________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT April 01, 2002 Vol. 2, No. 14 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... VSBA, VSA, VPA, AND TEACHERS UNION ALL EMBRACE CHOICE Chanting "Kids First!," members of all of Vermont's major education organizations joined together this week in a rousing rally on the statehouse steps to show support for school choice. "We know if we open the door to choice, our teachers are good enough and our school boards smart enough to make the adjustments necessary," said a VSBA representative. "All kids are different and deserve the best and most appropriate schools to meet their needs," said the leader of the rally, a longtime member of the teachers union. "How can we complain about lack of parental involvement if we shut the door on parents' choices?" mused one public school teacher. "Education is about supporting kids' needs. It's not about supporting systems or unions or school administrations," said a superintendent from central Vermont. "We know the research supports choice. It's time to stop blowing smoke in the eyes of legislators and the public with weak studies conducted by obvious opponents." ***Warning: What you have just read is the editor's attempt at an April Fool's joke. Would that it were true.*** PRESSURE IS ON - H 716 H.716, the House school choice bill, might make its way out of the Ways and Means Committee as early as Tuesday of this week. If so, watch for an extremely close vote. Legislators have been receiving a tremendous amount of pressure from opponents of choice over the weekends. One House member reports a particularly odd conversation with a local school board member who expressed fears over losing students under a choice program. The school is a small school which participates in the Rutland volunteer choice program and receives more students than it loses through the initiative. Apparently, the Vermont School Boards Association talking points were more persuasive than real-world experience for this board member. Another curious irony of this debate: about a year ago, the Rutland City School Board complained to legislators that they wanted money following the child in the choice program enacted several years ago. Yet Rutland City School Superintendent Mary Moran testified AGAINST H. 716 where money DOES follow the child. VERMONT NEA ALREADY GEARING UP FOR ELECTIONS Vermont's teachers union is getting ready to launch a legislative district program to recruit candidates for state legislature, scrutinize voting records of incumbents, issue questionnaires, and participate in pro-NEA candidates' campaigns, according to the Vermont NEA's April 2002 newsletter, "Vermont-NEA TODAY." "Vermont-NEA is re-forming the House/County Chair program that was so successful in the last election," reads the newsletter article, which counts "vouchers/charter schools" among the "destructive notions" the legislature looked at in this session. Those interested in joining the VT-NEA's "cadre of political activists" are encouraged to contact the union office and become part of "an exclusive grassroots lobby list." HOW BIG IS THE VERMONT NEA? The same issue of "Vermont-NEA TODAY" listed 7,201 teachers as members of the union. When other members are counted, the union membership comes to more than 10,000.  *    *    * ELSEWHERE... PHONICS DEBATE LINKED TO NATURE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH A fascinating article by Karin Chenoweth appeared in the March 28 Washington Post. It takes a look at the National Reading Panel's recommendation on phonics and educational research in general. Here's an excerpt: "The National Reading Panel was convened by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 1998 in answer to a request by Congress that they determine what research says about reading instruction. Congress was reacting to the scary fact that it is quite clear that at least one-third of American children do not read well enough to become fully functioning members of a sophisticated, technological society. "The 14-member reading panel was chaired by Donald N. Langenberg, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. I asked him why he, an experimental physicist by training, was chosen. One of the reasons, he said, was, 'I know what good research looks like.' "That, by the way, was an ideological gauntlet he had just thrown down. "The hard sciences, such as physics, long ago established ways to sort through which research is worthwhile, which worthless and which intriguing but not proven. One is to require that experiments be designed so that extraneous factors do not corrupt the results. Another is to ensure that experts in the field review the research. Yet another is to publish the results in journals so fellow scientists can replicate the experiment and either verify the results or dispute them... "Most educational research does not adhere to these kinds of scientific protocols. Much of it is anecdotal or not described in such a way that it can be replicated, or doesn't sufficiently filter extraneous factors. As a result, almost any educational practice can be justified by some piece of 'research' or another. Long-suffering teachers have learned to harden themselves against the words 'research shows,' knowing that what will follow is likely to be questionable. "The National Reading Panel bemoaned the paucity of good research on a whole range of topics related to reading. But, it said, enough research exists to begin building a knowledge of what constitutes good reading instruction. And one part of that is systematic, explicit instruction in phonics, particularly for children in kindergarten and first grade and older children who are having difficulty reading... "Phonics instruction is by no means what all children need, the panel said. They need to have stories read to them by fluent readers so they can understand the wonder of a good story. They need lots of conversations using sophisticated vocabulary so they can build their storehouse of words and ideas. They need opportunities to write poems and stories that are fun and interesting for kids. "The only really controversial part of the panel's recommendations, as far as I can tell, is that it called for explicit, systematic phonics instruction, a conclusion disputed by those who say that phonics instruction is too boring for children and too quirky to rely on because English words don't always follow phonetic rules. But those dissenters haven't been able to produce research that meets the reading panel's scientific standards. "What's interesting about the way the National Reading Panel did its work is that if its standards stick and are applied to all of educational research, that would represent a genuine turning point in education -- the beginning of a common base of knowledge similar to what has been built in the medical sciences in the last hundred years." For the full article, go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28582-2002Mar27.html READ WHY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE "ANOTHER PLANET" From The Education Intelligence Agency, COMMUNIQUÉ -- April 1, 2002 On the Web at http://www.eiaonline.com "Come with me and work in that school environment for at least a week. Not a day, not a morning, not a couple of days, but at least a week, to truly understand what teaching is all about and what education is all about." -- NEA President Bob Chase, September 6, 2001. Former Miami Herald journalist Elinor Burkett didn't visit for a week, she stayed every day for the entire 1999-2000 school year at Prior Lake High School in Minnesota. The results of what she learned are in her book from HarperCollins, Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School. If at all possible, stop reading this communiqué, go immediately to your local bookstore, purchase a copy, and open it. If you're like me, you won't put it down until you have finished it seven hours later. I got up only once, early on, to get my highlighter. For anyone who feels teachers and students are the opponents in the battle for education reform, Burkett provides the heartening news that they are just as aware of the lack of academic rigor as anyone. The school's union rep, Joe Goracke, is also the staunchest advocate of a classical education with associated discipline and no excuses. "Politicians and bureaucrats are trying to raise standards because there aren't any," he said "Or, there are, but we don't hold kids to them because we're hung up on protecting their self-esteem or rewarding them because they say they are trying. So we're part of the problem. We're a dysfunctional community." Burkett chose Prior Lake specifically for its upper middle class demographics and high test scores. Nevertheless, students had no idea who was running for president in 2000, what Roe v. Wade was, who Margaret Thatcher is and where Pearl Harbor is. One in three were unable to name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Four of five couldn't multiply two three-digit numbers together without a calculator. "After twelve years of education," Burkett wrote, "they didn't know much of anything." Burkett nails two key points, largely unexamined in the world of education policy. First is the lack of any expectation of self-discipline from the students. "It feels to me as if teachers have been worn down, that they've stopped being outraged at how little the kids know," said English teacher Mara Corey. "The kids are spoon fed. Everything has to be fun. They whine if you give them homework every night. They're incredibly intellectually lazy." After spending a year at Prior Lake, Burkett comes to a similar conclusion. Discussing her own educational background, she says, "No one had ever suggested to me that education should be fun. As a consequence, I learned a discipline of mind and a wealth of knowledge no germane divertissement could have afforded me." So why don't schools instill the values of hard work and delayed gratification? Burkett identifies the problem with laser-like accuracy. She calls it the breakdown of "the alliance of grown-ups." Parents, teachers and administrators, whatever their personal differences, once spoke with one voice concerning expectations and behavior of students. Disagreements were settled in private, and children perceived a united front that demanded they apply themselves to their studies. That alliance is gone, replaced by a world in which parents act as attorneys, defending their children's misbehavior and lack of effort and advocating for looser grading and easier standards. Faced with explicit demands for higher standards from the public, and at least tacit demands for lower standards from parents who want little Johnny to go to college with a 3.9 GPA, teachers are stuck in the middle. Agree or disagree with its portrayal of American public education, Another Planet is the kind of in-the-trenches journalism we need to encourage. It's worth 100 policy books. More about Another Planet here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0066211484/act60whatvermosh *    *    * 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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