________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT December 15, 2003 Vol. 3, No. 47 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... UNFUNDED MANDATES LIST AVAILABLE The Vermont School Boards Association (VSBA), the Vermont Superintendents Association (VSA) and the Principals' Association (VPA) have submitted their report on "education mandates and the removal of burdensome requirements" to the Commissioner of Education. This list is required under Act 68, the Act 60 reform law.  The VSBA has the list posted at its web site - http://www.vtvsba.org -- and it is well worth a look. The list is a good example of "unintended consequences." All the "mandates" listed were clearly enacted or put into place with the best of intentions. But their consequences include lost administrative time, reams of paperwork, and, in some cases, long absences that have to be covered by other personnel. In fact, under "financial implications," the most common complaint in the report seems to be "administrative time."  Examples of problematic mandates run the gamut from small to comprehensive. For example, requiring schools to offer drivers ed during the school day seems on the surface to be a small requirement. However, the report points out that more cost-effective programs could be designed just by changing the requirement that programs be held during the school day. Data collection is also listed as a problem. And, requiring certain kinds of licensure can add to school costs. Currently, says the report, only licensed speech and language pathologists (SLPs) can work with children with speech difficulties. Since SLP licensure requires a master's degree, qualified candidates are scarce and schools often hire expensive private firms to do the job. The report recommends the state clearly define the scope of work paraeducators and other language therapists could do and allow them to work with children with speech difficulties. "Implementation of the Family Medical Leave Act" is also listed as an unfunded mandate. The report notes that while the federal law gives employers the option of requiring or denying employees the right to use their own accrued paid leave as part of the Act, Vermont law gives employees the option of either using or not using accrued paid leave for up to six weeks. This results, says the report, in "substantial amounts of employee absence" with the obligation to hold the employee's position open. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) also comes under fire - for the way the Vermont Department of Education (VDOE) is choosing to implement certain sections of it. For example, the VDOE is using a "very lengthy survey" to determine if schools meet the "highly qualified teachers" section of the NCLB law. Instead, the report recommends allowing teachers to be responsible for updating their files, using the VDOE as the central repository for this information. Also included in the list is a recent addition to education law - Act 22, the law that requires school districts that don't currently participate in federal school breakfast or lunch programs to re-vote on the "opt-out" every year. It is interesting to note the origin of the mandates listed in the report. Of the nearly 30 items on the list, at least half have their origin, at least in part, in State Board of Education rules or VDOE practice. Especially in the accountability arena, the report seems to be sending the clear message to the VDOE to better coordinate state and federal testing requirements. The list provides a wonderful starting point for discussion and a road map to some quick solutions when rule-making and VDOE practice are the problems. The danger will be that legislators will look at the list and cherry-pick those items they find most appealing while ignoring items that don't correspond with their political ideology. Critics of NCLB, for example, could easily jump on the report's recommendations concerning that law and ignore the burdens of Vermont's interpretation of the Family and Medical Leave Act. The VSBA, VSA and VPA should be congratulated for putting together a good list that should spark a serious discussion.  TIS THE SEASON... ...to be generous. Vermonters for Better Education continues to raise money to support a radio ad campaign. Thanks to the many who've given so far! If you haven't donated, there's still time! Send checks to VBE at 170 Church Street, Rutland, Vermont 05701.  *   *   * COMMENTARY  COMMUNITY SPIRIT by Libby Sternberg With the approach of the holidays, many communities engage in activities designed to spread holiday cheer, help the needy and encourage the local economy. For example, numerous holiday concerts take place in towns throughout the state. In addition, radio stations, nonprofit organizations, churches and school clubs collect items for those in need to ensure everyone will have a merry holiday. Efforts to draw shoppers into downtowns emphasize the goods and services of local vendors and contribute to a feeling of community spirit. In this sense, "community spirit" is defined as a common sense of mission, or at least a common sense of attitude and culture. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, of course, so some of these activities don't generate unanimous sympathy or support. But a majority of folks probably do participate in some way. Community spirit changes, depending on the occasion, time of year and event. Perhaps the best example of true community spirit comes on election days when hundreds in a community turn out at the polls or at a gathering place for Town Meeting to participate in democracy. Throughout the year, I sometimes find a sense of community in our local supermarket. I run into people I know, and I see others experiencing the same random meetings. So when I hear opponents to school choice talking about public schools as the "centers of their communities," I wonder precisely what sense of community they're talking about. If they're referring to the shared sense of purpose regarding the education of the young, I can agree. I believe it is our responsibility to educate all children wherever their needs are best met. But if they're talking about a specific building, an institution, or a system, I have to disagree. With only a minority of the population having children in school at any given time, it is impossible to claim that the local school building is the "center of community." What it stands for, however, should be a central part of democratic life.  Community spirit is alive and well this time of year. Centers of community are alive and well throughout all of the year when community members recognize their obligations to the next generation.  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  A round-up of notable articles from other education publications. FROM THE FORDHAM FOUNDATION  On the Web at: http://www.edexcellence.net D.C. VOUCHERS IN THE HOUSE  This week, the pilot District of Columbia voucher program cleared another important barrier when it passed the House as part of a huge consolidated spending bill. Included are $13 million for the voucher program itself, $1 million for administrative expenses, and an additional $13 million for both D.C. public and charter schools. Children in D.C. have one more hurdle, the Senate, which won't drag itself back into session to pass the federal budget (now more than two months overdue) until late January. We are cautiously optimistic, however, since the Senate has also folded the program into its appropriations bill and Democrats have already conceded that they will not filibuster to stop the program from becoming law. And after it passes, the program is (likely) off to the courts. Stay tuned. "House approves vouchers for D.C.," by Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post, December 9, 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47376-2003Dec8.html "House again approves D.C. vouchers, ban on human patents," BP Press, December 9, 2003, http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=17244 "Boehner applauds House passage of historic school choice initiative for District of Columbia," press release, Committee on Education and the Workforce, December 8, 2003, http://edworkforce.house.gov/press/press108/12dec/dcchoice120803.htm  FROM FROM THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION  On the Web at: http://www.freedomfoundation.us A FOOLISH INCONSISTENCY  by David W. Kirkpatrick Senior Education Fellow One of the objections frequently raised by opponents of school choice is the loss of students from the public system. It may not be the students that are missed as much as the reduction in state subsidies which generally are based in part on ADA - Average Daily Attendance. Local revenues, primarily from the property tax, have no such direct relationship to enrollment. Yet you hear much less from the education establishment about school dropouts, which also lowers average attendance and state subsidies.  While exact figures may vary slightly from year to year, both in percentages and actual numbers, it is estimated that more than 700,000 students drop out per year.  That's an average of 4,000 students leaving for each of the 180 days in a typical school year. Put another way, that's more dropouts daily than the number of casualties at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Or lives lost on 9/11. Yet the school establishment says little about it. In Pennsylvania more than 18,000 students dropped out each year in the 1990s, an average of 100 per school day. While the per-student state subsidy varies from district to district according to a complicated formula based on the district's personal income and property wealth per student, the average across the state is in excess of $3,000 per student. That's a loss of more than $54 million to the state's 501 school districts. A report last year said that the rate had increased 29 percent from 1985 to 1995, while that in the nation at large had been holding steady or decreasing slightly during that same period. Where is the outcry? In individual schools, the attrition rate can be horrendous. For at least one Pennsylvania high school it has been reported to be in excess of 80 percent. In more than one Pennsylvania district the dropout rate exceeds 50 percent - for the entire district. In one Washington, DC high school a few years ago, there were 836 sophomores at the beginning of the year - but 172 were gone by Thanksgiving. The junior class had but 399 students, and the senior class a mere 240. If the figures are consistent across the two year span from 10th to 12th grade, that means nearly 600 students, or more than 70 percent of the sophomore class were gone before graduation. Perhaps the ultimate, however, was in an August 2000 report of a high school in the South Bronx, in New York City. It was said that the high school graduated 65 students that year. There probably are a number of high schools around the nation with graduating classes of that size. What made the South Bronx high school distinctive was that its 65 graduating seniors were the survivors of a 9th grade class which three years before had a student body of 1,000. Two years ago Johns Hopkins University researchers said 40-50 percent of the central high schools in the nation's 35 largest cities graduate less than half their ninth graders. It's not uncommon for them to graduate less than 30 percent of their ninth graders. Ninety percent of such high schools, said the researchers, are in just six cities: New York, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Yet these districts say little about such attrition, or the loss of money that follows, if statistics are accurately reported. Sometimes, in fact, the public schools are not only glad to see some students leave, they actively encourage it. This was demonstrated by a story in the October 2003 issue of Teacher Magazine. An elementary school principal in Florida sent a memo which referred to some of the students who didn't do well in school and, especially, on the state mandated tests. Attached to the memo was a note saying, "These are the kids we've got to get 'outta' here." A classic example of lack of concern for the loss of students in normal circumstances versus the potential student loss because of school choice occurred in Cleveland. When the scholarship program began in 1996 it involved fewer than 2,000 students. There was much complaining about the alleged negative effects which this loss of students would cause.  Yet, in 1972, the Cleveland public schools had about 150,000 students. By 1997, they had about 75,000 - an average loss of 3,000 student per year for 25 years. This annual loss was 50 percent greater than that from the state tuition program and, cumulatively, more than 37 times greater. Half as many students means half as many state dollars, half the number of teachers staff, half the potential membership and dues for the district's teachers union, etc.  By 1997 the district had suffered a cumulative loss in the billions of dollars in state subsidies, and was now losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The loss of 75,000 students was, and is, practically unnoticed. Yet a loss of only 2,000 students because of the student scholarship program was alleged to be very harmful to the district.  Ask them to explain that one!  NOTABLE  From "Howard Dean: A Citizen's Guide to the Man Who Would Be President" by a team of reporters for Vermont's Rutland Herald and Times Argus (Steerforth Press, 2003): When it comes to education, Dean wants to undo what George Bush has done. Many Democrats in Congress, including liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, ended up supporting Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which requires all third-through eighth-graders to be tested and imposes penalties on schools that do not meet "adequate yearly progress" targets. Looking at it from the perspective of a governor who had dealt with education at the grass roots for a decade, Dean opposed it. "It's a huge unfunded mandate, and it turns out not to be very good education policy, either," he says. "It's the problem with one-size-fits-all. It's really harming the majority of schools all over the country." Dean would replace the Bush plan with a more flexible system. "I'd have a national test," he says, "national standards, and very high standards. But what the sanctions would be would be up to the states and localities. We'd provide technical assistance to help those schools that are in real trouble. And all the tests would be fully paid for, and there would be no unfunded mandates." *   *   * 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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