Vermont Tiger

Seriously?

an idea whose time, we pray, will never come

Politics by Emerson Lynn

Oh. My. God.   

Our troubles are over. The answer to poor financial returns has been discovered. And all this time the answer has been before us, startlingly obvious, just waiting for a couple of state senators with enough pluck to make it work.   

The answer?   

The state needs to start buying private companies. Good ones. And the state [that’s all of us] should be allowed to buy controlling interest of these companies at bargain rates. The returns [guaranteed and always high] would flow to us.   

Forever.

Follow us and take notes.

Water, Water, Nowhere

by Art Woolf

You are at UVM and want to do something IMPORTANT.

You have three choices.  You can

1.  Ban the sale of a beverage that contains, water, 240 calories--mostly from added sugar--and also a variety of natural and other (unknown) ingredients.

2.  Ban the sale of a beverage that contains water, 110 calories—mostly from the sugar in added fruit juices—and other ingredients called “the best stuff on earth.” 

3.  Ban the sale of a beverage that contains water, 0 calories, and nothing else.

If you are the UVM administration, you choose #3 and ban water.  Not Coca Cola, not Snapple.   Last week UVM decided to ban bottled water from campus vending machines.

Why?

Just Askin'

The Freeps, editorializing about the dismal performance in math and science by Vermont's high school students, assumes its default, tut tut voice of admonishment:

The cheap shot here would be to complain that Vermonters aren't getting their money's worth for the school taxes they pay. The more difficult question is, how do we help all students do better in all of our schools?   

At contract time, teachers can be relied upon to ask for (nay, demand) more money.  Based on what, exactly?  Performance?  The legislators in Montpelier will soon be demanding more in property taxes to pay for education and passing the responsibility for further raises down to local boards by clipping the ed fund.

Why, then, is it unseemly of taxpayers to ask if their money is being well spent?  After all, nobody else seems to be.  Not the educators or legislators or administration officials, none of whom seems to have anticipated these test scores – which the Freeps admits are "distressing" – or to have a good explanation for them. 

 

Those Test Scores: What We Have Here ...

is failure of leadership

Politics by Emerson Lynn

Vermont’s reputation as a state that spends more on its schools than almost all others is a double-edged sword. The positive side is that we are defenders of education and have a reputation as a highly-educated state. The negative is the fact  we are being shown that our education outcomes are not commensurate with what we pay.   

If this week’s statewide assessment results are any guide, people could be expected to ask what’s up. In our high schools only 36 percent of our 11th graders were proficient in math, and in science that level dropped to 30 percent. The good news is that over 75 were proficient in reading, and, less stellar, almost half were proficient in writing.   

These are overall figures. As with any statewide scoring requirement, there are schools that do remarkably well and some that fail totally. This disparity can be the reflection of everything from demographic differences, to leadership and the willingness to innovate.   

Still, as a state we are now faced with the need to manage our reality and our reality is that we need to figure out how the performing schools do it and then figure out how to replicate their successes. We need to match our reputation for being a defender of our schools, with a reputation as being the center of educational excellence, which will require a tireless effort to embrace the need to change what happens in the classroom.

It’s difficult. Change is naturally resisted. Particularly in schools.

An Inquiry Into the Nature of Carts & Horses

one of them must go first; it's a rule

We talk a lot, here in Tigerland, about economic growth.  Even when it is not the specific topic of conversation, it is the subtext.  It would be fair to say that we believe that while economic growth does not fix all problems, it makes almost all of them easier to endure.  We had a couple of years of negative growth in Vermont and such economic expansion as we are now experiencing is pretty anemic.  The discussions in Montpelier about funding education, reforming health care, mandating renewables, and all the rest would be much less stressful if the economy had grown at 3% or more for the last few years,  for the obvious reason that there would be a lot more money to spend.

The Energy Perplex

When the price of oil (and gasoline) is "too high" (admittedly, an imprecise measurement), Senator Sanders thunders about the "speculators," and we can expect to hear him preaching from this text pretty soon now as the people who study these things say that gasoline will hit $4 a gallon this summer.

When oil prices decline, we do not hear an explanation from Senator Sanders.  Could the speculators have stayed up too late, drinking Veuve Clicquot and now they are sleeping in?  

Of course we never hear about oil prices being too low.  That, of course, would be a logical impossibility. 

Or would it?

Strongarming the Senate

day care providers playing union hardball

Politics by Emerson Lynn

John Campbell is the president pro tem of the Senate, and, by definition holds a position of influence. Thus, when Vermont AFL-CIO officials asked to talk with him about a bill to allow day care providers to unionize, he probably expected a conversation focused on the merits of the legislation. Instead, according to Mr. Campbell, a piece of paper was slipped across the table. It showed how much money the union had raised to support Mr. Campbell and his party. They made it clear what they expected in return from Mr. Campbell and told him he would be labeled as someone opposed to collective bargaining if he did not comply. It was a naked display of power: we give you our money, you give us your vote.

Mr. Campbell did not give the lock-step response the union officials might have expected. He said the bill should not go forward, saying, “…the tactics used to intimidate myself and this body are so against what good clean government is about, I think it would be rewarding bad behavior.”

To say the least.

Local Control ...

or controlling the locals?

Governor Peter Shumlin is urging local voters to reject school budgets that include any additional spending for next year.
    VPR

Question is:  Will Montpelier retaliate against those local school boards that don't buckle?  There are often (even, usually) good reasons to vote against increases in school budgets.  But one of them isn't because the governor told you to.

The more I read, the more confused I get

by Art Woolf

From today's Free Press

Case I.  Vermont's best-known climate change activist, Bill McKibben, testified in Montpelier yesterday:

Bill McKibben went before a panel of state lawmakers on Tuesday to say the storm [Irene] was at least partly the product of climate change and a likely harbinger of a troubled future.

In the 700 word story, there wasn't one word about any contrary opinions.   Such as over Mr. McKibben's assertion that 

 Irene fit “precisely with what the climatologists have been telling us to expect. It was not an unbelievable windstorm as it swept up the East Coast. But over the waters of New York and New Jersey, it encountered record sea surface temperatures. ... This allowed it to soak up enormous amounts of moisture, most of which it dropped on Vermont.” ...

McKibben said Vermont has gone from about 80 percent open land — mostly farms — and 20 percent forest in the 19th century to the reverse today. Since forest floors are good absorbers of water, the state should have been more resistant to flooding now than earlier in its history. That’s why Irene’s fury should be so striking, McKibben said. 

We Are the Third Highest Spending State ...

per-pupil on K-12 education and all we get are these lousy test results:

Every fall, public school students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 are tested in the areas of reading, writing and math on the common assessment exam known as NECAP.
The 2011 results show that nearly 75 percent of Vermont students are proficient in reading, and nearly 50 percent or more are proficient in writing. But only 36 percent of 11th graders scored at the ‘proficient' level in math.
    VPR

And, further down in the story we learn that only 30% of 11h graders are proficient in science.  So what, exactly, are we getting for our money?