________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT March 15, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 12 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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 NEWS & ANALYSIS... DOYLE POLL: PEOPLE WANT MORE CHOICE? Sen. William Doyle (R-Washington) distributes surveys on Town Meeting day and this year's "Doyle poll" included a question on school choice. But the results are open to interpretation. The question was: Should Vermont allow parents to send their children to any public school of their choice at public expense?" (a curious wording given the fact that ALL public schooling is at public expense). The responses were: 36 percent said yes, 52 percent said no, and 12 percent were undecided. However, Doyle himself believes that the negative responses were not anti-school choice in nature. From the comments people wrote on the surveys, it was clear they wanted MORE school choice, he said. Many wrote things such as "Why not vouchers?" or "What about private schools?"  SCHOOL CHOICE BILL STILL IN LIMBO There is still no movement on the public school choice bill introduced in the House Education committee at the beginning of the year and publicly supported by the governor in his State of the State address. Because of the opposition on House Ed, it's unlikely the bill will be voted out favorably, if at all. The other possibilities for the bill include: the House Ed Committee could vote it out to the floor with an "unfavorable" recommendation; a legislator (preferably the House Ed Chairman) could ask the House Rules Committee to put the bill on the floor for a vote; a legislator (again, preferably the House Ed Chairman) could move to relieve the committee of the bill and put it on the floor for a vote; or the bill could be attached to another bill and brought out to the floor that way. The latter solution seems to be the one the Administration and House leadership were counting on, but word has reached the VER that even this is unlikely. After paying lip service to school choice early in the year, both Administration and House leadership seem unwilling to make a meaningful effort to push the idea forward.  MEANWHILE, WHAT IS GETTING PASSED? Despite the constant cry to eliminate unfunded mandates, the House passed H.113, a racial harassment policy bill that requires schools to come up with harassment prevention policies among other things. The bill passed overwhelmingly with only nine "nays." The House also passed H.73, a bill that outlines procedures for local school boards that wish to allow students to be elected to their boards as voting members. This passed by a vote of 95-45. An interesting aside to this issue is the fact that the State Board of Education will take a look at H.73 at its meeting this week and a vote is scheduled on the issue. This caused some consternation in the legislature's House Education Committee where Rep. George Cross (D-Winooski) voiced his concerns about the SBOE treading on the legislature's territory, according to one House insider. Interestingly, that didn't seem to be an issue as long as the SBOE was packed with members who merely echoed the education establishment's sentiments. Now, of course, it has members who hold diverse opinions. H. 560, the homeschool driver's ed bill, still hangs in the Transportation Committee with some members expressing reservations about moving it forward. In the Senate, S.166, the early education initiative, is moving forward despite the fact that it has the potential to squeeze private day care providers out of the market and the research shows that any gains in academic achievement caused by early education programs are lost by around grade three.  VT-NEA POISED TO RAISE DUES According to an article in the March issue of Vermont-NEA TODAY (the teachers union's monthly newsletter), VT-NEA members' dues will rise 4 percent due to a budget passed by the VT-NEA's Board of Directors. The new budget includes the hiring of a full-time "Director of Professional Programs," the article's author Joel Cook writes. This staffer's duties will include responding to "challenges presented by the so-called No Child Left Behind act."  NINA REES VISIT Nina S. Rees, deputy undersecretary for innovation and improvement with the U.S. Department of Education, came to Vermont last week, visiting an innovative teacher-mentoring program in Chittenden County, and speaking to legislators, the press, and the public at the Statehouse. Rees talked about the No Child Left Behind Act, school choice and charter schools, and the work of her department. While she was speaking, an effort was underfoot in the statehouse to pass a resolution "Urging Congress to grant waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act to states where students perform at a high academic level." The resolution has 18 sponsors in the State Senate.  PUBLIC INTEREST LAW FIRM PUTS CASE ON HOLD Press Release from the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that litigates school choice cases around the country: Washington, D.C.-After its clients withdrew their children from religious schools to transfer them to public schools -- a decision unrelated to its litigation -- the Institute for Justice terminated its lawsuit seeking broader school choice in Vermont. Vermont currently allows "tuitioning" in any town that does not operate a public high school, giving residents the right to send their children to any school of their choice-public or private, in-state or out-of-state, but not religious schools. The Institute's suit sought to require the state to include religious schools as a component of that choice. The withdrawal from the case comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Locke v. Davey decision. In that case, the High Court stated that public money could not be used to fund the religious education of individuals seeking a divinity degree. Both school choice proponents and opponents had hoped for a broad decision putting the case in the context of school choice, but instead the Court kept its ruling narrowly focused on those seeking to become religious ministers. At least 28 times in the majority's 12-page opinion, the Court notes that Davey's scholarship was being used to fund training for the ministry, employing limiting phrases such as "training for a lifetime of ministry," "pastoral ministries degree," "degree in devotional theology," and "to pay for the religious education of future ministers." Dick Komer, the Institute for Justice's lead attorney in the case said, "We don't know what the ultimate effects of Locke v. Davey will be. We're prepared to let this issue play out in other jurisdictions." Komer said, "We will continue to fight for school choice, with a long-term goal of removing all legal barriers to providing parents with a free choice of whatever type of school they prefer. We hope that some day those efforts will succeed to the extent that Vermont will be unable to continue its policy of discriminating against religion."  *   *   * ELSEWHERE  FROM THE U.S. FREEDOM FOUNDATION (http://www.freedomfoundation.us) SMALL SCHOOLS ACHIEVE BETTER RESULTS by David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow.  Few aspects of schooling have been more thoroughly studied than the impact of school size. Studies are virtually unanimous in concluding smaller schools are better than large ones. Among other things, attendance, achievement, participation in extracurricular activities and graduation rates go up. Dropouts, discipline problems, and gang activities go down. One study found that high schools with 2000 students average twice the dropout rate of high schools with 600. Despite the overwhelming evidence school superintendents and school boards maintain their "edifice complex." They continue to build and operate large schools, especially at the secondary level. The January 2001 issue of the National Education Association's NEA TODAY confirmed this. It reported that more than 70 percent of public high school students are in schools enrolling over 1,000 students and half are in schools exceeding 1,500. These percentages would be higher except there are districts lacking enough students to fill big schools. Forty years ago, Roger Barker and Paul Gump, in their book Big School, Small School, noted hundreds of studies pointing out the advantages of smaller schools. Only in recent years has there been the emergence of a movement that paid attention. In 1997, Hawaii, which has no school districts or, if you prefer, has only one, the entire state, approved a policy limiting enrollment to 550 students in elementary schools, 600 in intermediate schools and 1,000 for high schools. This applies to new schools but they also began to look at dividing some of their existing 245 schools into smaller units.  More recently, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has taken on the task of supporting smaller schools. So far they have given more than $400 million toward this end. This includes $12 million to Chicago in 2001 and more than $51 million to New York City last fall. The New York City grant is to fund 67 small, theme-based high schools each of which would have a maximum of 500 students. Chicago, with some 440,000 students in 600 schools initiated a small schools effort long before it received the Gates Foundation grant. In 1995 the district adopted a small schools resolution, and the first eight such schools opened the next year. These included Best Practices High School, with a bit more than 400 students. Although 76 percent of its mostly Black and Hispanic students are low income, 84 percent graduate, compared to a citywide average of 67 percent, and 70 percent go on to college.  In April 2002 the district adopted a resolution encouraging any school to apply for restructuring as small schools. It also has a High School Redesign Project to oversee the process. The city now has some 150 schools with less than 400 students. A report a few years ago found they had better attendance, higher grades and lower dropout rates than the district's larger schools. Many communities have of necessity long had successful small schools. In Colorado's Boulder Valley, one mountain elementary school has one teacher and 18 students, while a second has two teachers and 30 students. In each case the school buildings serve as community centers and state education officials have commended the schools for high levels of academic achievement. Significantly, when the students move on to the larger middle schools in Boulder they consistently make the honor rolls. In Washington, PA, a small k-12 private school has only 86 students, 35 at the high school level. While it lacks interscholastic sports it excels in other areas, such as speech and debate in which it regularly send students to national competition. Or consider the new International Community School in Oakland, California. Eighty percent of its 238 K-5 students are Latino, half have limited English skills and 90 percent qualify for free or reduced lunches. In its first year of operation it set a goal of improving its Academic Performance Index from 545 to 558, up thirteen points. Instead, student achievement soared to 646, up 101 points. This compares to 479 points at a nearby elementary school with similar challenges of language and poverty but with 900 students.  *   *   * 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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