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________________________________________ THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT
January 16, 2006 - Vol. 6, No. 03
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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...KEY SENATOR CLAIMS EARLY ED FUNDING WAS NOT "IN STATUTE"
Last year, the legislature passed a budget that included language outlining how schools can use the ADM formula to receive funding for preK students. That law expires in June. At that time, if no early education bill is passed in the legislature, expect proponents of public preK to argue that using the ADM formula for public preK was legal anyway because of State Board of Education Rule 9200.4. This rule, passed in 2000, outlines the ADM formula for preK.
Opponents of universal prek (including the publisher of this newsletter) don't believe the SBOE had the authority to pass such a rule.
But maybe supporters of universal preK have their doubts about Rule 9200.4's legality as well. Witness Sen. Susan Bartlett (D-Lamoille), who was on the Mark Johnson radio show on January 6 when this topic came up. Here's a transcript of an exchange between Johnson and Bartlett on early ed:
MJ: Speaking of Pre-K, the Governor wants to have the legislature take another look at this pre-kindergarten program that was, uh, added to the, uh, appropriations bill at kind of the last hour -- not a lot of public discussion about it. You willing to reconsider that?So Senator Bartlett herself admits -- quite clearly -- that using ADM formulas for public funding of preK was happening "in practice" but wasn't "in statute." She even elaborated on this understanding by talking about the programs that would lose money if the ADM language had not been inserted into the budget. In other words, Rule 9200.4 wasn't enough authority even for her.SB: Well, first, there's sort of complete misunderstanding about what that did or didn't do, and it didn't suddenly open up a brand new door and change the universe. What it did was the programs that were already receiving funding under the structure that already existed, allowed them to continue receiving their funding. That's basically what that did.
MJ: That's all that did? Really?
SB: Yeah! Yeah it is! Isn't that amazing? It's gotten a lot of press about... that just simply isn't the truth. Um… we know-
MJ: If it... if it was already in law, then why did you need to add anything to the appropriations bill last year?
SB: It was in practice, and not... in statute. And there were communities, very poor communities, who were concerned about losing that funding and that meant they would close the programs they were operating if they lost the partial subsidy they were getting...
Senator Bartlett, by the way, was a member of the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules at the time the State Board of Education Rule 9200.4 was considered and approved by that body.
HE VOTED FOR EARLY ED BEFORE HE VOTED AGAINST IT
Those who helped mastermind the push for universal preschool are getting some heat from constituents and private childcare providers about this topic. Sen. James Condos (D-Chittenden) is one of those legislators and he has prepared a detailed rebuttal of what he believes are misleading claims about last year's insertion of public funding for universal preK into the budget bill.
The problem with Sen. Condos's rebuttal is that it's in a category of "misleading" all its own. Take, for example, this paragraph of a note to a concerned constituent about how the early ed ADM formula was passed last year:
Sen. Condos writes, "The Early Education language passed by the Senate was proposed by Rutland Senator Wendy Wilton and supported by Rutland Senators Maynard and Mullin. It was altered slightly by the budget conference committee to reflect current law, rules and practices."
Senator Wendy Wilton (R-Rutland) did NOT propose the early ed funding language. She DID propose an amendment to the early ed budget language that encouraged public schools to include private childcare providers in their preK planning. She would have preferred a stronger amendment - one that would have REQUIRED such collaborations - but was impeded by Sen. Condos and his colleagues. Her amendment was approved in the Senate (with the support of Senators Hull Maynard and Kevin Mullin, her fellow Republican senators from Rutland County).
Sen. Condos, however, was one of seven senators who VOTED AGAINST SEN. WILTON'S "early education language."
Yes, you read that right. He uses Sen. Wilton's amendment to illustrate to concerned constituents how "proper" the early ed funding scheme is. But he fails to tell constituents he voted against this amendment. And he fails to tell constituents that if this amendment had failed, early ed funding would have still been approved with the budget.
If you know of people who are receiving Sen. Condos's rebuttal, please pass along this important piece of information to them.
A SURVEY ON CHILD CARE/EARLY ED
In 2001, the Child Care Fund of Vermont hired Action Research to conduct a study of attitudes and facts concerning "Early Care and Education of Young Children in Vermont." The key findings of this project are relevant to today's discussion of early ed and can be found in a PowerPoint presentation available at: http://www.vermontcf.org/docs/ccf_insights.ppt
Worth noting from this survey are findings related to funding of childcare/early ed. For example, less than a majority (45 percent) "believe the state government has a financial responsibility to support child care."
If the state does take on the financial responsibility of early care, large majorities of those surveyed supported using "sin taxes" to support it -- 66 percent of Vermonters surveyed favored increasing the state's cigarette/tobacco tax and 70 percent favored or strongly favored increasing the state's tax on hard liquor to fund early ed/childcare.
But, according to the report, "there is significantly LESS (emphasis added) support for increasing the state's sales tax or using department of education funds."
SAVE THE DATE: JANUARY 26
Plans are in the works for an "early education" day at the Statehouse on January 26. Watch this space for more information as it becomes available.
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FROM ELSEWHERE...ABC NEWS AIRS SCATHING STORY ON PUBLIC ED IN AMERICA
On Friday, ABC's 20/20 news program aired a scathing look at public education in America. It was thorough, thoughtful and not very pretty. Pasted below is the transcript for the beginning of this program.
ABC NEWS: STUPID IN AMERICA:
How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education
By JOHN STOSSELJan. 13, 2006 -- "Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.
Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."
We tried to bring "20/20" cameras into New York City schools to see for ourselves and show you what's going on in the schools, but officials wouldn't allow it.
Washington, D.C., officials steered us to the best classrooms in their district.
We wanted to tape typical classrooms but were turned down in state after state.
Finally, school officials in Washington, D.C., allowed "20/20" to give cameras to a few students who were handpicked at two schools they'd handpicked. One was Woodrow Wilson High. Newsweek says it's one of the best schools in America. Yet what the students taped didn't inspire confidence.
One teacher didn't have control over the kids. Another "20/20" student cameraman videotaped a boy dancing wildly with his shirt off, in front of his teacher.
If you're like most American parents, you might think "These things don't happen at my kid's school." A Gallup Poll survey showed 76 percent of Americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school.
Education reformers like Kevin Chavous have a message for these parents: If you only knew.
Even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, Chavous says, "They're not. That's the thing and the test scores show that."
Chavous and many other education professionals say Americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren't that good. Because without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had.
And while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved ... We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."
He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.
Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., that spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools' complaints about money.
"That is the biggest lie in America. They waste money," he said.
To save money, Chavis asks the students to do things like keep the grounds picked up and set up for their own lunch. For gym class, his students often just run laps around the block. All of this means there's more money left over for teaching.
Even though he spends less money per student than the public schools do, Chavis pays his teachers more than what public school teachers earn. His school also thrives because the principal gets involved. Chavis shows up at every classroom and uses gimmicks like small cash payments for perfect attendance.
Since he took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst in Oakland to being the best. His middle school has the highest test scores in the city.
"It's not about the money," he said.
He's confident that even kids who come from broken families and poor families will do well in his school. "Give me the poor kids, and I will outperform the wealthy kids who live in the hills. And we do it," he said.
Monopoly Kills Innovation and Cheats Kids
Chavis's charter school is an example of how a little innovation can create a school that can change kids' lives. You don't get innovation without competition.
To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.
Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid."
We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.
Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."
The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better. At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.
American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids -- it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education -- at many different kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."
Last week Florida's Supreme Court shut down "opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of "uniform . . . high-quality" schools. Government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
In New York City, it's "just about impossible" to fire a bad teacher, says Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. The new union contract offers some relief, but it's still about 200 pages of bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average or way below average."
Here's just one example from New York City: It took years to fire a teacher who sent sexually oriented e-mails to "Cutie 101," a 16-year-old student. Klein said, "He hasn't taught, but we have had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."
Only after six years of litigation were they able to fire him. In the meantime, they paid the teacher more than $300,000. Klein said he employs dozens of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in what are called rubber rooms. This year he will spend $20 million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them. In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence. Klein's office says the new contract will make it easier to get rid of sex offenders, but it will still be difficult to fire incompetent teachers.
When I confronted Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, she said, "They [the NYC school board] just don't want to do the work that's entailed." But the "work that's entailed" is so onerous that most principals just have just given up, or gotten bad teachers to transfer to another school. They even have a name for it: "the dance of the lemons."
Zoned Out of a Good Education
I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn't read.
So "20/20" sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to.
Using computers and workbooks, Dorian's reading went up two grade levels -- after just 72 hours of instruction.
His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian's progress but disappointed with his public schools. "With Sylvan, it's a huge improvement. And they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're on point. But I can't say the same for the public schools," she said....
EDITOR'S NOTE: The rest of the 20/20 report is equally engrossing and equally devastating. Because some email programs won't support a mailing of the entire report, you can go to http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/ to finish reading this excellent program.
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WHO COVERS EDUCATION IN VERMONT?
We do! Consider a gift to Vermonters for Better Education, the publisher of the weekly Vermont Education Report, Vermont's ONLY continual source of education news. Send donations to: VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, Vermont 05701. VBE is a nonprofit organization and contributions are tax-deductible.
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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.
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