________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT October 06, 2003 Vol. 3, No. 37 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... VERMONT AG AGREES WITH WASHINGTON STATE ON DENYING FUNDS TO STUDENT STUDYING RELIGION The Vermont Attorney General's office has filed an amicus curiae brief in a case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 2 that could have ramifications in Vermont - possibly affecting future school choice initiatives, the tuition town system and even VSAC grants to college students. The AG's brief sides with the state of Washington in denying a state-funded scholarship to a college student who was enrolled in a pastoral studies program. The case is Locke v. Davey and involves a Washington state college student, Joshua Davey, who was enrolled as a double major in business and pastoral studies in a private Washington state college. Davey was told his state-funded scholarship could not be applied to pastoral studies because it violated the state's prohibition on the use of public funds for religious studies. This prohibition is contained in the Washington state constitution as a "Blaine amendment" - clauses in state constitutions that were anti-Catholic in origin. While the Vermont brief acknowledges the anti-Catholic intent of Blaine amendments, the AG argues that "the adopted amendment here has a broader and non-discriminatory scope." Despite the fact that the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) does not prohibit the use of state funds for Vermont students who might choose to study theology, the Vermont Attorney General's office has filed an amicus in Davey on the side of Washington state, arguing that Washington (and thus, any state) does, in fact, have a right to deny assistance to students based on religious grounds. According to Vermont Assistant Attorney General Timothy B. Tomasi, the AG's office chose to file the amicus because of a "concern that states be allowed some room between the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses" in the U.S. Constitution. The Establishment Clause specifies that states cannot make laws establishing religion, and the Free Exercise Clause specifies that citizens' free exercise of religion shall not be abridged. Both clauses have been used in previous cases to determine whether or not religious discrimination takes place when states fund public and private programs, yet refuse to include religious programs within the private ones. The Establishment Clause provided the basis for the victory in the voucher case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court a year ago, in which the court ruled that vouchers to religious schools do not violate the Constitution. Vermont has another interest in the Locke case, however, that is addressed in the amicus itself. In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that Vermont's state constitution was more restrictive than the federal constitution, and thus tuition town money could not be spent on religious schools, even though it could be spent on private nonreligious schools. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules that it is discriminatory to single out religious studies as ineligible for funding in an otherwise neutral funding program, Vermont could be found to have engaged in just such a discriminatory practice in the Chittenden ruling. The amicus brief does not appear on the Vermont AG's web page. However, it, and other information on the Locke case, can be found at: http://pewforum.org/school-vouchers/locke/ WHAT IS A BLAINE AMENDMENT? From "The State and the Non Public School," (University of Missouri Press) by Lloyd Jorgenson In December 1875, a Republican member of the House of Representatives who was a presidential hopeful, James G. Blaine, introduced a proposed constitutional amendment: "...no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefore, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations." The measure was debated in both chambers in August 1876... The members of the Judiciary Committee of the Republican-controlled Senate...bolstered it by adding sterner provisions... Vermont senator Edmunds, author of the Judiciary Committee version, quoted Pope Pius IX to prove that American Catholics were intent on the destruction of the common school system, instigated in this by the "universal, ubiquitous, aggressive, restless, and untiring" Holy See. Mockingly, Senator Bogy of Missouri confessed that while listening to Edmunds, he had almost imagined himself to be in the Vatican, with the Pope presiding: "I fancied that my distinguished friend from Vermont could well play the part of an infallible Pope, for if there be a member of this body who does play that part with more self-complacency than my friend from Vermont I really do not know him. Infallibility is part of his nature..." Religious liberty is not the issue in question, Bogy continued, it is merely the cloak for partisan maneuvers. The Republicans need a new bloody shirt, for the old one "can no longer call out the mad bull, (and) another animal has to be brought forth by these matadors t! o engage the attention of the people in this great arena in which we are soon all to be combatants. The Pope, the old Pope of Rome, is to be the great bull we are all to attack." ...(The Blaine amendment) failed to get the necessary two-thirds vote, (and) it did not pass. ...Undaunted by the defeat of the Blaine resolution, the Republicans included in their fall 1876 platform a call for a constitutional amendment "forbidding the application of any public funds or property for the benefit of any school or institution under sectarian control." Senator Moynihan has made an interesting comment (In the Washburn Law Journal Spring 1965) on this provision in the 1876 platform: "In 1876 there were those who thought that public aid to church schools should be made unconstitutional. But at least they were clear that the Constitution would have to be amended to do so. It is extraordinary how this so obvious fact got lost in the years that followed." Editor's note: Although the Blaine amendment was defeated at the national level, it made its way into many state constitutions, Washington's being among them.  DC VOUCHER BILL FILIBUSTERED The DC Scholarship program, which would grant vouchers to low-income children to attend the private schools of their choice, is being filibustered by Democrats in the United States Senate. Democrats will not allow it to come up for a vote, and proponents of the bill don't have enough votes to file for cloture. However, insiders say that the bill still could have a chance of passage within the next month. Voucher proponents therefore urge supporters to contact their U.S. Senators on this bill.  MORE VT SCHOOLS OPTING OUT OF NCLB WITH NO CONSEQUENCES According to the Rutland Herald, the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union might opt out of using Title I funds, thus escaping the consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act (http://www.rutlandherald.com/News/Story/72699.html). The story was unclear, however, on how the SU will precisely forgo the money since several schools in the SU depend on it while others don't. The Superintendent of Rutland Northeast is William Mathis, a longtime foe of school choice (one of the consequences under NCLB) and co-founder of the Vermont Society for the Study of Education, which recently became a partner with the Vermont NEA. In the article, Mathis claims that Vermont schools are already meeting higher standards than most schools because 2001 New Standards Reference Exam results show "82 percent of eighth-graders in the state and 74 percent of 10th graders achieved proficiency." A check of the state's school report data, however, doesn't show any figures matching those cited in the article (school report data available here: http://crs.uvm.edu/schlrpt/cfusion/schlrpt02/vermont.cfm). LUNCHEON ON TEACHER CERTIFICATION FILLING UP Those who want tickets to the luncheon talk on alternative teacher certification should make their reservations now. The room is filling up, according to organizer Laurie Morrow. Here are the details: on Tuesday, October 21, Vermonters for Better Education will co-sponsor a luncheon in Montpelier at which Lisa Graham Keegan and Kathleen Madigan will discuss "The Road Less Taken: American Board Teacher Certification." Other sponsors include the Ethan Allen Institute, the Associated Industries of Vermont, the Education Leaders Council, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, and the Vermont Association of Scholars. Keegan is CEO of the Education Leaders Council, a DC-based education reform organization made up of education leaders from around the country. Keegan herself is former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. Madigan is the president of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence. ABCTE is an approved provider of teacher certification and has developed a rigorous series of examinations that will allow talented, motivated people who already hold bachelor's degrees to enter the teaching profession without taking courses in colleges of education. The luncheon will take place at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Montpelier and the cost is $50 per person. To receive a ticket order form or to reserve tickets, call 802-229-9208. Or send a check for the appropriate number of tickets to: Laurie Morrow, 15 Deerfireld Drive, Montpelier, VT 05602.  *   *   * 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 in 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 From the Fordham Foundation's e-newsletter, "The Gadfly"  http://www.edexcellence.net FACING FACTS...  by Chester E. Finn, Jr.  "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams famously wrote, "and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Nowhere is that truer than in education, where passions and wishes often take the place of hard information. In recent years, an unexpectedly rich source of factual information about U.S. education has turned out to be the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based "club" of the world's more prosperous lands. When I attended OECD education meetings back in the 1980s, they were sleepy, formalistic affairs that only an education minister (or ed school professor) could love. But of late the organization has evolved into a valuable font of comparative data on education in what we once called the "industrial world." Its annual Education at a Glance is especially helpful in placing U.S. education facts in international perspective, though some of its "indicators" are hard to interpret as a result of OECD's need to massage the data in arcane ways to make them comparable from country to country. (The post-secondary numbers are especially gnarly.) You may want to get the 2003 edition for yourself, but it now runs a whopping 450 pages so allow me to note some facts contained therein that seem especially illuminating for American education reformers. -- The U.S. high school graduation rate--72 percent of the age cohort, using OECD calculations--is now well below average. Not only do we lag countries that you might expect to do well (Denmark at 96 percent, Japan at 93 percent) but we're also behind Poland (92 percent) and Italy (79 percent). The U.S. position improves when later graduates and GED recipients are factored in, but many analysts have come to doubt both their intellectual equivalence and their career- and income-boosting power. -- Though American 4th graders have reading skills in the upper end of the OECD distribution, our 15-year-olds are just average on this scale--and in both cohorts the "standard error" of the U.S. score is greater than for any other land, meaning we have greater disparities in the test-taking sample. -- When it comes to the performance of 15-year-olds in math and science (on the PISA math and science "literacy scales"), the U.S. score is again average in both subjects and again has the largest standard error. -- Our outcomes may be average, but our inputs are way above average. From pre-school through university, American education institutions spent an average of $10,240 per student in 2000, the most of any country and about twice the OECD mean ($5,736). To be sure, this is skewed by the high spending of our colleges, but it is also a fact that U.S. pre-school, primary, and secondary school per-pupil expenditures are second in the OECD world (after Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, respectively). -- Relative to GDP, our overall per-pupil expenditures are tied for first place (with Austria), though several countries outstrip us on this measure when preschool, primary, and secondary school are separated out from higher ed. More interesting, while the U.S. leads in overall per-pupil expenditures, it lags in public investment in private schools. According to the report "in a number of OECD countries, governments pay most of the costs of primary, secondary, and post-secondary non-tertiary education but leave the management of educational institutions to the private sector to provide a wider range of learning opportunities without creating barriers to the participation of students from low-income families." -- U.S. private expenditures on education are second highest at about 32 percent of total institutional expenditures, trailing only Korea (40 percent) and almost triple the OECD average. But that's mainly due to higher education. And when you flip it around, you find that U.S. public expenditures in support of private K-12 education are among the world's lowest: just 0.3 percent of total public education outlays, vastly below such countries as Australia, France, Germany, Spain, and Britain. -- America channels less of its GDP into government than do most OECD countries--not surprising, considering the heavy tax burdens of most European nations--but within our total public expenditure the share going to education (15.5 percent) surpasses the OECD mean (13 percent) and is bested only by Korea, Mexico, and Norway. -- Once upon a time, Americans didn't necessarily go to better schools but they got more schooling. That's no longer true. The average number of years of full-time schooling expected for today's young American is 15.5, compared with an OECD average of 15.7. Adding part-time schooling brings our average to 17.1, versus an OECD mean of 16.9, but we're way outstripped by Australia (20.6), all of Scandinavia, Germany, New Zealand, even Spain. -- Not surprisingly, our college-going rate no longer leads the world, nor do our persistence rates within college. (Even when full and part-time tertiary education are combined, our expected average of 3.5 years is outdone by Finland and Korea.) And we've developed a wider-than-average female-male discrepancy in college matriculation and completion rates. -- Though the U.S. is surpassed by just a few countries (Hungary, Iceland, Italy) in the number of school employees per 1000 K-12 students--we're at 116.2 vs. the OECD average of 99.5--we have relatively fewer teachers (and other academic personnel) within that workforce (62.1 per 1000 students vs. an OECD mean of 71.4). That's because we have more administrators and "maintenance and operations" personnel. -- U.S. teachers get better-than-average pay at every level--beginners, after 15 years, and at the top of the salary scale--but compared with the nation's wealth (measured as GDP per capita) they earn less than their peers in a number of countries. The average U.S. teacher salary after 15 years of experience equals 1.19 GDP per capita, compared to OECD averages of 1.31 to 1.43. American teachers also work more student "contact" hours each year. Our high-school teachers, however, are no better paid than primary teachers--strikingly different from the pattern in most other lands. What to make of such stubborn facts? America looks strikingly AVERAGE on most measures of education performance and efficiency, including some where we once beat "the competition." Where we now do best is on gauges of education spending. Where we fare worst is on measures of educational attainment, both quantitative and qualitative. If average returns to large investments are good enough for the world's only super-power, we can quit trying to reform our education system. To those who see the present situation as the path to national decline, however, these data should serve as an alarm bell. Education at a Glance 2003, Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development, September 2003: http://www.oecd.org/document/52/0,2340,en_2649_33723_13634484_1_1_1_1,00.html From the U.S. Freedom Foundation http://www.freedomfoundation.us CHOOSING TO HOME SCHOOL by David W. Kirkpatrick Senior Education Fellow, U.S. Freedom Foundation  The most rapidly growing segment of education for K-12 students is home-schooling. Estimated to include only about 10,000 students in 1980, it grew to perhaps a quarter of a million by the mid-1980s. Some say the total is now as high as two million. Home-schooling is legal in all 50 states, although specific requirements vary. In Delaware anyone wishing to home school need only send a statement of intent to the state Department of Public Instruction. Former State Superintendent Pascal D. Forgione, Jr., said he hadn't seen any egregious problems. And why should any be expected? Home-schooling has a long and successful history, from the nation's earliest days. In the 17th century William Penn was home-schooled, as was George Washington in the 18th. In the 19th century Abraham Lincoln received some home-schooling but, like many others, was largely self-taught. This was the rule since there was no educational system during this time, and relatively few schools. The public school system began emerging with the passage of Pennsylvania's common school law in 1834 and the work of Horace Mann in Massachusetts during the years immediately thereafter. Still, home-schooling continued. Among its 20th century products: Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, William Buckley and his nine brothers and sisters, Pearl Buck, and anthropologist Margaret Mead - whose grandmother said she wanted the girl to get an education and refused to let her attend any school. Departments of education in Alaska, Tennessee and Washington have conducted studies that found the typical home-schooled student comes out ahead on virtually every significant measurement. Achievement tests find home-schooled students average 30 percent higher than public and private school students. Established education groups, having lost the battle on legal and academic grounds, often cite the need for social development, as if a public school is the only place that can occur. They also assume that socialization in a public school is invariably a positive experience. Cornell University Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner suggests that, at least until age 10 or 12, students who spend more time with their peers than with their parents tend to rely on the other children for their values. The result? They tend to have a lower sense of self-worth, of optimism, of respect for their parents, and, ironically, even of trust in their peers. And that's not even counting students who are bullied, shunned by others, shy or otherwise are subjected to negative factors. A study for the Smithsonian Institution by Harold McCurdy concluded that genius is more likely to develop among children who spend more time with their parents and other adults, less time with their peers, and are free to work out their fantasies. McCurdy suggests the public school system tends to do the reverse and restrict such development Furthermore, based on experience, hundreds of colleges, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton, seek to attract home-schooled students for their advanced social skills as well as high SAT scores. Home-schooling ties into the school choice movement for a number of reasons. First, not everyone home-schools as a first preference. When their school district will not allow them to send their child to a school other than the one the district selects, and they cannot afford tuition at an acceptable independent school, they may home-school of necessity. School choice grants would give them more options. Second, even those who voluntarily home school tend to do so at the elementary level. One-third or more of these students transfer to an established school, usually a public school, at the secondary level. Grants, again, would provide more options. Third, those who home-school do the public an economic favor, as well as help their children. Home-schooling costs a fraction of the public school expenditures, typically about $800, and that's not tax money. A grant to a home-schooling parent of $800 per child would be a bargain compared to spending $8,000 or more in a public school. The problem, therefore, is not one of academics, social adjustment or the public interest. It is political. It is necessary to overcome the resistance of the public school establishment and convince legislators to permit parents to educate their children if they are so inclined. To home-school is a major commitment. But since those who voluntarily do so have a superior track record, to give them a modest bit of assistance would be in the public interest. Home-schoolers have much to gain, and to give, by supporting the school choice movement. As a constituency grows, so does its influence. Imagine the outcry if millions of parents, sending their children to any school, or no school, as they chose, were faced with prospective stifling government laws or regulations restricting their freedom. Full school choice would benefit home-schoolers, public school students and parents who wish to have better alternatives to the schools in which their children presently find themselves. The general public would see a better return on their tax dollars and the general interest would be better served by improved student achievement and social maturity.  *   *   * "Why is it that millions of children who are pushouts or dropouts amount to business as usual in the public schools, while one family educating a child at home becomes a major threat to universal public education and the survival of democracy?" --Stephen Arons, Compelling Belief, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Col, 1983, p. 88.  *   *   * 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.   Subscribe Here SubscribeRemove

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