________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT December 20, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 45 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... WHY CAN'T A WOMAN BE MORE LIKE A MAN - DESIGNING CHILD-CARE/EARLY ED PROGRAMS USING A "MALE CAREER MODEL" As the new legislative session looms, early education initiatives might once again be on the agenda. An early ed bill, S.166, was pushed strongly by Democrats in the Senate last year (with the help of Republicans - it passed unanimously) before being stalled in the House. Will it resurface next year? If so, policy-makers might want to consider an intriguing article in the Winter issue of The Public Interest (http://www.thepublicinterest.com). Entitled "What Do Women Really Want?", it is written by Neil Gilbert, Chernin Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. Gilbert analyzes data on fertility rates, women's participation in the labor force, and numerous countries' approaches to "family-friendly" public policies such as paid family leave and subsidized early education/child care. The majority of women, Gilbert points out, fall into a category who are "interested in paid work, but not so vigorously committed to a career that they would forgo motherhood." They might work part-time, he says, but are more invested in home life than paid work. These women might re-enter the career track later, but their career model does not track with the traditional male model of seamless transition from school to work and up a career ladder. Instead, the female model is more varied - perhaps including school to work to marriage to motherhood to career. The woman's track, in other words, is not a seamless trajectory up the career slope. Unfortunately, most family-friendly public policies, Gilbert says, are informed by the male career model and are thus "friendlier" to some lifestyle choices than others. Therefore, the emphasis is on providing relief for the working parent through paid family leave and subsidized child care. These policies, however, can end up "squeezing" some women into the labor force because of the high tax burdens the policies require. One income isn't enough. Gilbert suggests that policy-makers might want to consider a broader range of family-friendly policies and not just those that benefit parents who are using the male career model. For example, Gilbert points out that Finland and Norway now employ policies that actually pay cash benefits to families with children up to three years old as long as the child is not enrolled in a state-subsidized day-care center. As a result of that policy, labor-force participation of Finnish women with children under three years old declined from 68 to 55 percent between 1989 and 1995 -- which could be an indicator of these women's desire to stay home with their children while the children are young. This non-male-centric policy allows them to do that. Gilbert also suggests other family-friendly policies based on models other than the male career track. Why not award "social credits," he asks, for each year at home with young children, "which could be exchanged for benefits that would assist parents in making the transition from homemaker to paid employment." These benefits could include everything from tuition for training to preferential points on federal civil-service examinations. Gilbert believes rethinking family-friendly policies is necessary "not to advance one pattern of motherhood and employment over another, but to give equal consideration to the diverse values that influence how women respond to the conflicting demands of work and family life."  MERRY CHRISTMAS! A condensed VER will be published on Tuesday, December 28. Enjoy the holiday!  *   *   * ELSEWHERE  FROM THE FORDHAM FOUNDATION On the web at: http://www.edexcellence.net (VER Editor's note: The Fordham Foundation recently released its list of recipients of the Thomas B. Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education. The following is Fordham's description of one of those award recipients) Presenting the 2005 Recipients of the Thomas B. Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education. To learn more about the Fordham prizes, or about this year's winners, please visit: http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/global/page.cfm?id=248. JOHN BRANDL--UNORTHODOX DEMOCRAT In his hometown of St. Cloud, Minnesota, no one had much in the way of worldly possessions--or so it appeared to John Brandl and his childhood friends. Brandl's father, a brakeman for the railroad, earned a modest wage, yet somehow managed to keep food on the table for all six of his children. The truth was that just about everyone in St. Cloud back in the 1940's seemed to survive on the margins of poverty--and thus all seemed equal. To be a Brandl was to be a "deep-down Democrat." The Catholic schools that young John attended only reinforced his sense of the value of social equality and the importance of a community that nurtures its young. Yet in his Benedictine education, John Brandl learned that competition, and not just community, was a value to be treasured as well. His two mentors, high school debate teacher Sister Annerose Wokurka and economics professor Fr. Martin Schirber, pushed him to think independently and to strive to excel. Father Schirber was an unusual man of God--a monk with a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. Nearly half a century later, Brandl can still recall Father Schirber expounding on the benefits of free markets. Like fellow Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey before him, John Brandl went on to a distinguished career as a professor-politician and liberal Democrat. After earning his own Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, Brandl served a total of 12 years in the Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota Senate before becoming dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. But unlike many Democrats, Brandl was willing to rethink party orthodoxy. He showed that liberals, too, can favor educational choice. Brandl never lost sight of the importance of community and public-spiritedness. But he also remembers and prizes the creative potential of markets to reshape bureaucracy and improve the K-12 school system. Brandl supported vouchers at some risk to his political career. Shortly after introducing the bill, he recalls being "taken aside by the black leadership in Minneapolis, who mournfully said to me, 'don't do this.'" Former friends and allies in the teachers union turned frosty, too. "People don't slash tires out here," says Brandl. "But for the next several elections, the teacher unions didn't endorse me, and it's not easy to run as a Democrat without their endorsement. Democratic lawmakers who support vouchers often have to find another line of work." Although Brandl's voucher bill failed, it helped kick-start a flurry of laws that dramatically expanded school choice for Minnesota children. In quick succession, Minnesota enacted programs that enabled 11th and 12th graders to enroll in college courses for credit at state expense and established K-12 open enrollment, allowing students to attend public schools outside their districts. Brandl helped sponsor both bills. Shortly after he left the state Senate in 1990 to return to the Humphrey Institute, the legislature enacted the nation's first charter law, paving the way for America's first charter school in 1992. In the mid-1990s, Professor Brandl returned to the choice wars, testifying on behalf of GOP governor Arne Carlson's controversial legislation to create a refundable K-12 education tax credit for low-income families. The credit, worth up to $1,000 a child or $2,000 for a family, has served as a kind of mini-voucher that reimburses parents for money spent on books, tutors, and after-school programs. Taken together, Minnesota's legislative initiatives have begun to erode the public school monopoly. The state currently has about 835,000 public school students. But last year, 56,000 low-income families took advantage of the tax credit; 30,000 students opted for open enrollment; nearly 16,000 were home-schooled; 12,000 enrolled in charter schools; and 7,000 11th and 12th graders took college courses for credit. In Minnesota, choice is still not the norm. Yet it's no longer a quixotic dream either--thanks in no small measure to the labors of a lifelong liberal Democrat.  FROM THE U.S. FREEDOM FOUNDATION On the web at: http://www.freedomfoundation.us THE HOME SCHOOLING PHENOMENON by David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow If education reforms such as vouchers, charter schools, tax credits and homeschooling were corporations on the stock exchange, the one to buy would be home schooling. It is the most rapidly growing segment of education for K-12 students. Estimated to involve 10,000 students in 1980, the total now may be two million. Not only that, despite this much higher base, the movement is said to still grow by 10% or more a year. If the higher estimates are correct, there are more homeschoolers than the combined public school enrollment of ten states: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. One reason for the ongoing growth is that, while it was once illegal in many states, home schooling has been legal in all states since 1993, although specific requirements vary from state to state. About half require annual testing. In Delaware, for example, anyone wishing to home school need only send a one-page form to the state Department of Public Instruction notifying them of their intentions. Background checks, teacher certification, curriculum requirements or final tests are not required, nor is any state or accrediting agency given authority over these students. While there has been no definitive study of the results state-by-state, homeschoolers in the largely unregulated states apparently do at least as well than those where some regulations exist. There have been suggestions that "some" homeschoolers may not do as well as they might with other educational options, or that they may not have adequate opportunities to socialize. While almost anything might be true for "some" among a group of 2,000,000 students, how about the reality of millions of students who fail to get educated in the public school system, where not only individual schools but some entire schools districts have more than half their students drop out?  As for socialization, school is not the only place this can occur. Worse yet, many public school students can tell you their personal experience of being "socialized" in a public setting has been excruciating. As an example, a Secret Service study of many incidents of public school violence in recent years concluded that in the great majority of cases the perpetrators had been bullied and harassed beyond their endurance and were so ignored that, although virtually all of them gave advance indications of what they were about to do, no one paid attention or reported the warning signs. There is even evidence that literacy was higher prior to the 20th century although attendance at common schools at that time was spotty and brief, and much of a child's education occurred at home. In the 17th century, William Penn, after whom Pennsylvania was named, was educated at home. In 18th-century colonial America, when there still was no system of public schools, most of the Founding Fathers were homeschooled, tutored or self taught. The result? A population smaller than that of today's metropolitan Philadelphia produced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, among many more, the likes of which are not to be found today in a nation approaching 300 million individuals.  In the 19th century the ranks of the homeschooled included Abraham Lincoln, who was largely self-taught. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child who attended no formal school until he entered Harvard. Some, like Thomas Edison, had to be homeschooled because the public schools found them to be uneducable, incorrigible, or both. Nor were these exceptions. Homeschooling was the rule since the public school system didn't begin to emerge until after Pennsylvania's common school law of 1834 and the work of Horace Mann in Massachusetts from 1837-1848. Even after public schools appeared it was rare for students to get more than a few years of schooling until well into the 20th century. Not until the late 1960s was half the population high school graduates. So homeschooling never disappeared. Among its 20th-century products are Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, William Buckley and his nine brothers and sisters, Pearl Buck, and anthropologist Margaret Mead -- whose grandmother refused to let her attend any school because, she said, she wanted the girl to get an education.  David Kirkpatrick is a Bennington native, a former public school teacher and a former officer in the Pennsylvania NEA. He now lives in Pennsylvania. *   *   * 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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