________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT September 19, 2005 - Vol. 5, No. 36 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... SOME PRIVATE CHILDCARE PROVIDERS "DESERVE" TO GO OUT OF BUSINESS? Rob Roper, executive director of Freedomworks Vermont, was recently on the Charlie and Ernie radio show in Burlington with Sen. Don Collins (D-Franklin), Sen. James Condos (D-Chittenden) and Rep. George Cross (D-Winooski) to discuss early education. During the show, Roper shared the story of a Middletown Springs private childcare provider who had to close her business when the local public school opened one that offered services for free.  This prompted a call from another private provider, one of the fortunate ones who has been able to secure a contract with a public school. This provider's comment? Perhaps the Middletown Springs provider "deserved" to go out of business. This callous and uncharitable remark was greeted by silence from the three legislators. None of them jumped in to take issue with the caller. In fact, Sen. Condos, Roper reports, appeared to be nodding his head in agreement. VERMONT COMMISSIONER OF ED SETS UP STATEWIDE MEETINGS Vermont Commissioner of Education Richard Cate wants to hear what's on your mind. As school started, Cate had a commentary published in many papers around the state urging parents to be involved in their children's education. He also let parents know he is planning a series of meetings around the state, a "listening tour" of sorts, to hear what's on parents' minds. Here's the preliminary schedule, from the Vermont Department of Education web site: October 27, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.: Milton High School November 7, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.: Bellows Falls Union High School December 1, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.: Lake Region Union High School April and May visits, to be scheduled in the Southwest and Central parts of the state respectively, have yet to be put on the books. *   *   * FROM ELSEWHERE... From the Alliance for School Choice  On the web at: http://www.allianceforschoolchoice.org/ KATRINA'S DISPLACED STUDENTS By Clint Bolick Earlier last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings lamented that there are no clear answers to where the 372,000 schoolchildren in Louisiana and Mississippi displaced by Hurricane Katrina will attend school or who will pay for their education. For a major part of the answer, Mrs. Spellings need only look down the street toward her boss and mentor. With a stroke of a pen, President Bush could open educational opportunities in private and charter schools for thousands of displaced children. The storm-ravaged schools no less than homes and businesses. Mrs. Spellings reports that more than 700 schools in the two states were closed, and many were destroyed, just as the new school year was getting started. Tens of thousands of the displaced students had been attending private schools. For the children rendered homeless by the hurricane, there is no time to spare in securing stable educational opportunities but federal bureaucracy has left their fate far from certain. Public schools across the nation, many of which already are overcrowded, have opened their doors. Many Catholic and other religious schools have accepted displaced children without charge. Congress already has appropriated $62 billion for emergency relief, but precious little will trickle down to schoolchildren. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says its funds cannot be used to hire teachers or buy books. Even worse, FEMA regulations prevent use of funds by religious relief providers. By contrast, the 73,000 college students displaced by the storm can use their federal aid anywhere, at public, private or religious schools. Mr. Bush can cut through this bureaucratic nonsense by issuing an executive order suspending the FEMA restrictions. In the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the elder President Bush suspended federal Davis-Bacon Act prevailing-wage requirements to ease rebuilding in southern Florida. Cutting through FEMA red tape is necessary to deliver precious educational opportunities, and the president owns the scissors. Nor is there any constitutional impediment to providing such aid. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that public funds may be used in religious schools so long as parents choose where to spend the funds. The only thing holding the president back is the weight of bureaucratic inertia, which already has exacted unacceptable costs in this catastrophe. Likewise, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour possess broad emergency powers. State funding already had been appropriated before the hurricane struck. The governors should exercise their emergency authority to ensure that the funds will follow the children to whatever schools public, private or charter can pick up the slack. For thousands of mostly low-income children in New Orleans, their public schools were devastated long before the hurricane arrived. Bob Herbert characterized the New Orleans public-school system in the New York Times as "one of the worst in the nation," whose officials were "enveloped in a bureaucratic fog and the toxic smoke of corruption." The system, 96 percent of whose students are black, graduates only about one-half of its students. The school system's problems were so severe that earlier this year, the state's heavily Democratic House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to approve a school voucher program for New Orleans schoolchildren, which would have allowed them to choose private or religious schools. The bill was narrowly defeated in a Senate committee. More than 1,000 pre-kindergarten schoolchildren in the New Orleans area were receiving vouchers for private preschools before the hurricane struck. If there could be a silver lining to this tragedy, it would be that children who previously had few prospects for a high-quality education now would have expanded options. Even with the children scattered to the winds, that prospect now can be a reality if the parents are given power over their children's education funds. At an average public school expense of $7,500, the cost of educating the children displaced by Hurricane Katrina would total $2.8 billion a tiny share of the $62 billion already appropriated. If state education funds followed the children, the federal cost would be even less. Because median private-school tuition is far less than public school costs, extending such choices to displaced families would lessen the relief cost even more, while giving the children opportunities they never had but desperately need. Mr. Bush came into office as a "compassionate conservative," vowing to encourage the delivery of social services by faith-based providers. Scores of private and religious schools stand ready to heed the call to offer high-quality educational opportunities to thousands of children left homeless and school-less by the hurricane. If ever we needed the president's actions to match his rhetoric, the time is now. Clint Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice.  *   *   * From The U.S. Freedom Foundation On the web at: http://www.freedomfoundation.us FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES by David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform measure including a provision for charitable choice, commonly termed faith-based initiatives, allowing the nation's 350,000 religious congregations to receive public funds for programs such as counseling, job training and day-care. Then Governor of Texas in 1996, George W. Bush was one of the first to sign legislation making it possible for state agencies to fund programs run by faith-based groups. Soon after he assumed the office of president in 2001, he established a faith-based office in the White House to do the same. By early 2005 as many as 20 governors had staff assigned to help religious organizations gain access to such grants, including money for programs serving school students.  As support from such politically different presidents and governors indicate, this idea does not fall into simple definitions as liberal or conservative. For example: Q. Is public funding of charitable programs by religious groups a new practice instituted in 1996? A. No. Joseph Viteritti, in "Choosing Equality," indicated child and family service programs conducted by religious groups already received as much as 40% of their funding from government sources Q. Who said, "I've seen the difference faith-based organizations make...where the unique power of faith can help us meet the crushing social challenges that are otherwise not possible to meet...we must explore carefully tailored partnerships with our faith community."  A. Vice-President Al Gore, May, 1999. Q. Who said, "I'm a supporter of these programs in which faith-based organizations help the government serve public purposes." A. Sen. Joseph Leiberman, on ABC-TV's "Nightline," February 14, 2000. Programs which are faith or value-based are often more successful than government-run programs because they can use methods which the government cannot. For example, the Victory Fellowship in Texas, which uses the Bible as part of their recovery program for drug addicts, claims a 70% success rate. You would be hard pressed to find a government program that remotely approaches that record. Individually, Americans are perhaps the most religious people in the western democracies. The great majority say they believe in God, large percentages belong to a church, and most attend church regularly or occasionally. To these citizens faith-based initiatives make a great deal of sense, not least of all because of its established track record that might otherwise not be possible. Whether one is religious, an agnostic or an atheist, there can be no denying that, for a significant number of people, especially for many with serious problems, religious values are vital to their well being.  Further, when the First Amendment's reference to religion is cited, it should be done in full. Too often It is only noted that the Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." omitting the next six words, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  There are those who argue that making a public program or funding generally available except to religious groups is a violation of the Amendment since it, in effect, prohibits religious groups from participating in benefits available to those not practicing or lacking religious values.  Nor did the First Amendment or any other part of the Constitution place such a restriction on state and local governments, school districts, etc. This did not come about until the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 1947 Everson decision, introduced a new interpretation to this effect by combining the First and Fourteenth Amendments.  In the 1870s, politicians, led by President Ulysses S. Grant and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives James G. Blaine, tried unsuccessfully to amend the Constitution to prohibit aid to religious schools. They wouldn't have done that if they thought they had already achieved this aim by adopting the 14th Amendment. Their effort occurred during an era of strong anti-Catholic sentiment, an attitude unfortunately still too prevalent, and part of the background of current First Amendment debate, although few dare to state it quite as blatantly as could be done 130 years ago. If what is important is results rather than rhetoric, ideas rather than ideology, vitality rather than violence, and people rather than political correctness, there is much to be said for charitable choice, or faith-based initiatives. David Kirkpatrick is a Bennington native now living in Pennsylvania. He is a former public school teacher and officer in the PA-NEA. *   *   * From the Fordham Foundation  On the web at: http://www.edexcellence.net FIE ON MIDDLE SCHOOLISM If ever an education fad showed dreadful timing, reaching its intellectual and political pinnacle just as lightning struck the mountaintop, it's "middle schoolism." The key year was 1989, when the middle school bible, an influential Carnegie-backed report named Turning Points, was published. It hit just as the governors and then-President Bush gathered in Charlottesville to place the United States squarely astride the standards-based reform that is antithetical to the central message of this education religion. In the ensuing decade and a half, the National Middle School Association (NMSA) and its acolytes, flying the banner of Turning Points and arguing that the middle grades are no time for academic learning, argued with great success that these schools should be devoted to social adjustment, coping with hormonal throbs, and looking out for the needs of the "whole child." That is the essence of middle schoolism as set forth in a stunning new Fordham report by Cheri Pierson Yecke. It's a jeremiad drawing upon gobs of evidence that show the middle grades are where U.S. student achievement begins its fateful plunge and where a growing number of other nations begins to outpace us. That the middle grades can be a time of strong academic growth and marked achievement in core skills and knowledge is demonstrated by numerous effective school examples. Though youngsters between the ages of 10 and 15 can be ornery and exasperating, they can also learn lots of math and history, plenty of literature and science, and an abundance of art and music. They can develop sound character, admirable values, good habits (with occasional slippage), positive attitudes (also with lapses), and excellent social skills.  There's nothing about kids this age that undermines their capacity to learn and there's nothing about grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 that precludes them from being places of powerful teaching and intent learning from a solid core curriculum. All this can happen even in places called "middle schools." Grade configuration is not the key issue. Yecke focuses instead on the education philosophy, assumptions, goals, and expectations that drive a school spanning the middle grades and those who lead and teach in it. If they worship at the altar of middle schoolism, their theology tells them not to dwell overmuch on academics; other things matter more. If these leaders and teachers subscribe to standards and results-based accountability, however, they will pay greater heed to their students' long-term prospects than to their short-run adjustments, and to the academic gains that play so large a role in these youngsters' futures. Yecke's goal is to show why middle schoolism should be consigned to history's dustbin--another education fad that, however well intended, now needs to be retired. One way to do that is to dedicate middle schools to the goals of high standards, academic achievement, and tough-minded accountability. The other way is to revive the K-8 school, where middle grade pupils study under the same roof as elementary grade youngsters. The number of such public schools has risen 17 percent since 1994 (versus a 9 percent increase in pure elementary schools), although there are still only about 5,000 K-8 schools (versus 65,000 public elementary schools). Under Paul Vallas's leadership, Philadelphia is making the switch. Of course, Catholic schools have been organized this way for eons. It's no panacea, to be sure. K-8 schools bring challenges of their own. But there's some evidence that, overall, they work better. For years, there's been ample evidence that U.S. middle schools aren't pulling their weight. Generalizing, one can say that U.S. kids do reasonably well in grades K-4; that their performance falters in grades 5-8; and that (with splendid exceptions) it is dismal in high school. ...If middle-grade education in the U.S. is to be reformed, the civilians who are ultimately in charge of it will have to take control. Full article is available at http://www.edexcellence.net -- click on "The Gadfly"  *   *   * 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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