________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT July 18, 2005 - Vol. 5, No. 28 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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 COMMENTARY... UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL IN VERMONT by John McClaughry  (Editor's Note This commentary appeared in the Barre Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald on July 3. The Ethan Allen Institute has been writing about early education issues for several years and was instrumental in bringing this topic to the public's attention in Vermont.) With the signature of Gov. James Douglas on the FY 2006 appropriations bill, Vermont's tax-supported public school system grew by two more grades. Few legislators clearly understood that this was happening. It was accomplished completely below the radar of public and legislative debate, with almost zero attention from the news media. When most school districts take advantage of the new law, the cost to taxpayers will be from $40-70 million a year, most of it raised from the property tax. "At-risk" Children the Original Early Ed Targets... Since 1987 a few school districts have operated homemade preschool programs. In addition, a program called Essential Early Education, to help handicapped children who will later enter special education programs, has been in existence for many years. It is currently budgeted for $4.5 million a year, paid for from the state's general fund. Act 60, the court-ordered education finance act of 1997, provided money from the new education fund to school districts to aid "at-risk" children (from low-income families or with limited English proficiency) through preschool or early-grade mentoring programs. Act 60 did not, however, authorize universal preschool programs for all children. Unsure of the status of the handful of schools that had been spending funds on universal programs, the Department of Education in 1998 adopted a temporary rule (9200.4) that allowed those schools to count children in 10-hour-a-week preschool programs as 0.46 of a pupil in Act 60's complex pupil weighting formula. That rule expired in 2000. According to the current Education Commissioner Richard Cate, the Act 60 legislative oversight committee (now defunct) informally told the department to make the rule permanent, which it did that same year. The legal authority of the board to make the essentially legislative decision to tap the education fund for this purpose remains in serious contention. The Move to Fund Pre-School for All.... In late 2002 then-commissioner Ray McNulty determined to lead Vermont into the new era of universal preschools. McNulty's initiative fell on eager ears within the educational establishment. The people running Vermont's schools are very much aware that the state's public school attendance is going down, while school spending is going sharply up. This can be difficult to explain to heavily burdened property taxpayers, who pay two-thirds the cost of the school system. An obvious solution is to bring more pupils into the system. Three- and four-year-olds come cheap. They can be "educated" (the distinction between early education and day care remains controversial) at half the cost of serving elementary school kids. By adding two more grades below kindergarten, the schools can add new pupils that will increase the nation's lowest pupil-teacher ratio and actually bring down per-pupil spending. The teachers' union, of course, will be delighted to enroll hundreds of new pre-K teachers and add them to its political action machine. Additional support comes from some large businesses eager to have taxpayer-financed pre-K to relieve day care pressures and costs for many of their employees, and remove the issue from employee benefits and collective bargaining. In 2003 the Senate Education Committee took up Commissioner McNulty's initiative (just as he departed for another position). It heard dozens of witnesses on its preschool authorization bill, S. 166. The bill gave clear statutory authorization for school districts to use Education Fund money to pay for universal preschools. It also encouraged "collaboration" between school districts and independent day care centers -- provided that the day care centers met costly state licensing and quality standards. On April 2, 2003, after Senators beat down an effort on the floor to inject a small amount of parental choice into the program, the Senate passed S. 166 on a 28-0 vote. In the House, however, S. 166 faced tougher sledding. Some representatives raised concerns about putting private day care centers out of business or driving up their costs to qualify them for "collaboration" with public schools. Others were alarmed that the new public school pre-K programs would effectively put church-based preschools out of business. Eventually S. 166 died in the House Education Committee. The Vermont Department of Ed Leads the Charge.... For at least two years the department had been actively encouraging districts to create programs that went far beyond the long-established assistance for at-risk children. Acting only on the authority of its own rule, the department had approved education fund reimbursement for those programs. Despite the assurances from department lawyers, there is good reason to believe that school districts with such universal preschool programs are on thin legal ice, and that the department is in a politically awkward position. School districts are draining $15 million a year from the education fund to pay for universal preschooling. But the education laws nowhere authorize the use of education fund spending for this purpose. In fact, the law reads "Upon withdrawal of funds from the education fund for any purpose other than those authorized by this section (K-12 programs)" the state property tax is repealed. In January, Commissioner Cate sought the approval of the State Board of Education to adopt an amended preschool rule. The proposed rule spelled out conditions for collaboration with independent providers, and reaffirmed the inclusion of preschoolers in the pupil count to qualify for education fund spending. Realizing the far-reaching nature of the proposed program expansion and its contested legality, the board balked. Cate withdrew the proposed rule. Sen. Jim Condos, D-Chittenden, then reintroduced S.166 (newly numbered S.132) to get the Legislature to solve the problem. Senate Ed Subverts Its Own Process Senate Education, now chaired by Sen. Don Collins, D-Franklin, moved slowly. On April 13 Vermonters for Better Education and the Ethan Allen Institute briefed Gov. Douglas and Administration Secretary Charlie Smith to explain the effects of S.132. They argued that the high-standards preschool demanded by the educators would cause a huge drain on the education fund, and prevent the governor from advocating any further reductions in state property tax rates. Further, they said, S.132 could drive hundreds of independent preschool providers out of business by attracting most of their clients into "free" public programs. Gov. Douglas and Secretary Smith clearly understood the issue, but made no commitments. By mid-May it was obvious that Sen. Collins' was not going to be able to push S.132 through the Senate, let alone the House, in 2005. Without supportive legislative action, the districts with universal preschools would remain in legal jeopardy. So on May 20, Sen. Collins took the key provision of S.132 -- the inclusion of preschoolers in the Act 60 pupil count formula -- to the Appropriations Committee. Describing the provision as a technical amendment to ratify current practice, he persuaded the committee to add it to the Senate version of the FY 2006 appropriations bill. His appeal met with no resistance from the committee and, apparently, no objection from the Douglas administration. On May 25 the Senate passed the bill and sent it off to conference with the House. At this point the Douglas administration made a belated appearance. In a June 1 letter to the conferees, Finance and Management Commissioner James Reardon wrote "the Administration strongly recommends that the new Senate language in this section with respect to ADM [the Education Fund pupil count] funding for early childhood pupils be eliminated ... the cost of this program to the Education Fund is open-ended and potentially immense." Now the Senate was asking the House appropriations conferees to accept a brand new provision creating an open-ended, universal, education fund-financed preschool program, not just for at-risk children, but for all children. Despite the fact that the House had never considered the issue, the House conferees agreed to the Senate provision. The resulting act authorized financing universal preschool from the education fund by incorporating by reference the language of the State Board's Rule 9200.4 adopted in 1998 and again in 2000. Despite his strongly worded objections of June 1, Douglas made no further mention of this provision, and it was not discussed in the June 16 special session. The governor signed the appropriations bill into law on June 21. Silence from the Media... During this month of intense Statehouse activity on this issue, the Vermont news media took almost no notice of it. Ross Sneyd of The Associated Press devoted two sentences to the Senate preschool provision in a lengthy summary of the contents of the appropriations bill. Despite being urged to report on these developments, the Burlington Free Press and Vermont Press Bureau, usually aggressive reporters of legislative doings, did not find the matter worthy of mention. Vermont has now become the sixth state to enact universal preschool. Unlike all of the other states, Vermont acted without floor debate in either chamber of its legislature or voter approval through initiative. This sweeping measure, with its "potentially immense" costs to taxpayers, was quietly slipped through by Sen. Collins and his confederates, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille and House Appropriations chair Martha Heath, D-Underhill, (who knew what the game was, but raised no objection.) Preschool programs, now draining $15 million from the education fund, will rapidly increase as more and more school districts get in on the action, and as more and more parents opt to enroll their children. The private day care providers now face the choice of becoming indentured servants to the public schools, at best, or driven out of business as their customers migrate to the "free" taxpayer financed programs. There has long been strong support for educational programs to help close the achievement gap for disadvantaged children. With the advent of universal preschools, the funding that might have closed that gap will now be distributed among all children, most of whom will get few if any measurable benefits beyond day care services. Where Was the Governor? Douglas, who could have awakened Vermonters to the implications of the preschool provisions that his administration strongly opposed, chose to veto the appropriations bill only because of language relating to the state college labor dispute. Whatever one may think about the merits of universal taxpayer-financed preschools -- and there is a spirited debate among experts about those merits -- the Vermont Legislature, the governor, and the media failed the people of this state. With zero legislative debate, Vermont school districts now have been given the green light to create and expand universal preschools. As these proliferate, they will cause the perpetual annual expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars, threaten the very existence of hundreds of small (and usually woman-owned) businesses, offer nothing to close the achievement gap affecting at-risk children, and quite possibly do nothing of any value for anyone other than the new teachers, aides and bureaucrats that will be called into being to absorb its spending. John McClaughry, a former vice chair of the Senate Education Committee, is president of the Ethan Allen Institute (http://www.ethanallen.org). *   *   * MORE EARLY ED RESEARCH A July/August Harvard Education Letter on "Early Education at a Crossroads" has some intriguing and provocative information. The article's author, Deborah Stipek (I. James Quillen Endowed Dean of the Stanford University School of Education and a researcher in early childhood development and education) makes the usual case for why early ed is important. But she also hammers a point that has been made on these pages -- that low-income children "begin school at a serious disadvantage." Because of that, she argues, quality early education programs are crucial to those in lower-income groups. While she argues for quality preschool programs to close the achievement gap, she also says that "a question that is not yet settled, however, is what kinds of instruction will narrow these gaps without undermining young children's enthusiasm and self-confidence." Stipek appears to be nervous about programs that are too academically-intense, but she does note that "language-rich classrooms and sensitive teachers" are some insurers of success. Once again, this report -- circulated, by the way, by supporters of publicly-funded preschool -- points out that it is LOW-INCOME CHILDREN who should be receiving targeted aid and that the jury's still out on precisely what kinds of instructional programs work best. So we come back to a question many Vermonters should be asking why should taxpayers fund UNIVERSAL early education programs -- for rich and poor alike -- when it is the disadvantaged who should have the money targeted at them?  SUMMER IS.... ...the time for Vermonters for Better Education's annual fundraising efforts. Information is power, a wise person once said. Every week, the Vermont Education Report brings you information on education in Vermont and elsewhere that you won't find in any other media outlet in the state. We are virtually the lone voice of education reporting in Vermont. Shining the spotlight of information on policy discussions has turned out to be a valuable service. Most notably, we raised the alarm on the early education discussion. Without the VER, most of this discussion would have taken place "under the radar" of the mainstream media, far from those whose lives would be effected by it. But we need your help to continue. As we stated last week, Vermonters for Better Education, the publisher of this newsletter, is a small operation with one part-time staff member and a volunteer board. Yet policy-makers and policy-watchers regularly rely on this newsletter for important education information they won't get elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Education Lobby, consisting of the teachers union and allied groups, has both money and personnel to promote their agenda. Despite being outgunned in the resources department, VBE has played an important role in education issues over the past few years, with at least one Vermont Department of Education employee observing how "powerful" we are. Won't you please help us continue our work? Send contributions to VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701. Thank you for your continued support!  SUMMER SCHEDULE The Vermont Education Report will appear irregularly throughout the summer. Although we'll strive for a twice-a-month schedule, we might show up in your email boxes at unexpected times as news breaks!  *   *   * 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.  *   *   * 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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