________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT October 20, 2003 Vol. 3, No. 39 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... ANTI-RACISM GROUP WANTS SCHOOL CHOICE The Vermont Anti-Racism Action Team held a press conference last week calling for school choice as a way to root out racism in Vermont public schools. The group approved a resolution calling upon the Legislature to pass a school choice plan, according to a Burlington Free Press article. "The reason we are going for school choice is we have been knocking our heads against a stone wall: the refusal of the education administration to own up to the fact that racism exists," said Paij Wadley-Bailey, volunteer director of the 9-year-old anti-racism group. "We can't keep doing business as usual. We can't sit by and do nothing," she said. "If one child is harassed in the schools, that is too many." For the full story, go to: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/bfpnews/local/saturday/1000h.htm INTERIM REPORT ON QUALITY EDUCATION DOESN'T SAY MUCH One of the studies required by H. 480, the Act 60 reform bill, is a $50,000 report on "what funding level or range of funding levels, per pupil or otherwise, is necessary and sufficient to enable a Vermont school district to provide a sound education." The Vermont Department of Education contracted with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) for this study, and the preliminary report was due last week. According to the Interim Progress Report submitted to the education and money committees of the legislature, NCSL has "identified 10 schools/districts that have improved academic performance" and has requested the action plans from each of these, as well as documenting the percentage of expenditures in different categories. In addition, NCSL will be interviewing personnel from the targeted schools/districts by next week to determine "methods and spending strategies used to improve performance." The final report will be due December 15. OTHER STUDY COMMITTEES FORGE AHEAD The Education Cost Containment Study Committee, also mandated by the Act 60 reform bill, meets this week -- on Wednesday -- and their agenda includes discussions on collective bargaining, staff-teacher recruitment, district size, teacher-student ratios and class size, and joint purchasing. The No Child Left Behind Oversight Committee meets next Tuesday, October 28, and their day will consist of presentations by Bud Meyers, Bill Talbott, Bill Reedy and others from the Vermont Department of Education, as well as representatives of the Vermont NEA, the Vermont Superintendents Association and the Vermont Principals Association.nbsp; COMMENTARY PLAYING EDUCATIONAL CATCH 22 by David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow U.S. Freedom Foundation http://www.freedomfoundation Making it possible for all parents to exercise their constitutional right to determine how and where their children will be educated is a legitimate concern. How best to structure a program to meet that concern deserves serious consideration and thoughtful review. There is no single approach or "model legislation," though various models have been suggested. Just as no two states have the same school code, or the same charter school law, it is neither necessary nor likely that they will adopt identical school choice laws. Among both proponents and opponents of school choice there are those who, in good conscience, bring forth questions or concerns that can usually be resolved when all parties act in good faith. But there are also those who raise objections with no intention of seeing them met or arriving at a workable compromise. They shift ground as necessary and often attack a school choice proposal that meets an earlier objection of theirs. These opponents fight furiously against any school choice legislation. They seek to cripple such legislation, to make it unworkable, or, failing that, to limit it to the fewest dollars for the fewest students. Is it legitimate to insist upon limiting legislative proposals and then cry crocodile tears for the students left behind because of those same limitations? No matter what plan is offered, however, the establishment objects. If it is a general program, largely available to everyone, they oppose it as too large, too expensive, too this and too that. If the proposal is limited, Catch-22 opponents then condemn it as helping too few with too few dollars and leaving others behind. If opponents were sincere, the solution is to make school choice available to every student, and provide funding at the per-pupil level currently being spent in the public schools. This has been done successfully for generations in many Vermont communities. Grants may equal the statewide average per pupil spending, no one is left behind, and there are a wide variety of options. Students have attended schools in Paris and Finland with the tuition (not the travel expenses) paid by their local Vermont government. If local citizens agree in a town meeting, the grant can be increased beyond the state average. Another common objection is that there is no research showing that school choice works. They couldn't be more wrong. There is a growing body of research, by John Chubb, Jay Greene, Caroline Hoxby, Terry Moe and Paul Peterson, just to name a few. There is also the practical experience of the various GI Bills, Pell grants and other scholarships, both public and private, in higher education. Based on personal choice, postsecondary education is generally hailed as the best in the world. Although not perfect, it works better than the K-12 system and 80 percent of the students are enrolled in public institutions. Assume that there isn't adequate research plus practical experience. The obvious answer would be to conduct research and learn the facts. But the establishment opposes every effort to do this as well. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) staffer Bella Rosenberg, an Assistant to then AFT President Al Shanker, dismissed Paul Peterson's findings on the grounds that he has never found a school choice program that hasn't had positive effects. She fails to point out that she has never found one that does, a conclusion she has reached without doing any research, which Peterson has. As someone once said, "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts." It is sometimes argued that most students won't be able to make choices because there won't be enough options available. Yet, when the Cleveland voucher program began in 1996, a Cleveland teacher, speaking for the local teacher's union, complained that schools had been created solely to take advantage of the vouchers. He also testified at a public hearing in one of those schools that the program was a failure. That was the first time he, or anyone from the union had been in the school. His bias was so obvious that, on two separate occasions, he was the only testifier who was asked no questions when he completed his presentation. Another objection is that voucher proposals are "divisive." Yet what makes them so are the objections of those who complain they are divisive. They are the ones who want to tell others what to do, not those who are seeking to enable everyone to exercise their constitutional right to school choice. Nationally, hundreds of different school choice proposals have been introduced at the state and national levels. The public school establishment, especially teacher unions, who have the most political power, have objected to every single one, without exception. These are not serious people. They are hypocritical obstructionists. Increasingly they are being recognized as such. As school choice moves forward they will be left by the wayside. Most tragically, these defenders of the status quo don't have their own children where most students drop out, or where violence is a daily occurrence, schools which they insist other people's children must attend. If a school is not good enough for their children, it is not good enough for other children. *   *   * "Of the major social institutions in the Western democracies, only three are characterized by compulsion: prisons, the military, and public schools." --Denis P. Doyle, p. 22, The American School Board Journal, July 1989  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.  *   *   * BOOK REVIEW FROM "THE GADFLY", the the e-newsletter of the Fordham Foundation, http://www.edexcellence.net THE ECONOMICS OF SCHOOL CHOICE  Caroline M. Hoxby, editor, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003 In this new volume, Harvard economist Hoxby presents a compilation of papers that take a close look at various aspects of school choice from the perspective of economic research. As she notes in her introduction, economists are particularly well suited to evaluate programs like vouchers, charter schools, and public school choice. They employ robust analytic models and understand market forces, efficiencies and inefficiencies, productivity gains and other factors essential to drawing conclusions about choice. In short, economists know how to simplify complex problems and arrive at useful answers, and this book does just that. For instance, Hanushek and Rivkin find that competition among schools (in Texas) does in fact boost teacher quality. Nechyba shows that choice can help break the link between housing and schooling. Fernandez and Rogerson show that vouchers can not only make markets more efficient, they can also redistribute resources (helping those who most need it). And Peterson et al. recount their studies showing the potential achievement gains from vouchers. The book also explains why public schools have incentives to resist accepting students from other schools and suggests that one reason so many parents seek special ed status for their kids is simply to get personal attention in an otherwise inattentive public system. The book's basic arguments favor choice, but the papers are not one-sided. They carefully explain the tradeoffs, caveats, and details that matter so much in complex public policy decisions. Though lay readers will find the chapters' conclusions more interesting than the methodologies used to reach them, this book could find a place on any serious education reformer's bookshelf. The ISBN is 0226355330 and you can find it at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15642.ctl. --Eric Osberg Order your copy here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226355330/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.   Subscribe Here SubscribeRemove

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