research in the field, and researchers have long considered these components to be vital to learning to read.
Maine ranked at the bottom in the nation for how it taught core components of reading instruction and had the highest rate of teaching reading practices that do not align with science, according to the council’s report, which based its findings on UMaine’s course materials the council said it obtained from 2022.
The council looked at three UMaine undergraduate courses for teaching reading and language arts for elementary school, and said that the university only adequately taught one of five core components of reading: comprehension. The council also docked points from the UMaine program for only allotting fewer than two hours each of instructional time for supporting English language learners, struggling readers and others.
Schools that did not participate in the council’s review can request an interim review of their program, Noble said. The process allows for a back and forth between the analysts at the council and universities.
William Dee Nichols, a literacy professor at UMaine’s teacher preparation program, described the F grade as frustrating since the program has made changes to its reading instruction courses since 2022. He did not recall anyone reaching out to him directly for information about the university’s reading courses, but he said it is ultimately up to the University of Maine System to decide whether or not to participate in the council’s analysis.
Nichols said he is open to an interim review, but the decision lies with the system. He said that current coursework aligns with the science of reading, and that some materials used in class are recommended by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Nichols provided more recent syllabi to The Monitor showing that he and another professor have assigned textbooks considered “acceptable” by the council. One textbook was deemed “unacceptable,” according to the council’s recommended list of textbooks.
“The grade’s unfair primarily because the UMaine system doesn’t participate in the study,” Nichols said. “It almost seems like it’s retaliatory. You didn’t participate in the study, and therefore this is the grade you’re going to get.”
A “could not be determined” grade would have felt more fair, Nichols said.
Kimball, dean of the college of human development, also referenced a recent response to the council’s report from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, a membership-based organization that focuses on teacher preparation. The association expressed “concerns about methodologies, such as those used by [the National Council on Teacher Quality], that rely primarily on document review as a proxy for the quality of educator preparation.”
The council, however, has never claimed to “provide a complete analysis of the quality of teacher programs,” Noble said. Instead, the council’s goal is to examine whether courses are covering content vital for future educators to effectively teach reading. What programs write into their curricula and descriptions of students’ assignments should reflect what’s being taught, Noble said.
“If you’ve adopted an approach to reading that’s codified in your syllabus, that’s what you’re expecting professors to be teaching,” Noble said. “So it does seem quite fair to me to hold a teacher prep accountable to the very thing that it’s putting in writing.”
