Education: Vermont's Failed Model

Let’s talk about education, shall we?  Over half of the state and local taxes collected in Vermont go to pay for K through 12 education.  This datum leads one, inevitably, to ask, “Well, are we getting our money’s worth?”  Admittedly, there are people in Vermont who think it is rude to ask such questions.  Who believe that cost/benefit analysis is unfeeling and cold and that the people who think in those terms are not concerned enough with matters that go beyond mere dollars and cents.  But taxes do impose a hardship on the people who pay them and it seems reasonable to ask if those who spend the money are getting results.

So, are they?

Well, going by this account in today's  Freeps, the answer has to be, “No, not really.”  And for a change, among the people who are saying this (in qualified fashion, to be sure) are those who actually spend the money.

Vermont Education Commissioner Richard Cate said the performance gaps and large numbers of students below standard mean it's time for bold changes in the way Vermont educates students.
 
"I just don't think that we can make significant change to the outcomes for kids without making significant change to how they are educated," Cate said Tuesday.

That doesn’t sound like a man bragging about what a good job he  and his team are doing.  Which is understandable given the results of recent statewide tests that showed:

Reading scores climbed two points from 2006 to 2007, putting 70 percent of Vermont students in grades three to eight at or above standard. Math scores dropped a point, to 63 percent at or above standard. Writing scores were flat -- with only 48 percent meeting standard for the second consecutive year.

Put another way, 30% of students tested substandard in reading; 37% in math; 52% in writing skills.  Do Commissioner Cate and the teachers, administrators, and educrats of Vermont think they deserve pay raises? Will they strike if they don’t get them?  Do they think the consumers of their product are getting their money’s worth?

Well, consider the reaction of Mr. Angelo Dorta who is head of the Vermont teachers union, arguably the most powerful single political organization in the state.

Dorta said he was "sick of hearing about lagging results" for these groups of students without the state taking more leadership to solve the problem by spotlighting and promoting programs already in place at schools that have made progress closing achievement gaps. "For the most part we've already got the flexibility we need," Dorta said. "We simply need to focus on this problem and do what we know has the best impact for the buck" with the targeted students.

But Mr. Dorta also called for more bucks, though not in so many words.

More schools need parent-to-school staff facilitators to improve communication with parents of low income or special needs children, he said. And while the state recently took strides to expand preschool and early education programming, this work needs to go further. Saturday school, summer school and adult mentors are other ways to help students, Dorta said. Small classes at the high school level -- of 15 or so students -- would allow teachers and students to better connect, he said.

Anyone who has ever served on a school board has heard a variation on this one.  “We’re doing a wonderful job and we could do so much more if we only had … more money.”

The story never changes.  The results of these same tests, last year, were analyzed by economist, Art Woolf, in a little fledgling website that hardly anyone read or paid attention to.  Art has been on this case for years, now.  And the tone of Cate’s remarks – as well as Dorta’s – indicate that maybe people are paying attention and beginning to realize that:

a) This thing is not working
and
b) We can’t afford to keep traveling down this road to futility

The same website that posted Art Woolf’s prescient column also published the detailed research and analysis done by a private citizen who became alarmed by what he learned during service on his local school board.  Mr. Hugh Kemper plainly demonstrated what was driving those runaway school budgets (hint: it was not energy and health care costs) and what the state needed to do to get control of them. Mr. Kemper pointed out that Vermont has among the lowest student-to-teacher ratios in the country, to which a spokesman for the teacher’s union said, essentially, “so’s your mother.”

"We have the second smallest population to governor ratio in the nation. Nobody is suggesting we need fewer governors," Joel Cook [executive director of the Vermont-National Education Association]said.

Mr. Dorta, Cook’s boss, reacting to yesterday’s test scores, indicated that he believes we need a lower ratio yet. ("Small classes at the high school level -- of 15 or so students -- would allow teachers and students to better connect.")  One wonders if the educrats will be satisfied with anything less than one-on-one tutoring for Vermont’s students.

But interestingly, even the usual defenders of the educational status  quo seem lately to be aware that something is not merely wrong but badly wrong.

The Legislative Council listed 231 new education requirements from 1997 to 2007. Just listing the mandates took 37 pages. Allergies, family leave, bullying, home schoolers, criminal record checks, hazing, school lunches, air quality, bookkeeping — virtually nothing has escaped legislators' need for a fix. And these do not include highly regulated areas like state aid, buildings, special education and standardized testing.
 
Every time a bill is passed and signed into law, a new cost is added to education. Ironically, the same people who spent 2007 blaming schools for their "out of control" spending are the authors of the new and costly mandates.

That is  William J. Mathis, superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, writing in the Herald.  He is arguing against legislation – passed last year – aimed at keeping down exploding educational costs.

It is the obligation of responsible legislators to listen to the concerns of those most affected. They must seek them out. Instead they listened to each other and to the wind of their own politics, rather than to the needs of the state.

By “most affected,” Mr. Mathis means the educators.  Not, of course, the consumers.  The people who pay for the ever-increasing salaries and the lavish benefits (try to buy health care coverage, on the private market, that is as good as that enjoyed by the teachers at your local school) are not really his concern.  Except when -- perhaps without realizing it – he admits that they are:

Our greatest educational shortcomings are in the unmet needs of our poorest students and the systematic overstepping of a government nanny state. The result is an uninvolved and disenfranchised citizenry. This hazard may conjure up a storm of far greater ferocity and danger than any imagined shortcoming of schools.

Vermont Tiger is many things, but “uninvolved” is not one of them.  This week we have published another report from Hugh Kemper, this one offering a plan for reigning in education spending.  We have also published Curt Hier’s report on the fat cat salaries enjoyed by officials of the teacher’s union, which is arguably the greatest single obstacle to education reform in this state and nationwide.  We will be sponsoring a forum on educational issues in Montpelier later this month. 

Education reform is a core policy issue facing this state.  Since Montpelier seems disinclined to conduct a serious discussion and debate on this matter, we may as well do it here.  We expect that Vermont Tiger supporters – as well as those who merely visit the site to see what the other half (well, one-third) thinks – will want to contribute to this debate.  Please do.  We welcome your comments and letters-to-the editor. You are, after all, the people who are paying for, and consuming, the state's education product.

Comments

[Charity]

Coming from the perspective of a homeschooler, who has the freedom to experiment with how kids learn, I thought that Commissioner Cate had some good ideas in the Free Press article, especially about the need to engage boys.

I am glad that the commissioner is willing to admit we need to change the system.

But I was livid when I read Mr. Dorta's comments. Livid!

[rod hill]

Until there is less money to spend nothing will change.CUT COSTS.Rod Hill
grand isle,vt.

[Jon Harrison]

Two important points are made is this post. First, taxpayers and students are consumers of the public education "product." We have a right to demand value for our money. Second, note the Legislative Council's list of 231 - yes, 231 - new requirements since 1997. Yet some people still maintain that the "nanny state" isn't a problem. When are we going to real on this subject, people?

[David Usher]

The theme that echoes in my gray head and which seems absent is ACCOUNTABILITY:
-from parents for their kid's learning
-from principals for teacher performance
-from school boards for results obtained by school employees
-from VT's Board of Education for sponsoring strategic reform
-by the Legislature to control state education spending by, YES, mandating consolidation
-by taxpayers to approve only rational local budgets
-by students for learning...which is what its all about in the end

[Mister Guy]

I'm not opposed at all to merit pay...if it's based on objective criteria and everyone knows ahead of time who will get what for x-amount of performance.

"Do they think the consumers of their product are getting their money’s worth?"

Public education is not part of the free market...thank God. If it were, we'd be throwing the poor performing students out the window in order to maximize profit.

I agree that more "hands on" learning really does allow poor performers to turn around (that’s what my Mom’s been doing for over 30 years), but with all the concern over student-teacher ratios here...I don’t know how we can manage to get more of this done in VT.

It is important to have parents vested in their child’s education. I dunno why more states don’t have their kids going to school year-round with longer vacation breaks in between teaching "tracks". I think that’s probably what the union dude was talking about.

I'm sorry...is the state of VT paying those "fat cat salaries" in the NEA?

Keep patting yourselves on the back there...I don't see you guys doing much of anything concrete besides whining. Yea, and the "detailed research and analysis" didn't come up with the rising cost of benefits being part of the problem...lol...

What you are really continuing to do here is trying to obscure the real issues to support your "conservative" Republican smaller govt. vision, period.

[James Ehlers]

Dear Mr. Hill,
Perhaps we could cap the tax.

Sincerely,
James Ehlers