________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT February 09, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 06 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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 IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC HEARING ON SCHOOL CHOICE THIS WEDNESDAY The House Education Committee will hold a public hearing on school choice on Wednesday, February 11 from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. at the Statehouse in Room 11. This is an important opportunity for ordinary Vermonters to be heard on the issue of school choice. Mark your calendars!!  NEWS & ANALYSIS... HOUSE AND SENATE ED COMMITTEES: SCHOOL CHOICE, DRIVER'S ED, NCLB, AND EARLY ED In addition to a public hearing on the 11th, the House Education Committee will have several discussions about school choice this week, including taking testimony from former Commissioner of Education and current Castleton State College President David Wolk on Thursday. Also testifying about school choice will be State Board of Education President Diane Mueller, SBOE member Tom James, and current Commissioner of Education Richard Cate. Also on tap this week for House Ed will be continued discussion of the Driver's Ed bill that would allow homeschoolers more flexibility in teaching their children to drive, and testimony on childhood wellness and technical education. Senate Education, meanwhile, will be talking about No Child Left Behind, VSAC, civics education, and early education. In fact, on Thursday, the committee members will take a "field trip" to visit Burlington early education programs.  LETTERS UPSET TEACHERS Nearly 3,000 teachers received letters from the Vermont Department of Education recently, asking them for background materials currently lacking from state files. The letters are part of a move by the state to come into compliance with the "highly qualified teachers" component of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. By the end of the 2005-06 school year, school districts must notify parents if their children are being taught by teachers who have not been certified as "highly qualified," and gathering the necessary paperwork is the first step in determining if this is the case. But the letters have resulted in many complaints and protests from teachers and teacher advocates across the state. Angelo Dorta, Vermont-NEA president, said in a VPR interview last week that the new requirements are "an embarrassment and insulting factor." In the same interview, William Mathis, superintendent of Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, said, "we simply know everyone who's licensed and what they're teaching and whether they're properly licensed or waivered for it. So I think it's redundant. I'm not so sure it will really result in better teachers as a result of all the paper pushing."  VT-NEA END RUN AROUND SBOE Last week, the Vermont NEA's president, Angelo Dorta, and executive director, Joel D. Cook, sent a memorandum to House Education Chairman Howard Crawford (R-Burke) and Senate Education Chairman James Condos (D-Chittenden) to request a public hearing. The subject of this hearing would be what Dorta and Cook labeled the "so-called 'highly qualified' teacher requirements" of NCLB.  Dorta and Cook want the opportunity to have teachers describe how "emotionally upset, worried, frustrated, confused, and just plain angry" they are at having received letters asking for more information concerning their qualifications. The union would like an early evening meeting time of the NCLB Oversight Committee in which to have a public airing of these complaints. Although the union says in the memo that the problems concerning NCLB's "highly qualified teacher" component "are many," they then write that the "most important ones are psychological." The union also wants the legislature to use its power to conclude that the granting of a Vermont license is the measure of being highly qualified. In other words, the union appears to want to get the State Board of Education and the Vermont Department of Education out of the picture when determining if teachers are highly qualified or not. "It is quite remarkable," the union writes in the memo, "that the State Board and Department took on this assignment in the first place." The union also believes the legislators should "request from the State Board and Department an accounting of the cost they have incurred thus far and how much they believe the balance of this project will cost..."  FORDHAM FOUNDATION: VERMONT HAS "SERIOUS" PROBLEMS The Fordham Foundation released its annual guide to state standards, tests, and accountability systems last week (http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/GradingtheSystems.pdf) and once again, Vermont did not fare well. Here are excerpts from their section on Vermont: "Vermont's system...has serious problems across the board. Middle school math standards are the best, but most standards across all grades and subjects are poor. The standards for elementary math are typical, with nearly two-thirds of essential skills covered, undermined by vague and overly broad language that limits the usefulness of the standards themselves...Elementary reading is especially bad, with confusing and tedious supporting text. Reading and some literature standards are also poorly organized... "The New Standards tests used in grades 4, 8, and 10 provide a fair - bordering on poor- level of content coverage overall and hold the dubious distinction of having the worst ratings of all off-the-shelf tests reviewed in this study. The middle school reading test exemplifies the problems, with coverage of only one-third of essential reading skills and very low coverage of the vocabulary identified as high priority for the grade level. The high school test instructions are often open to broad interpretation and reading passages display mundane and formulaic choices of low interest to high school students... "The overall alignment between these tests and Vermont's state standards is fair. The alignment for elementary school reading is typical, with 60 percent of the state standards tested either directly or indirectly. It was not possible to assess the rigor of the states' tests because the necessary technical information for the New Standard tests was not available (even though New Standards is sold commercially by a test publisher!). The testing system has a very poor rating for trustworthiness and openness, due largely to the fact that technical manuals were not available for review...and to the lack of data suitable for comparisons with NAEP trends as a result of the state's limited participation in the testing program. "Vermont's accountability policies prior to NCLB were poor. Despite a fair regimen of assessment and performance categorization, the system was undermined by limited consequences for educators and no consequences for students. Should the state implement NCLB requirements, we expect its accountability policies to improve to solid."  IT'S NEVER TOO LATE... ...To consider a donation to VBE! Not only will it help support the continued circulation of the Vermont Education Report, it will also help us fund a radio campaign to explain the benefits of school choice. We've been receiving contributions steadily, but we could use more! Send your checks to: VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701. Thanks!  FROM OTHER EDUCATION PUBLICATIONS  A round-up of notable articles from other education publications. From The Teacher Quality Bulletin (http://www.nctq.org) Research States that are looking to properly tune their incentives should look at labor market research. Labor economist and NCTQ board member Michael Podgursky has a brief but useful piece on the single salary schedule for teachers in this month's Texas Education Review. Podgursky, a long-time critic of the artificial constraints that salary schedules put on the teaching profession, traces the history of the single salary schedule and reviews how it continues to hurt the profession's ability to attract people to teach in certain subjects and in hard-to-staff school districts. One of Podgursky's recommendations is that salary schedule decisions be decentralized to the district level and not decided by a state body. "Do Financial Incentives Motivate Teachers?  Arizona Republic, February 3, 2003  http://www.azcentral.com/families/education/articles/0203incentives-ON.html "Teacher Housing Crisis a Myth" The San Jose Mercury News, February 2, 2004 http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/7854560.htm "Money for Teacher Incentives Faces Cuts" The Louisville Courier-Journal, February 4, 2004 http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/02/04ky/met-4-teacher02040-4937.html Reforming the Single Teacher Salary Schedule in Public Schools By Michael Podgursky The Texas Education Review, Winter 2004 http://www.educationreview.homestead.com/2003ReformingTeacherPay.html  From A Voice for Choice (http://www.childrenfirstamerica.org/avfc/index.htm) D.C. SCHOOL CHOICE ALREADY HAVING A POSITIVE EFFECT? The Washington, D.C. school choice scholarship program isn't slated to get underway until this fall, but it's possible that the mere anticipation of competition is already having a beneficial effect on the district's public school district. Last week, the D.C. school board announced plans to reform the beleaguered district; including such measures as academic performance standards for students, a consistent citywide curriculum and performance contracts for teachers and administrators. According to The Washington Post, the district would monitor student progress more closely, create a math and reading curriculum based on 'best state standards.' Also, the district would establish a 'rewards and sanctions' program for teachers and administrators, and hire an outside private firm to monitor school finances. "What we're trying to do is increase the pace of improvements. . . . There are some things that can't wait," said interim superintendent Elfreda Massie.  From The U.S. Freedom Foundation (http://www.freedomfoundation.us) LITERACY THEN AND NOW By David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow It is often claimed that our public schools have made our nation successful. In fact, the nation was a democracy prior to the establishment of the public school system. The beginnings of the latter date from 1834 when Pennsylvania's Common School Act was passed.... Many studies of literacy since the colonial period show that literacy was not only higher then than now but in recent years the number of illiterates has grown. One estimate is that during 1640-1700 the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was between 89-95 percent. When the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787 one of the lesser-known Founding Fathers, Fisher Ames, said that very few of the emerging nation's citizens could not read or write. Slaves wouldn't be included in that statement but there is evidence it did include indentured servants. One might also consider other contemporary evidence - Tom Paine's Common Sense for example. At the time of The Declaration of Independence the population of the thirteen colonies was about three million, counting slaves and indentured servants. Paine's pamphlet is estimated to have been read by 1,000,000 people, half of the adult free population at the time. Today it's considered difficult for high school students. The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, appeared as articles in New York newspapers to persuade the general public to approve the proposed Constitution. Those articles can today present a challenge to college students. In 1900 only 10.7 percent of the public could not read or write a simple message. By 1993 such functional illiterates were estimated to be 21 percent of the population. While in 1910 only one Massachusetts child in a thousand was illiterate, in 1984 the Boston Globe estimated that 40 percent of the adult Boston population was functionally illiterate. In 1987 Labor Secretary Bill Brock was concerned because, he said, 700,000 high school graduates each year couldn't read their diplomas. David Kearns, the head of Xerox, said not only were 700,000 high school graduates functionally illiterate but that didn't count another 700,000 dropped out annually. He also estimated that four of five young adults couldn't summarize a newspaper article, read a bus schedule or correctly figure their change from a restaurant bill. A 1935 survey of 375,000 men in the Civilian Conservation Corp found only 1.9 percent could not read a newspaper or write a letter. On the September 16, 2002 edition of the ABC-TV Evening News with Peter Jennings, it was reported that 50,000,000 Americans read at or below the 5th grade level. That is, they are functionally illiterate. Other opportunities to obtain mass data came when millions served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The Army defined illiteracy as being unable to read at the fourth-grade level. That may not seem like a very stringent standard, and in World War II it wasn't. Only one in 200 recruits from 1939 to 1945 with at least four years of schooling failed to qualify. By 1950 to 1953, 20 percent of Korean War recruits couldn't read at the fourth-grade level. A decade later, 1965-1972, one quarter of Vietnam War draftees couldn't perform at that level. Perhaps coincidentally, Korean and Vietnam War veterans were increasingly the product of the "look-say" approach to teaching reading, rather than phonics as in earlier times. If schools were educating today's young people the illiteracy rate would be decreasing as the older generation passed from the scene. To the contrary, at least one estimate is that the number of illiterate Americans is growing as much as 2,500,000 a year. Obviously, if you've gotten this far this doesn't include you. But how about your children? Or grandchildren? Or those of your friends and neighbors?  David Kirkpatrick is a Bennington native, former public school teacher, and former PA-NEA officer. He now lives in Pennsylvania. *   *   * 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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