Vermont has one of the most expensive education systems, on a per pupil basis, in the nation, as Hugh Kemper writes on these pages and I have written here, here, and elsewhere. Defenders of the status quo argue that our students perform well, a notion that Mr. Kemper and I disagree with.
An article in the Times Argus has an unsettling quote by Bill Stenger, president of the Jay Peak ski resort and head of the Next Generation Commission.
Says Mr. Stenger:
One-third of high school students go to college, Stenger said. One third move into solid jobs. But one-third fall though the cracks and end up on the public dime.
"They are probably in the unemployment line this morning," Stenger told the gathering of board members, who represent business, education and service interests. The drifters might be receiving welfare checks or even sitting in a jail cell, he added.
Unfortunately, there is no statistical source cited for the quote.
If our educational system is failing one-third of the students who leave it (some who graduate and some who don't), that's not a ringing endorsement of the quality of education in Vermont. Even if Mr. Stenger's estimate is off by a factor of two, that's still one out of every six students who are not adequately prepared to be successful in today's world. We spend 36% more than the national average to educate each student and our performance is, at best, average. That's not a good use of scarce public resources nor an indication of high productivity in Vermont's education system.
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