________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT April 26, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 18 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... TESTIMONY CONTINUES TO TILT IN FAVOR OF S.166 Testimony on S. 166, the early education initiative, continues in the House Education Committee with supporter after supporter sitting in the witness chair. Last week, the committee heard from education establishment representatives and Julie Cadwallader-Staub, executive director of the Child Care Fund of Vermont, an organization in support of S.166. Cadwallader-Staub apparently cautioned committee members against "romanticizing" the days when mothers stayed home with their children. The only discouraging words came from Richard Courcelle, who works for the private provider Vermont Achievement Center. Courcelle showed up to talk about the bill's potential negative impacts. (See excerpts from his testimony below.) This week, the committee is slated once again to hear from members of the Education Coalition, which has been largely supportive of the bill. On the schedule are representatives of the Vermont Principals Association, the Vermont-NEA, the Vermont Superintendents Association, the Vermont School Boards Association and the Vermont Department of Education. After Richard Courcelle testified about the bill's potential negative impact, Rep. Harry Chen (D-Mendon) reportedly wondered why others like Courcelle weren't coming forward to testify. Good question. But it is better aimed at the committee leadership who, after all, control the agenda. House Ed is likely to approve the bill and then it heads to Appropriations.  EXCERPTS FROM TESTIMONY OF RICHARD COURCELLE, DIRECTOR OF FINANCE and PLANNING, VERMONT ACHIVEMENT CENTER "My remarks here today are intended to illustrate what we believe are problems with S166 that will have a significant negative impact on private providers of early education in Vermont... "In Vermont, preschool has primarily been a private sector programming endeavor. While some public schools offer preschool on a limited basis, the new funding mechanisms of S166 could exponentially grow the number of public preschool providers. According to our own state education officials, this legislation under consideration could spawn a 300 percent expansion in public preschool programs within 7 years... "During the discussions about S166 I have heard frequent mention of a few successful public-private collaborative preschool models already in place and funded under current legislation. Supporters say 'it's working in the Burlington area so it can work elsewhere as well under S166.' (I only wish that many things that work in the Burlington area could be replicated in Rutland). A collaborative model might be working in the Burlington area today and perhaps in some other areas in Vermont. That does not mean the model will be successfully replicated in other areas of the state in school districts with superintendents and administrators of differing mindsets. Nor does it mean the models being lauded today as great examples of collaboration will continue to function when more public schools enter the preschool arena.  "While S166 encourages collaborative arrangements between public and private providers, it does not go far enough to level the playing field. "Unless there already exists in a public school district an extremely cooperative and effective public-private collaborative mindset, creating one would be difficult. Under S166, the power to establish qualified service provider contracts rests with the school districts, namely the superintendent of schools. We need to ask why a superintendent would reach out to private providers when there is no incentive (or concrete mandate) to do so in this legislation. And while this legislation encourages public schools to use existing qualified service providers, it would not be difficult for a school district to establish its own program rather than contract with an outside provider. Too much power rests on the whims of a superintendent with S166...  "Consideration of this legislation comes at a time when many early education providers are adopting the recently published Vermont Early Learning Standards. (Vermont Achievement Center is doing so). The intent of the standards model is to level the playing field so to speak -- to offer some assurance that an early education program that follows the framework guidelines -whether a public or private provider- is engaging in prescribed early learning and socialization models. A private program that employs the new standards, but has not been ordained through qualified service provider status, may still be viewed as inferior to a public preschool. "Another issue of concern with S166 is that the public school preschool programs will likely be free, or at a reduced price. Given a choice between free and paying a fee, where do you think a parent will send their child? ... "The loss of a few slots is not a blow to Vermont Achievement Center. But it may be to a smaller private provider. In addition, because these public preschools are generally part-time, they are selective in design because they favor those families for whom part-time programming works (and that is not the majority of working families). ... "... Why reinvent the wheel? Help the high quality private providers make their programs even better by allowing the parents to choose what early education program is the best for their child and letting the dollars follow the child."  VERMONT SPENDING $10,415 PER CHILD The Vermont Department of Education has posted the latest Summary of the Annual Statistical Report of Schools on its web site and, according to the federal definition of "Current Expense," the state spent $10,415 per student in Fiscal Year 2003. The federal definition requires states to incorporate special education and transportation expenditures into the total. For the full report, go to: http://www.state.vt.us/educ/new/html/data/sasrs_03_toc.html IT'S OFFICAL - VT-NEA DUES GOING UP According to the May issue of the Vermont-NEA newsletter, members of the union's April Representative Assembly approved a 2004-05 budget that calls for a dues increase of $12.  HOW LONG DO SCHOOLS GET KIDS? In a Monday Burlington Free Press commentary, Vermont Commissioner of Education Richard Cate points out that schools have limited influence on children, considering how many hours kids are actually in school versus how many hours they are at home or elsewhere. He writes: "Our educational system is imperfect as is any organization, but our society as a whole needs to do a much better job of caring for our children during the time when they are not in school. Of the 8,760 hours in a year, students spend on average 962 hours in the classroom. That means that students are spending only 11 percent of their time inside of a classroom." That's true, but a more accurate picture would be drawn if you compared the total number of WAKING hours to the number of hours spent in the classroom. If you figure kids spend approximately eight hours a night sleeping (many younger children spend more), students' total waking hours come in at 5,840. Therefore, students are spending a larger percentage of their waking hours in school than Cate estimates - somewhere between 16 and 17 percent, in fact. Yes, kids are definitely influenced by many people and messages outside the classroom. That does not change the fact that schools do control a large percentage of kids' time. And it's not unreasonable to expect that schools succeed at teaching these kids, regardless of their backgrounds, some basic gateway skills during the 16 percent of students' waking hours the schools control.  LOCAL STUDENT ACHIEVES TOP ACT SCORE Ben Robinson, son of Kelly and Rebecca Robinson and a homeschooled student in Brattleboro, was the only college-bound student in Vermont and one of 38 in the U.S. to achieve a 36, the highest possible composite score, on the December 2003 national test administration of the ACT assessment.  About 300 Vermont students, and 332,000 from across the nation, completed the ACT college-entrance exam on December 13, 2003. The ACT consists of tests in English, mathematics, reading and science. Each test is scored on a scale of 1-36, and a student's composite score is the average of the four test scores. For purposes of comparison, the average composite score for the national high school graduating class of 2003 was 20.8.  In a letter recognizing this exceptional achievement, ACT chief executive officer Richard L. Ferguson pointed out that Ben should have a choice of the widest possible range of future educational options. ACT scores are accepted by virtually all U.S. colleges and universities.  MORE ON SPENDING: VERMONT TEACHERS ONLY GET 32.1 PERCENT OF TOTAL EDUCATION EXPENDITURES According to an article in School Reform news, total public K-12 education spending in the U.S. reached $437 billion in 2002-03, but less than a third of that money actually landed in the paychecks of teachers. The article, written by School Reform News Managing Editor George A. Clowes, used data from the "Ranking and Estimates" report published by the National Education Association (NEA). According to the article, Vermont teachers only see about 32 percent of the total expenditures on education in the state. For the full article, go to: http://www.heartland.org/article.cfm?artId=14818 NEA FOR CHOICE? No, not school choice. The National Education Association was a co-sponsor of the "March for Freedom of Choice" (abortion rights) in Washington on Sunday. That was the march where actress Camryn Manheim (of ABC's The Practice) told the crowd she was glad George W. Bush couldn't get pregnant because we don't need any more Bushes around. It was also the march where actress Cybill Sheperd bemoaned the fact that Attorney General John Ashcroft's mother didn't have an abortion. If students were to use this kind of rhetoric in schools, would they be accused of bullying?  *   *   * ELSEWHERE  FROM THE U.S. FREEDOM FOUNDATION http://www.freedomfoundation.us TUITION VOUCHERS... AN OLD STORY David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow  What do Adam Smith, Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Margaret Mead, Milton Friedman, the 1976 California Supreme Court, former U.S. Secretaries of Education Lamar Alexander and William Bennett, U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a majority of the American public (according to many public opinion polls) and numerous other nations have in common? They have all advocated providing financial support for education to students rather than, or in addition to, institutions. If they could all be together in one room it is possible that this is the only idea upon which they could agree. A concept that powerful, that enjoys such widespread support, and that has been around for more than two centuries, would seem to have much to recommend it. Yet it has never been generally adopted in basic education in this nation, unlike many other countries. Instead, vouchers have sometimes been erroneously condemned as new, radical, or untried. (The U.S. Supreme Court's Zelman decision of June 27, 2002 settled the question as to their constitutionality). The proposal, though not the name, is literally older than the United States, first appearing in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776, and then in Tom Paine's The Rights of Man in 1792. So much for new. As for radical and untried, the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, and its subsequent versions, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, is generally hailed as the greatest educational innovation in American history. It is a tuition voucher approach as are the various federal and state student grant programs. Even in basic education, vouchers, by various names, have a long and tested history. It is available, for example, for students in many communities in Vermont and Maine. It is frequently used across the nation for special education students who attend private schools at public expense. It is available from the federal government for preschool students. And it has been estimated that approximately one-quarter of the funding for private schools in America comes from public funds in various ways. In essence, a tuition voucher is a third-party payment for a service, something very common throughout our society. "Tuition voucher," while descriptive, is a relatively new and strange term to many. If tuition vouchers were called scholarships, education grants or student aid, as in higher education, they would be more recognizable, and perhaps more acceptable. Suppose the federal government had used the public school model when Social Security was established in the 1930s. The government would have levied the necessary taxes and then established homes in which senior citizens would have had to reside to receive the program's benefits. Those preferring to live independently would not receive federal funds and would have to support themselves. Or, for a more recent program, when it was decided that some Americans needed aid in order to have sufficient food to eat, the government could have established its own grocery stores, at which those receiving publicly funded groceries would be required to shop. Actually, the public school model is similar to the way social services were often at least partially based in the past. There was a time when the penniless were sent to "poor houses" to receive public assistance. Those needing medical services but unable to pay for them had to go to a pauper's hospital. There have been, and still are, state homes for veterans, in which elderly veterans reside at public expense although, again, they are not forced to use them or assigned to them. While this approach isn't totally absent today - witness the large public housing projects - the trend has been toward rent subsidies, individual assistance grants, for Medicare, Medicaid, public assistance allotments, food stamps, and the like, whereby individuals can make some personal choices. Public education is the last bastion of compulsory socialism providing social services to the general citizenry. And, like compulsory socialism elsewhere in the world, it doesn't work very well.  *   *   * GET CREATIVE - WRITE A SCHOOL CHOICE AD! Vermonters for Better Education, the publisher of this newsletter, is in the process of soliciting radio ad ideas to promote school choice. VBE is working with a former advertising executive who is volunteering his time to come up with pro-school choice messages designed to educate the public on the importance of this issue. In the meantime, we'd like to hear your ideas for radio scripts! A 30-second ad limits you to approximately 75 words or less, however, so sharpen your editing pens. Submit your ideas to VBE at VTBetterEd@aol.com or mail to VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701. Send a donation too! The best of the best will be posted eventually on this web site.  *   *   * 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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