________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT October 03, 2005 - Vol. 5, No. 38 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... MARK YOUR CALENDARS: OCTOBER 15 FREEDOMFEST Saturday, October 15 will be an excellent opportunity for free-market thinkers to gather in Vermont for the FreedomFest to learn about important issues facing the state. The event, which is sponsored by the Ethan Allen Institute and FreedomWorks-Vermont, will take place at the Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and will feature a presentation by Stephen Moore, founder of the Club for Growth and a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Presentations will center on the economy, taxes, health, education, environment, energy, and cultural renewal. The $25 registration includes lunch. For more information, go to http://www.ethanallen.org. WHAT'S "UNIVERSAL" PRESCHOOL AND WHO PAYS FOR IT? Vermont Public Radio's call-in show Switchboard focused on early education last week with guests Commissioner of Education Richard Cate and Terri Edgerton of the Rutland County Parent Child Center. Hosted by VPR journalist Nina Keck, the show wouldn't have offered any diverse views if it weren't for the call-in audience. Even Keck herself appeared to be promoting early ed programs with her introduction of her guests. Research shows, she opined, that kids do better in school and in life when they've attended a quality preschool program. There was no mention of "fade out" -- as even advocates of publicly-funded preschool know, the research shows that kids do better for a time, and then advantages gained through early ed fade out, usually by the third or fourth grade. Keck also asked about mandatory preschool, an idea from which Commissioner Cate was quick to distance himself. In fact, Cate stated emphatically at one point in the program that the best preparation for school was in a good home with nurturing parents. Several callers, including the editor of this newsletter, asked questions about the potential cost of such a program. In particular, this editor asked Commissioner Cate how he would explain to a senior citizen living on a fixed income why her taxes should support the free childcare for a lawyer's son, a doctor's daughter, a CEO's children. Cate's answer was....muddled. He attempted to explain why the program wasn't "universal" but he appeared to be confusing "universal" with "mandatory," explaining that not everyone would take advantage of the program.  However, it is counterintuitive to think that financially well-off people would bypass a quality program that was free for one they had to pay for. Wealth doesn't equal stupidity. So the cost question remained unanswered for the most part. Another caller brought it up even as he extolled the value of early ed programs and wholeheartedly endorsed the notion of free preK for all. That caller suggested that programs be paid for by looking at ways to cut other programs at the middle and high school level. Programs like athletics. Yet a later caller who has taken advantage of the free preK at her school asked about cost as well, wondering if it was taken care of through the receiving/sending town formulae of Act 60/68. Commissioner Cate pointed out that costs would stay the same at schools undertaking the new programs. They would not rise even though a new program was being instituted. As pointed out on these pages before, many towns are facing declining enrollments which should lead to cost reductions. Keeping costs the same by instituting a free preK program is thus an implicit increase if not an explicit one. And, the new programs' costs could rise as time goes by, just as education cost increases in general outpace other programs. There wasn't ample time to discuss all the issues related to the early ed debate. For example, the private provider topic was barely touched upon -- how private providers are expected to compete with "free." There was some brief talk about programs where there was collaboration between public and private providers. When Edgerton was asked to weigh in on this, she pointed out that these programs take place elsewhere but she doesn't have personal experience with them. And why should she? In Rutland County, several superintendents view collaboration with private schools as anathema. It's unlikely you'll see such collaborations dotting the landscape in that neck of the woods, a point this newsletter has made often. The world does not revolve around Chittenden County's ideas, in other words. All in all, the VPR program provided an opportunity to touch on early ed issues but didn't offer a diverse or expansive discussion. One final note -- on many Switchboard shows, callers are allowed to engage the guests in conversation. When the editor of this newsletter called in to this show, her follow-up questions didn't make it on the air, even though she called in again and even though some subsequent callers referenced points she had made.  TOO EASY ON THE GOP? After last week's commentary ("Why Not in Vermont?") about the lack of progress on school choice legislation in Vermont, several readers took the editor to task for being too soft on the Republican party. These readers pointed out the lack of strong leadership on the school choice issue when the GOP controlled the House several years ago. Fair enough. But allow us to clarify. When we wrote that the "easy" answer to why school choice had not advanced in Vermont was "partisanship," we meant it was the obvious answer but not necessarily the real answer.  The fuller picture of why school choice legislation is sluggish in the Green Mountain State contains weak efforts on the part of Republicans in leadership positions. And leadership -- from high-profile elected officials, in particular -- is crucial to pushing this reform forward. Republicans winning the governor's office and control of the House didn't help advance school choice legislation into law. In fact, it was when Democrats were in charge that at least the weak Act 150 was pushed through. While that's not a perfect choice law by any means (it only allows a handful of kids from public high schools to choose among a limited number of other public high schools), it happened when Vermont was governed by Howard Dean and Democrats were in control. So, ironically, Democrats in Vermont can claim a school choice victory while Republicans have nothing on their side of the school choice score card.  ST JOHNSBURY SHAKE-UP Whenever school choice laws are discussed, a common argument against implementing them in Vermont is: what will happen to small schools? Will big schools suck students and lifeblood from small towns' small schools? Will small schools lose their autonomy and be forced into larger management structures? That's the fear. In reality, school choice could help save small schools by allowing them to reconfigure into specialty institutions that attract students from beyond their borders. This concern for small schools appears to be capricious, however. A September 20 Barre Times Argus article (available at http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005509200323) tells how the Vermont Commissioner of Education is recommending that the St. Johnsbury Supervisory District (which oversees a small K-8 school) "be placed under state board review for a supervisory change." That change could mean the district will be absorbed into a larger supervisory union.  *   *   * FROM ELSEWHERE... The Education Intelligence Agency - COMMUNIQUÉ - October 3, 2005 On the web at: http://www.eiaonline.com/ EIA Exclusive: THE NEA PYRAMID -- THE VIEW CHANGES AS YOU RISE TO THE TOP OF THE NATION'S LARGEST UNION Last April 25, EIA reported that the annual NEA member survey would include questions on whether the religious beliefs of members affect their voting on political candidates and issues, and how they feel about private accounts in the Social Security system. That survey was conducted in May by Michigan-based Star Research and delivered to NEA in July. Concurrently, the firm conducted a parallel survey of NEA's local affiliation presidents, completing it in August. The union has nearly 14,000 locals of varying size, and the survey's sample admirably accounts for these variations. EIA has the results of those surveys, and is now equipped to definitively answer once and for all the question: Does NEA represent the views of its members? Answer: It depends. As unsatisfying as that short conclusion may be, the two surveys, examined together, explain clearly how an organization of 2.7 million members of widely divergent political and social views can end up championing a narrowly liberal world view. A few highlights: * About half of NEA's new members are "not at all" involved in the organization at any level. * The top reason new members join NEA is because they have "no choice." * Fifty percent of NEA members identify their philosophy as "conservative" or "tend conservative." Only 40 percent identify themselves as "liberal" or "tend liberal." * As the size of a local affiliate grows, the more likely the local affiliate president will be liberal. Eighty-two percent of the presidents of NEA's largest locals identify themselves as liberal. * Eighty-nine percent of NEA local affiliate presidents were unopposed in their last election. EIA's full report is posted on its web site at http://www.eiaonline.com.  *   *   * U.S. Freedom Foundation On the web at: http://www.freedomfoundation.us/ SEEING THE SCHOOL CHOICE FOREST  by David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow Sometimes when working on a complex project there is a tendency to allow attention to details to blur awareness of the overall picture, that is, not being able to see the forest for the trees. Thus it is that both proponents and opponents become so involved in the struggle of one or more of the individual "trees," that they fail to notice, or lose track of, the overall movement. One of these major "trees" is the existence of some 25,000 nonpublic schools which collectively enroll about 5,000,000 students. Everyone involved in such schools is there as a matter of choice. A lesser number, with estimates as high as 2,000,000, and still rapidly growing, are students who are being homeschooled. This is up from as few as 10,000 in 1980, only 25 years ago. Of more recent vintage is the charter school movement. There were none in 1991. The yet undetermined 2005-6 school year totals may include 4,000 such schools with a total enrollment of 1,000,000 or more. Florida alone reports 56 new charter schools this year; Minnesota 23, New York City 15, and San Diego 13, for a total of more than 100. They are only representative of the ongoing growth of this movement. While not often viewed collectively, these issues of choice are relatively widely known and recognized. This is not equally true of other trends. Often overlooked, or minimized, is choice within the public sector. More than a half-dozen years ago, in 1998, there were an estimated 4,000 public magnet schools which were not only open enrollment institutions but many attracted far more students than they could accept. By 1999, twenty-seven states had provisions allowing interdistrict choice, whereby students could enroll in any public school in the state.  One estimate a few years ago was that 25% of public school students were attending a school of their choice. And that may be a major understatement. One survey of public school parents reported that 53% said they live where they do so their children can attend the public schools they are in. If that percentage applies to students as well, it means that more than 25,000,000 public school students are exercising their, or their parents', choice of schools. The U.S. Department of Education suggests that this figure may be too modest. In 2000 the USDoE estimated that 59% of public school students, or something in the range of 30,000,000, attend schools of choice. Of course these figures include considerable duplication. The last figure, of 59%, certainly includes many of the students in charter schools, magnet schools, and the like. To be on the conservative side, let's assume that it includes all options within the public system. But to that inclusive figure of 30,000,000 must still be added the five million nonpublic and two million homeschooled students. That's 37 million of some 50 million total k-12 students, or about 75% of them, who right now are exercising their constitutional right to a school of their choice. In other words, while skirmishes, and even a major battle here and there, remain to be fought, the overall outcome of the school choice wars has been determined.  This is of more than casual interest. For one thing, it means the opponents of school choice are unnecessarily nervous, or terrorized, with the idea that fully funded school choice will mean there will be a wholesale flight from the public schools. This not only shows a nearly complete lack of faith in their own system, but is simply wrong numerically since the great majority of students are already where they want to be. A more serious problem exists for advocates of educational choice. While opinion polls indicate most people support the school choice movement, if most of them have already chosen how their own children are being educated, they have no inherent motivation to support this reform. This, combined with other factors, such as the apathy with which most people view political action, perhaps indicates why success of such a valuable and popular issue moves forward slowly. Ultimate victory may well be assured. But, unfortunately, it is already too late for too many. David Kirkpatrick is a Bennington native now living in Pennsylvania. He is a former public school teacher and PA-NEA officer.  *   *   * 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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