________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT September 26, 2005 - Vol. 5, No. 37 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  Covering education news in Vermont and beyond... Informative, provocative, unique... Published by Vermonters for Better Education  VBE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to enlist parents and the public at large in achieving quality educational opportunities for all the children of Vermont by monitoring the state of education in Vermont; promoting the value of educational freedoms for all parents; and giving parents the evaluative tools with which to identify excellence. Libby Sternberg, executive director: VTBetterEd@aol.com COMMENTARY... WHY NOT IN VERMONT? by Libby Sternberg In the 1800s, Americans began building the current public school system. While many changes have swept through the system over the years, one thing has remained virtually constant until recently -- we still deliver publicly-funded education services at the K-12 level based on the geographic residence of the students. While post-secondary students can choose from educational institutions (using public funds) around the world, K-12 students are stuck with their local school whether it suits them or not -- unless their parents have the financial resources to make a change. This state of affairs, however, is shifting across the country: Eleven states and the District of Columbia either have publicly-funded voucher programs or tax credit programs. Most states (40) have charter school laws now and many states (21) offer "dual enrollment" to students -- programs that allow students in high school to enroll in college. Vermont, however, has been slow to join the march toward this liberating reform. The Green Mountain State, for example, is not among the majority of states that have charter school laws. And we have an extremely limited dual enrollment program whose modest parameters meet with fierce resistance from defenders of the status quo. Attempts to broaden our extremely weak public high school choice law are shot down by the same folks who stand in the way of other choice initiatives. Why is it this way? Why do choice opponents hold so much power in Vermont when public opinion supports school choice? The easy answer is partisanship. Republicans generally make up the most active school choice supporters while Democrats oppose this reform. And Democrats control the legislature. But across the country important choice initiatives -- even vouchers -- have gained support from Democrats. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), after all, supported the DC voucher program. Senators Lieberman and Biden, both prominent Democrats, have spoken eloquently about the value of school choice. And they are not alone. The Democratic Leadership Council, too, has supported some forms of school choice -- charter school laws, in particular, and public school choice as well. So it isn't just a clear case of Democrats versus Republicans when it comes to school choice. In fact, if you look at the parties' platforms here in Vermont, you see some measure of support on both sides of the aisle: "Education builds the future for Vermont and all Vermonters. It is our best investment. All children have the right to have an equal opportunity to a quality education, regardless of where they live... We endorse strategies to provide choice among secondary schools in public education that preserve community-based schools..." That's from the Vermont Democrats' 2004 platform. Here's the relevant section from the Republicans': "...We believe in planning for the future of our state by ensuring that our children have the best educational opportunities possible through educational choice and increased accountability... We strongly support and affirm the right and responsibility of parents/guardians to choose the best educational options for their children..." So the Republicans want to go farther than the Democrats in offering choice. But still, there at least appears to be consensus on public school choice at the high school level. Why, then, is it so darned hard just to talk about expanding Act 150, the state's public high school choice plan that now only allows a handful of students from each high school a choice (if they're lucky enough to go to a school that actually abides by the law)? The reason isn't partisanship. It's ideology. While Democrats elsewhere have learned to embrace the reform of school choice and join with more activist choice supporters in the Republican party to enact choice laws, Vermont's Democrats have kept their distance because many of them are closer to the ideology of the Progressive Party than to the ideas embodied in the party of Biden, Lieberman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Franklin Roosevelt. They are more comfortable with the policy outlook of a Bernie Sanders, in other words, than with the mainstream Democratic values of the DLC. On the other hand, a passion for school choice has not exactly ignited the Vermont Republican party. Support is there, but activism is sometimes missing. Some Vermont Republicans have worked hard to push for school choice legislation year after year, but there are many Republicans who aren't willing to take heat, especially from local school boards, on the issue. Until recently, in fact, Republicans didn't have the bully pulpit of the governor's office to champion choice as a critical education reform in the state. And a high-profile elected official, such as the governor, is a crucial component of any school choice initiative. When Rutlanders successfully passed a voucher program in 1996 (not implemented because it requires legislative approval), it was largely due to the leadership of then-Mayor Jeffrey Wennberg, the CEO of the city. Unfortunately, after a burst of support for school choice in his first term, the governor has largely abandoned the field. As a new school year begins and the legislative session is but three months away, isn't it time for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on the school choice issue and expand, if even modestly, the opportunities available to kids in this state? Here are a few ideas, which should suit members of both parties if their platforms are to be taken seriously: - Expand the VAST program - this dual-enrollment program allows kids in high school to take college courses. Open it up to more colleges and more kids. - Expand Act 150 to include all public high school students and allow them to choose any public high school, not just those with whom their own school has formed a "collaborative." - Enact a charter school law that would allow entrepreneurial educators the ability to set up schools of choice. Ensure it has a provision in it that allows public schools to reconfigure as charter schools, thus allowing some small schools facing closure or consolidation the ability to stay open and draw students from beyond their district's borders. These are simple, modest ideas that might have a chance in a moderate-minded legislature. But enacting any of them will require three crucial components: strong Republicans, real Democrats, and their mutual desire to work together on school choice legislation. Maybe it will happen -- 2006, after all, is an election year. *   *   * FROM ELSEWHERE... From the Fordham Foundation On the web at: http://www.edexcellence.net/ BLIND HOGS AND BEHAVIORIST LAWS by Chester E. Finn, Jr. "Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while," quoth the late Russell Long (D-LA), longtime chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. And so it is with the customarily education-blind New York Times editorial page, which unearthed a back-to-school acorn of wisdom on September 6. Perhaps inspired by the flat-world musings of Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the editors delivered themselves of a perceptive analysis, noting that NCLB has done well at forcing states, districts, and educators "to focus at last on educational inequality, the nation's most corrosive social problem." But, they continued, "it has been less successful at getting educators and politicians to see the education problem in a global context, and to understand that this country is rapidly losing ground to the nations we compete with for high-skilled jobs that require a strong basis in math and science…. The United States can still prosper in a world where its labor costs are higher than the competition's, but it cannot do that if the cheaper workers abroad are also better educated." (emphasis added) That sentence should be written on the blackboard a thousand times by everyone balking at the demands of NCLB and other standards-based reform strategies. For such reforms seek to secure America's future in two ways. One is by narrowing our domestic achievement gaps. The other is by boosting our overall level of academic prowess, at least up to the level that states have defined as "proficiency." Those who decry NCLB have their eyes on today, or maybe yesterday, not on tomorrow. Skeptics say the dual goals are in conflict. Closing the achievement gap, they argue, means dumbing down standards and reining in high achievers, whereas a regimen that propels young Americans to world-class norms in demanding fields such as math and science would leave some of their classmates behind. That paradox is true in part. We cannot be completely equal and truly excellent at the same time. But we could be more of both than we are today. Imagine what a different country this would be if 70 percent of all our kids were "proficient" in key subjects rather than the 30-odd percent who are today. (I'm using the NAEP gauge of proficiency, not the squishier versions adopted by most states.) Picture a society in which 90 percent of all young people graduate from high school on time (instead of today's 70 percent) with diplomas that signify readiness for college and modern jobs. To get anywhere near those outcomes, however, we must make major changes in how we organize, pay for, and deliver K-12 education. This is in addition to the accountability mechanisms we impose upon the system and its various components--including the people who work in it. If we don't change our ways, we won't get different results. (Recall the old definition of insanity.) And that's what NCLB, at bottom, is about: pressing states, districts, schools, and educators (not to mention kids) to change their ways, alter their behaviors, do things differently than they're accustomed to. It's the strongest behaviorist statute I can remember in the field of education; Uncle Sam at his pushiest. This explains why others are pushing back. People don't like to change their behaviors and institutions resist altering their established practices. Through such a lens one should view the machinations of the NEA, of Connecticut's attorney general and state superintendent, of Utah's legislature, and sundry other instances of NCLB backlash. Prodded by Washington to do things differently, they're balking. They don't want to change. But that's hard to admit. So they're finding a million other rationales ("local control," "unfunded mandate," "unconstitutional") to justify their resistance. They're demanding waivers, exemptions, and "flexibility" so they don't have to change, at least not much. And to a lamentable degree the U.S. Department of Education is yielding of late, just as the Clinton Department of Education did when states balked at implementing both "Goals 2000" and the 1994 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. No, NCLB isn't perfect. I have as long a list as anyone of its malfunctions, unintended consequences, and needed amendments. And yes, a handful of states (not including Utah or Connecticut, by the way) had pretty decent systems of pre-NCLB standards-based reform that were showing gains; it's hard to fault them for not wanting to retool just because Uncle Sam has a slightly different approach. Still, the country's K-12 education arrangements, taken as a whole, need to change in a big way. Otherwise, we'll neither close our domestic gaps nor catch our international rivals. Change means altering behavior, which usually means being compelled, dragooned, bribed, or outsmarted into doing things differently. Despite not wanting to. Boosters of NCLB in particular and standards-based reform in general would be wise to rest their case on two grounds, as the blind-hog Times did: the moral and political imperative of narrowing the achievement gap at home and the economic and geopolitical need for a population that can out-compete the countries now striving to whip us. So far, the former argument is practically all one hears. The White House should join the Times editors, as odd a coupling as that may seem, in making the second argument, too. Further, the White House should quit letting people off the hook just because they don't want to change. Instead, the president should point out that not altering behavior means not changing our results, and that, my fellow Americans, will not get us where we need to be.   *   *   * WHO COVERS EDUCATION IN VERMONT? We do! Consider a gift to Vermonters for Better Education, the publisher of the weekly Vermont Education Report, Vermont's ONLY continual source of education news. Send donations to: VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, Vermont 05701. VBE is a nonprofit organization and contributions are tax-deductible.   *   *   * The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701, 802.773.5240 Contact VTBetterEd@aol.com for more information.   Subscribe Here SubscribeRemove

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