________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT March 31, 2003 Vol. 3, 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: LSternberg@aol.com NEWS & ANALYSIS... HOUSE ED CHAIR UNLIKELY TO MOVE TO SENATE Last week, Governor Jim Douglas announced the appointment of Senator Robert Ide (R-Caledonia) to the position of director of the state's energy efficiency program. This leaves an opening in the senate that the governor will have to fill. Republicans in Caledonia County are planning on caucusing soon to nominate people to fill the position, and the governor will likely choose from among those nominations. According to a March 27 Caledonian Record article, names that "surfaced repeatedly" to fill Sen. Ide's spot include Rep. Steve Larrabee (R-Danville), David Brown (R-Walden) and House Education Chairman Howard Crawford (R-Burke). But several political observers believe Crawford is not interested in the job and Larrabee could be the front-runner. Other names mentioned in the article were: Bernioer Mayo, former headmaster of St. Johnsbury Academy, Brent Beck, Waterford selectman, and Joe Benning, Lyndon attorney.  ED COMMITTEES WORKING ON...SOMETHING The House Education committee has continued to look at tech center issues, but is unlikely to pass much of substance before the session is over. One bill of substance that could come before the committee for a vote, however, is H.113, a bill that seeks to "expand the definition of harassment in schools." Sponsored by Rep. Mark Larson (D-Burlington), the bill would require each school district to name two or more "school civil rights officers" whose duties would include receiving and investigating complaints of harassment and hazing. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Education Committee members will be reviewing issues connected to the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as H.54, the free breakfast mandate already passed by the House. Later in the week, the Senate will hear from Jim Squires of the Vermont Department of Education and Kim Keiser of SRS, testifying about S.166, the Senate's Early Education Initiative which could end up allowing public schools to monopolize the early ed market. VBE does not support S. 166. All bills are available on-line at http://www.leg.state.vt.us VTNEA PRESIDENT WORRIES WAR WILL COST EDUCATION The April issue of Vermont-NEA Today, the newsletter of the Vermont teachers union, contains a commentary by Angelo J. Dorta, president of the Vermont NEA. Entitled "Iraq and Our Schools," the commentary was written in early March before hostilities began. In it, Dorta laid out his worries as the conflict neared: he worries about family, friends and neighbors who "are obliged to carry out U.S. foreign policy." He also worries about "miseries that will be added to the civilian populations of Iraq and its Middle East neighbors." He worries about possible terrorist retaliation. And he says it is "increasingly clear from news accounts that our nation once again will re-visit a level of disagreement and divisiveness over the aims and prosecution of an Iraq war reminiscent of the Vietnam era." Nonetheless, he urges educators to "educate, not indoctrinate." He concludes by expressing the worry that one legacy of the war could be that public schools will be "starved" of the resources they need as money is needed to pay for defense.  EDUCATION SPENDING HIGHER THAN DEFENSE SPENDING Last week, the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office posted a new Featured Fact from its online collection of education facts: "According to the Department of Education the U.S. spent $392 billion on public elementary and secondary education in the 2000-01 school year, compared to $295 billion spent by the Department of Defense in 2000 according to the Congressional Budget Office. When private spending and higher education are included, the U.S. spent a total of $700 billion on education, or 7 percent of GDP, compared with 3 percent of GDP spent on defense. Even with the increase in defense spending after September 11th and the cost of the Iraq war, estimated at around $80 billion, and even with the much-bemoaned proposed cuts in education spending due to state budget shortfalls, total education spending this year will be roughly twice as large as the total amount spent defending the country against foreign dangers." To view the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office website, including the Institute's complete collection of education facts - basic information and vital statistics on education programs in Florida and nationwide - go to http://www.miedresearchoffice.org.  PRIVATIZATION BOOKLET AVAILABLE ONLINE Vermonters for Better Education has received so many requests for its booklet "How to Privatize a Public School in Vermont" that we have posted the booklet online. It is now available at our web site: http://www.schoolreport.com/vbe_privatize.htm. The booklet spells out the steps necessary to turn a town with a public school into a tuition town. It includes relevant Vermont statutes and a timeline used when the town of Winhall went through the process several years ago. The booklet is particularly useful for small towns with declining student enrollments where it might be more cost-effective to pay for the tuition of the students in town instead of the maintenance of a public school.  WHO COVERS EDUCATION IN VERMONT?  WE DO! Maybe you noticed that this is the third "volume" of the Vermont Education Report. That means we're entering our third year of covering education stories in the state that you WON'T FIND ELSEWHERE. Education is a complicated and important topic. In Vermont, it's a nearly one-billion-dollar industry. Yet scant notice is given to it in the major newspapers and broadcast media in the state. Only in the VER will you find regular coverage of education issues - stories on what the department of education is doing, what is happening in the education committees in the legislature, and how the state really compares nationwide, as well as tidbits from around the country. Help us keep going - send a contribution today to: VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701.  ELSEWHERE... THE LAW PEOPLE LOVE TO HATE... by Chester Finn, from "The Gadfly," the weekly e-newsletter of the Fordham Foundation  Bring back Richard Rothstein! The space his education column formerly occupied in the Wednesday New York Times is often filled nowadays by the grumpy Michael Winerip, who seems bent on proving that everybody in America hates the No Child Left Behind act. His latest contribution was last week's column reporting "pervasive dismay" with NCLB across the land. "As I travel the country," Winerip writes with evident relish, "I find nearly universal contempt for this noble-sounding law." To be sure, the Gadfly has itself fussed on occasion about NCLB, but commentaries such as Winerip's come close to letting people off the hook by condoning a public-education system that isn't doing a satisfactory job today and resists doing anything differently tomorrow. If the view settles over educator-land that NCLB sets hopeless goals, needn't be taken seriously and can be dismissed on grounds that Uncle Sam isn't covering the full costs of compliance, then much of America should resign itself to twenty more years of flat scores, wide gaps and semi-educated kids. Whereas A Nation at Risk was greeted by a chorus of Pollyannas who asserted that its basic analysis was wrong and that everything was really copacetic in American education, NCLB seems to be attracting a choir of defeatists, especially state officials who say, in essence, "You just can't expect us to do all those things. They're too hard, too disruptive and you're not giving us enough money." Too bad the lead education voice in America's "newspaper of record" is singing along with that choir. The effect is to deny that the problems NCLB seeks to address are grave enough to warrant painful changes in established practices. As Secretary Paige recently told state board members, "In order to make a difference, we have to operate the situation differently. That change is difficult. But change is required." If NCLB fails, America may as well forget standards-based reform, which is the same as forgetting tens of millions of needy kids. Meanwhile the evidence continues to roll in that standards, testing and accountability work--so long as states stick to their game plans and are undeterred by protesters and defeatists. Massachusetts reports that 90 percent of the high school class of 2003 has now passed the core English and math sections of the Bay State's demanding MCAS high-school graduation test. Texas announced the other day that more than 80 percent of its third-graders have passed that state's new and tougher TAKS reading test, a larger fraction than just about anyone expected in the first round of TAKS. (Texas is following its past practice of gradually raising its "cut-score" over several years. In this initial administration of the English-language reading test, 89 percent of 3rd graders passed; 81 percent got scores that would qualify them as passing against the higher standard planned for 2005. Scores on the Spanish-language reading test were a bit lower.) Are such results flukes or part of a pattern? A heated debate rages as to whether statewide accountability systems boost academic performance or --as a pair of Arizona State University academics, including uber-Pollyanna David Berliner claim-- have no effect, or even make things worse. While that debate will persist, the best analyses I've seen of multi-state, multi-year evidence conclude that state accountability systems have the hoped-for effect most of the time. A forthcoming issue of Education Next will present such a review by Eric Hanushek and Margaret Raymond. (An early version of that analysis can be found at: http://edpro.stanford.edu/eah/papers/accountability.Harvard.publication%20version.pdf.) It's time to consider whether most protests against standards-based, test-driven state accountability systems have more to do with objections to the concept--and to change itself--than with credible evidence that such systems don't work. Do not, however, doubt the determination of resisters to stick by the regime under which they have thrived... Feeling beset on many fronts--including NCLB's requirement that every classroom must have a "highly qualified" teacher, Rod Paige's continuing push for "alternative certification," widespread Congressional criticism of ed schools, and anxieties about the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act--the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education is girding for battle. Earlier this month, President David Imig circularized his deans with an astonishing amalgam of delusion, strategy and spin. Excerpts follow: "I know that virtually every education school is doing a commendable job. We continue to be the most accountable unit on the campus and are fulfilling our obligations for the NCLB challenges. Our need is to tell our story in more compelling ways to the policy makers and the public. Until we do so, we can expect to see efforts to make education schools even more accountable to Washington... My purpose in writing is to urge you to make your local U.S. Congressman a friend of your education school... When you respond, use the language of No Child Left Behind and demonstrate your commitment to that legislation... Consider inviting your Representative to give the Commencement Address this Spring but insist that they spend some time hearing your newly minted teachers brag about their program and how well it prepared them to teach in challenging schools..." Instead of trekking around the land to hear state officials beat up on NCLB, maybe Michael Winerip should consider listening to ed school deans praise it. Evaluating their veracity would be fit work for the New York Times.  COLORADO SENATE PASSES CHOICE BILL from Children First America: http://www.childrenfirstamerica.org/avfc/index.htm  A bill to establish publicly-funded scholarships for low-income students trapped in poorly-performing public schools passed the Colorado Senate on its final vote Thursday, and is expected to be signed into law by Governor Bill Owens. The measure, which sparked intense debate on the Senate floor, will return to the House to approve minor changes before heading to Gov. Owens. While Owens has not said whether or not he would sign the bill, a spokesman said, "The governor has been a big supporter of educational choice in the past." When the bill becomes law, low-income families with children who attend school districts with eight or more schools that have received scores of "low" or "unsatisfactory" on annual reports would receive a "Colorado Opportunity Scholarship" to be used at the school of their choice. With the enactment of this law, Colorado would become the first state to establish a statewide school choice program since the Supreme Court ruled school choice to be constitutional last year.  CORPORATE TAX CREDIT BILL PASSES ARIZONA SENATE (also from Children First America)  In an exciting development, a bill which would create a corporate tax credit for scholarships narrowly passed the Arizona State Senate Wednesday in a 16-13 vote, the bare minimum needed to pass the measure. The bill now goes to the House, where support is considered to be much stronger than in the senate. Arizona already has an individual tax credit law in which citizens can direct up to $500 ($650 for couples) of their tax burden to organizations which grant scholarships for families to use at the school of their choice. Unlike the individual tax credit, however, the proposed corporate scholarships would be available only to those students currently enrolled in public schools who are eligible for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program. In addition, figures from legislative budget staffers indicate that the program will be revenue positive, as the state has a net gain of $2,000 per student that transfers. The measure would cap the scholarship fund at $10 million the first year, but that figure would rise to $50 million after four years. State Sen. Jack Harper said he welcomed anything that introduced an element of competition to the school system. "Competition makes everyone better," he said.  IN CALIFORNIA, SCHOOLS DEVELOP AN "ENEMIES LIST" from "Wrights Law": http://www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/Enemies_List.html  The Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) represents over 14,000 California school administrators. This group surveyed their membership to identify groups and parents who had been critical of schools. The School Administrators Association organized the survey responses into a secret Enemies List. This document included the name of the group, and names of parents who were identified with the groups, and name of superintendent. There was a section for comments about the parents' subversive activities - what actions they took that earned them a place on the Enemies List. Someone leaked the Enemies List to the press. The Association of California School Administrators was confronted with their Enemies List. The Association said they were just trying to identify "disruptive" individuals and groups. A copy that was circulated shows that the report is organized by district, with columns for the name of the superintendent, the name of the group, followed by names of the parents involved in the group. There was also a section for comments describing the activities of the groups and what they did to earn a place on the list. Targeted parents were guilty of "disruptive" acts that included questioning special education placements, filing complaints with the Office of Civil Rights, and objecting to the way Parent Advisory Groups were set up. "The existence of such a list confirms the worst fears of many parents - that schools single out parents who advocate for their children. It further suggests an adversarial and repressive attitude towards these parents - a precursor to the retaliation reported by many."  *   *   * 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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