________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT January 07, 2002 Vol. 2, No. 2 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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: MAILTO:LSternberg@aol.com STATE NEWS... CHARTER SCHOOL STUDY COMMITTEE: NO SURPRISES The state's Charter School Study Committee will most likely issue its negative recommendation today or in the near future, telling the legislature that Vermont doesn't need charter schools. The make-up of the committee foreshadowed its outcome. Of its 10 members, at least five were predisposed against school choice in general. AND SO IT BEGINS: LEGISLATIVE OUTLOOK Because this is an election year, political posturing and not substantive education reform might be the likely outcome of this year's session. Nonetheless, school choice could be on the agenda as choice advocates under the Dome struggle to push something through after a frustrating session last year, where the only choice initiative was the ill-fated charter school study committee. In fact, a school choice bill might come out of the House that goes beyond what the charter school study committee could have recommended had it been fairly constituted. "Choice will be fully explored," says one House insider. Another big issue will be how the state responds to the new federal education bill. House Education Committee Chairman Howard Crawford (R-Burke) hopes by mid-January to have a clear idea what is in the bill. "Then we have to set down what Vermont's assessment looks like next to the federal requirements," Crawford says. Crawford is concerned about Vermont's assessments on two levels. Since Vermont's assessment exam is only shared by one other state (Rhode Island), will the state lose clout in the testing industry as the rest of the country moves to other assessments? Crawford also wants a clear picture of what the federal government will require the states to do regarding assessments. "I want to know what the old law required us to do," Crawford says. "Then we'll look at the new one and I will not, as chair, allow the two discussions to be mingled. We need to understand what the new act requires us to do and we need to look at what we can cease doing." Crawford is also interested in hearing from the new Commissioner of Education on what his priorities will be and what areas the department believes they should not be involved in. MORE ON SCHOLARSHIPS The Vermont Student Opportunity Scholarship Fund (VT SOS) offers scholarships to income-eligible students in grades K-8 to attend a school outside their home district. Information/application brochures are available at schools, libraries, town clerk offices, social service agencies and pediatricians' offices. You may also call their toll-free number (888-558- 8883) to request an application. Remember the March 1, 2002 deadline! COMMENTARY... GOOD NEWS ABOUT FEDERAL LEGISLATION by Edwin Hobson A version of this commentary appeared in the Burlington Free Press Vermont political and education officials have almost universally condemned the new Federal "No Child Left Behind" Education Act. They argue that it provides little more than "unfunded federal mandates" that are intrusive and not relevant to Vermont. As the parent of two former consumers of public education, I beg to differ. Ironically, two former Vermont educators are among the champions of this legislation. Perhaps the most prominent advocate is former Johnson State and UVM teacher Dr. G. Reid Lyon, chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, who was the author of the National Reading Panel report. Another prominent advocate is former Vermonter Dr. Louisa Cook Moats, project director for the District of Columbia component of the NICHD-Houston-Washington, D.C., Early Interventions Project. Using the basic elements of reading instruction in a test project in the inner city, Dr. Moats has reduced the number of children in the bottom 25th percentile in reading from 35 percent to less than 5 percent. Dr. Moats teaches reading instruction to teachers every summer at the well-regarded Greenwood Institute in Putney, Vermont. Former Vermont governor and federal Deputy Commissioner of Education Madeline Kunin has supported the law enthusiastically as a great stride forward. To hear the critics talk, one might not understand that the bill increases federal funds for education, and was passed overwhelmingly by Congress, Republican and Democrat alike. More importantly, it holds schools receiving those funds accountable for the individual results. The law requires that schools teach the basic elements of reading. An estimated twenty percent of children cannot learn to read properly without the full elements reading instruction. These basic elements may seem to be only the obvious: teaching that our written language uses symbols for sounds, a system that was developed after the pictograms used by the Egyptians. An overwhelming body of research establishes that children who cannot read fail because they cannot sound out the words¾what we call phonics. Under the new law, the elements of required reading instruction are explicit and systematic instruction in: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency, including oral reading skills, and reading comprehension strategies. Incredibly, most of these elements are not a significant part of "whole language" and "balanced" instruction- that is the prevailing method of reading instruction in Vermont. In these systems, phonemics (individual sounds) and phonics are seen as too boring, so that no mastery of these skills is required. Reading is a prerequisite to meaningful participation in a democracy, not to mention for successful participation in our economy during the Information Age. We have depended instead on Special Education and remedial programs to teach basic reading skills to those who need them, at enormous unnecessary cost and to uncertain results. An estimated eighty-five percent of Special Education students suffer deficits in reading. Moreover, if your own child is among a twenty percent who need to be taught well and thoroughly, you may never know it. State testing does not necessarily uncover the deficiency. The Vermont Department of Education's much ballyhooed "New Standards Reference" testing does not test even the rudiments of language decoding, such as spelling, the best generalized test for detecting decoding difficulties. Voodoo testing legitimizes voodoo reading instruction. I'm okay, you're okay. As an example, one of my children tested in the State's New Standards Reference examination as achieving at the 95th percentile level (better than 19 out of 20 children) at the same time he was actually two grades under grade level in reading decoding skills, that is, sounding out words. Rather than reading, he struggled to memorize words and guess at the meaning of unfamiliar words from their context. Essentially he was faking an ability to read. Five years into elementary school, phonics and phonemics had been almost wholly lacking from the reading curriculum. Until proper reading instruction and testing becomes part of a standard Vermont education, you have to take responsibility to assure you're your child is in fact properly taught to read. If you are a parent of a child who does not like to read and spells poorly, you should know that you have a legal right to a "full special education evaluation" in reading. Properly conducted, such an evaluation can detect decoding difficulties. In Vermont, twenty percent of children are being cheated by basic reading curriculum in a substantial number of Vermont's schools. If it takes a federal law to require that they be taught properly, there are no more worthy beneficiaries than these forgotten children.  *    *    * Edwin L. Hobson is a Burlington lawyer and a resident of Middlesex, Vermont. Both of his children attended public elementary schools. ELSEWHERE... WHY IS EDUCATION REFORM SO HARD? by the Fordham Foundation's Chester E. Finn, Jr.  (from the electronic newsletter "The Gadfly")  Welcome to 2002. Allow me to open it by recalling nine great obstacles to serious education reform in America-and the (mostly obvious) changes we must make to break through them. You may, if you like, regard the latter as New Year's resolutions. 1. We know more about the quality of our dishwashers than the quality of our children's schools. Most Americans have little understanding of the effectiveness of their children's education or don't think the achievement gap has much to do with their own schools. Despite lots of testing, we face an astonishing dearth of accurate information about school results vis-à-vis academic standards. Reliable outside audits are scarce. For the most part, the system controls-and vigorously spins-the data about its own performance. Poor and minority families sense that their kids' schools are failing to educate them, sometimes even to keep them safe. But much of America's vast middle class is smug about its suburban schools. Complacency is a potent reform retardant. Remedy: Make schools transparent institutions that pump out clear, reliable, prompt, comparable information about what they're doing and how well they and their students are performing. 2. More emphasis is placed on what goes into education than what comes out. Despite much talk about standards and results, the bulk of our reform efforts have focused on school inputs: more this or that poured into the system, more dollars, more teachers, more technology, more staff development, more homework-all this despite a conspicuous lack of evidence that pumping billions more into schools has yielded stronger results and notwithstanding plentiful research showing no clear link between a school's resources and its outcomes. Remedy: Schools should be strictly accountable for their results-whether their students are learning what they should-but not for complying with a thousand rules or running a hundred programs or spending their budgets in fifty prescribed ways. 3. Adult feet don't get held to the accountability fire. Even when we focus on results, there are few consequences for not producing them, at least not for the grown-ups in the education system. In the name of "accountability," many states and districts now come down hard on youngsters who don't meet standards or pass tests, but teachers and principals (and superintendents, board members and state officials) generally keep their jobs and suffer no great embarrassment, hardship or inconvenience. Indeed, it is still true in America that the likeliest policy response to a failing school is to send it more money. Remedy: A proper accountability system doesn't just crack down on non- performing kids (and reward those who meet standards). It confers suitable rewards and sanctions on everyone involved, especially the adults who work in schools. 4. Consumers lack clout. In the eternal struggle for control of key decisions, education's producers- the system's employees, managers and suppliers-hold far more power than do parents and students. Only well-to-do consumers, armed with the power of their own checkbooks, can navigate around bad schools and cartel-like arrangements for teacher training, curriculum and textbooks. Members of that cartel are superbly organized to cling to power and repel reform. Education's consumers, by contrast, are poorly represented in policy councils. School children employ no lobbyists. Remedy: Along with school competition on the "supply side" must come consumer choice on the "demand side." That will shift power from those who run schools to those who decide which schools to attend. 5. Weak competition encourages weak performance. Few public schools face competition-and few families have meaningful choices about where to educate their children. American K-12 education operates as a quasi-monopoly. We know that monopolies do badly at efficiency, productivity, and customer service. Though cracks in this one can be glimpsed-e.g. charter schools, the outsourcing of some troubled public schools to private managers-these are, as yet, tiny openings through which few can escape. Would-be teachers face a monopoly, too. The system's fear of competition and innovation leads it to deny entry into teaching by people without state certification (even as private schools hire whomever they like). Some states have "alternative" paths for teachers but the cartel is doing its best to give them the same hairpin turns as the regular path. Remedy: Encourage educators and policy makers to differentiate schools from one another, to cherish institutional diversity, to make schools compete for students (and resources) and to enable all sorts of well-educated people to enter the classroom without needless hurdles. 6. Too few of the best and brightest come work in schools. For a host of reasons, public education does not attract enough of our ablest people, much less our keenest entrepreneurs and innovators. Mediocre pay is one factor, but red tape and monopoly are at least as important-and they intersect with pay through such absurd practices as uniform salary schedules that don't distinguish between highly effective and terminally mediocre educators. Working for the school system more closely resembles a civil service job than one in the private sector. Not surprisingly, it tends to attract people with the drive and imagination of civil servants-and then gives them lifetime tenure at the age of twenty-five so that actual performance never again affects their job security. It's a wonder that we have as many dedicated, energized teachers and principals as we do. Remedy: Reconstruct the personnel system around different rewards and incentives, different assumptions about compensation and tenure, different arrangements for making decisions. Educators should be paid-and retained- according to the scarcity of their skills, the value they add to their pupils and the difficulty of the challenges they face in school. 7. The education profession is awash in fads and bad ideas. It favors curricular and instructional strategies grounded in ideology and wishful thinking over those based on scientific proof. In the crucial area of reading instruction, for example, colleges of education continue to induct new teachers into "whole language" methods despite decades of evidence that phonics-based methods work better with most youngsters. Diane Ravitch and E.D. Hirsch have brilliantly traced the profession's abiding affinity for "progressive," "child-centered" methods that accord with its beliefs even though they don't work very well for children. If physicians behaved similarly, hospitals would still feature leeches, incantations and mustard plasters. Remedy: Out with the snake oil. Only research-based practices should be tolerated in our classrooms-and only bona-fide scientific research should be tolerated by the leaders of this profession and those who run our schools. 8. Even Houdini couldn't escape the red tape. Public education's governance structures are uncommonly hard to alter, even to penetrate. Five levels of decision-making-federal and state governments, the local district, the individual school, and the teacher with her door closed-shape what happens in the classroom. Each can effectively block changes launched from another level. This system's innate response to any problem is to devise more regulations, impose more procedures and demand more resources. The only change it welcomes is more dollars. Remedy: Rethink public education's governance arrangements, with fewer layers of decision makers and clearer alignment of authority with responsibility. The federal government should trust states (while verifying their results); states should work directly with schools-which should also be accountable to their customers. The "local school system" as we know it is an anachronism. 9. Schools are expected to solve all of society's problems. School occupies just nine percent of most children's lives. The other 91% is spent under the sway of family, peers, neighborhood, television, etc. Lots of academic skills and knowledge can be imparted during the schools' 9% if the 91% cooperates. But when the 91% pushes in other directions, 9% offers too little leverage to counteract it. And when society decides that the failings of the 91% must also be solved within the schools' jurisdiction- thus adding character education, drug education, sex education, tolerance education and whatnot to their curriculum-there is simply no way that this relatively weak system can produce all the desired results. Remedy: For kids who need it, expand the school's 9% to confer greater leverage in their lives, whether through pre-school, extended days, reconfigured years, or cyber-education that breaks through the school-home barrier. An education system that is expected to do more for its young charges needs more scope in which to do so. It's no wonder our recent education reform efforts have accomplished so little. They're not nearly as powerful as the forces that resist them. Breaking through that resistance is the main work of serious education reformers in 2002 and over the next decade. While the needed breakthroughs are easily described, they're politically arduous to put into place. Some will say they're pipe dreams. Yet so long as these (or kindred) changes remain unmade, the education status quo will continue to prevail, our schools will remain unfixed and our children will continue to be poorly educated. To subscribe to "The Gadfly," send an e-mail to majordomo@edexcellence.net and write "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message.  KENNEDY LOBBIED NEA FOR BUSH BILL From: The Education Intelligence Agency Communique -- January 7, 2002 On the Web at http://members.aol.com/educationintel/ U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, NEA's Friend of Education for 2000, did something last month noteworthy for its uniqueness: he addressed the union's board of directors and suggested NEA back off on an important education bill. Kennedy was on the conference committee negotiating the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that President Bush is now due to sign. NEA had been lobbying hard, encouraged by U.S. Senators Tom Harkin, Jim Jeffords and Paul Wellstone, to include an amendment for full federal funding for special education costs, even holding a rally on Capitol Hill on December 6. The amendment would have increased the bill's cost by an estimated $15 billion. The day after the rally, Sen. Kennedy asked for and received permission to address the NEA Board. After summarizing the ongoing conference committee negotiations, he told the board that the special education funding amendment would not pass and hinted that insisting on it would jeopardize the agreements he had made with Congressional Republicans and the Bush Administration on other aspects of the bill. One eyewitness told EIA that NEA President Bob Chase was "visibly displeased" by Kennedy's remarks. Ultimately, the amendment failed and NEA took no position on the final bill, though Chase did call it "a tremendous disappointment."  *    *    * QUOTABLES... HUH? "Cutting school funds to control costs is like cutting fuel oil budgets to control the weather." --William J. Mathis, superintendent of the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union and senior fellow of the Vermont Society for the Study of Education. *    *    * The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701, 802.773.5240 Contact LSternberg@aol.com for more information.

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