________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT March 14, 2005 - Vol. 5, No. 11 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... EARLY ED CONFERENCE "NO HIGHER PURPOSE" A group of early education experts gathered in Rutland on Monday and their message was clear - quality early education programs are necessary to solve long-term societal problems. The gathering was one of two conferences co-sponsored by the Vermont Department of Education and numerous other organizations. A second conference will be held in Montpelier at the Capitol Plaza on March 25. The Rutland conference began with a panel of experts talking about various aspects of early education programming. Education Commissioner Richard Cate says he is "absolutely convinced that good quality early education - wherever it is provided - is the ONLY way to close the achievement gap" between rich and poor. There is "no way we can undo developmental activity that did or did not happen before kindergarten," he said during his part of the presentation. Cate also touched on the debate surrounding early education to date in Vermont by saying "There are some who believe the Education Fund shouldn't be used for (universal preschool). I think there's no higher purpose (for it)."  He also said that "some came away (from previous discussions) thinking the Vermont Department of Education wants to take over pre-k," but the department's real interest is only in "doing what's best for young children." This theme was echoed by other participants. Jim Morse, commissioner with the Department for Children and Families of the Agency of Human Services (and former Vermont Supreme Court judge), said that "children learn whether we teach them or not" and that's why we needed to look at helping children even below the age of three. Debra Gass, executive director of early education services in Brattleboro, went one step further by saying "learning begins in vitro" (we assume she meant "in utero") and agreed with Commissioner Cate's comments that there is "no higher purpose" than using resources to establish quality early education programs. While supportive of early ed programs, Dale Goldhaber, chair of UVM's early childhood education department, provided some dissenting information. Goldhaber pointed out that "we don't really know" if quality early education programs benefit populations that are not at-risk. And he said that studies show early education doesn't have "any long term effect" when not coordinated with K-12 curricula. Despite this information, Goldhaber believes we should be looking at universal preschool that serves at-risk and general student populations alike because we don't approach K-12 education only in terms of "at risk" children. In a question and answer period with the audience, Commissioner Cate had this to say about the role of public and private providers "If we truly care about kids, we shouldn't be worried about turf. We should just make it happen." (We only hope that Commissioner Cate remembers those words and fights the Vermont-NEA, the VSBA, the VSA, and the VPA to overcome the turf battles that stand in the way of K-12 school choice.) AND ABOUT FUNDING.... The governor might be concerned about the Vermont property taxpayer's exposure to drawing down of Education Funds for programs outside of K-12, but the VDOE seems to have no such qualms. Bill Talbott, CFO of the VDOE, gave a brief but substantive presentation on funding of early education programs and the implicit message was clear - school districts can count preschool kids in their ADM (using a weighted system) and thus set off the potential negative tax impacts of declining student enrollments. In other words, forget "higher purposes." Show me the money. According to Talbott's presentation, "if education spending and equalized pupils change at the same rate, cost per pupil does not change." And if cost per pupil doesn't change, tax rates stay the same. "If you can grow your equalized pupil count," he said, "you can grow your spending." Translation If your student enrollment is declining, you can consider starting an early ed program because the weighted ADM will add to your "equalized pupil" count, thus allowing it to grow at the same rate as your spending, keeping your per-pupil costs and tax rates constant. So taxpayers who might have thought declining school enrollments will mean decreased education spending are wrong. The districts will find other ways to spend the money - such as on early ed programs.  SPEAKING OF FUNDING.... Among the hand-outs at the early education conference were a couple sample contracts between public and private providers. It's no wonder public schools like this kind of arrangement. The sample contract provided by the Burlington School District calls for the district to keep 30 percent of the ADM funds (presumably for the paperwork) while the private provider gets 70 percent.  SPEAKING OF FUNDING SOME MORE.... As part of its presentation to House and Senate Education committees last week, the Vermont Department of Education prepared a chart of current early education programs in the state. According to this chart, over $11 million in state and federal funds are already available and in use for early education programs of one kind or another, not counting the early ed programming paid for with weighted ADM counts. Here's a snapshot Early Education Initiative (services for at risk children) $1,328,826 Essential Early Education (early childhood special education services) $3,893,400 Early Compensatory Education (for preschool children with identified learning needs) $2,231,225 Even Start (family literacy program) $1,120,106 Family, Infant, Toddler Project (family-centered program for infants and toddlers with disabilities) $3,200,000  OTHER NEWS SBOE'S SCHOOL CHOICE BILL IS IN THE SENATE Thanks to Sen. Maynard (R-Rutland), Mullin (R-Rutland), Wilton (R-Rutland), and Shepard (R-Bennington), the State Board of Education's public school choice bill is now in the Senate. S.141 would expand public school choice to all grades and incorporate a phased in approach to funding with money following the child in increasing increments over a three-year period until at last the full block grant follows the student to the school of his or her choice. The bill was introduced in the House last month and presented very ably to the House Education Committee by Rep. Kevin Endres (R-Milton).  LAST YEAR'S SCHOOL CHOICE OPPONENT, THIS YEAR'S SCHOOL CHOICE SPONSOR Rep. Harry Chen (D-Mendon) was a hold-out last year on House Education when the governor tried unsuccessfully to get a public school choice bill passed. This year, however, Rep. Chen "got religion" and is now the lone sponsor of a public school choice bill focused on expanding choices for high school students. Although not as expansive in scope as the governor's bill last year, Chen's H.452 would require all high schools to allow transfers of students from high schools in adjoining districts and even calls for some money to follow the child to the school of his or her choice. The big question is Chen serious about this bill or is it merely a sop to constituents who might have been upset about his obstructionist stance last year?  SEX WITH A TEACHER OUTLAWED BY NEW BILL A new bill has been introduced in the Senate that would make sexual activity between school employees and students illegal, with imprisonment a potential penalty (for the school employee) even if the student involved is no longer a minor. S.139 was introduced by Sen. Wilton (R-Rutland), Cummings (D-Washington), Doyle (R-Washington), Mullin (R-Rutland), Shepard (R-Bennington) and Starr (D-Essex/Orleans). The bill is designed to ensure that school employees do not misuse their power relationship with students, regardless whether the student is a minor.  *   *   * FROM ELSEWHERE... NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH SAYS PRE-K CREATES PROBLEMS From the March 10, 2005 NBER Digest - DOES PREKINDERGARTEN IMPROVE SCHOOL PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE? On the web at: http//www.nber.org/digest/mar05/w10452.html The share of children attending early education programs in the United States has risen dramatically in recent years. Some 66 percent of four-year olds were enrolled in a pre-kindergarten center or a school-based preschool program in 2001. That's up from 23 percent thirty years earlier. Particularly striking, early education programs sponsored by school districts now serve one in seven four-year-olds. One frequent motivation for this early education is to insure that disadvantaged children with academic skill deficits are better prepared when they start school. But is it worth all the money and effort being spent in advancing children's school readiness? Using a new rich source of data, researchers Katherine Magnuson, Christopher Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel conclude in "Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance?" (NBER Working Paper No. 10452) that early education does increase reading and mathematics skills at school entry, but it also boosts children's classroom behavioral problems and reduces their self-control. Further, for most children the positive effects of pre-kindergarten on skills largely dissipate by the spring of first grade, although the negative behavioral effects continue. In the study, the authors take account of many factors affecting a child, including family background and neighborhood characteristics. These factors include race/ethnicity, age, health status at birth, height, weight, and gender, family income related to need, language spoken in the home, and so on. Some details of their findings are significant. For example, disadvantaged children and those attending schools with "low levels of academic instruction" get the largest and most lasting academic gains from early education. On average, disadvantaged children (defined to include those from poor families or whose mother or father had not completed high school) scored in the 33rd percentile in reading, while those who attended pre-kindergarten had a score in the 44th percentile. The behavior of disadvantaged children who attended pre-kindergarten was similar to that of the general population of children at school entry. But by spring of the first year, it got somewhat worse. They were in the 69th percentile in terms of problem behaviors. Attending pre-kindergarten, however, does not appear to increase the probability that a disadvantaged child will repeat kindergarten or be held back in first grade. Also, the behavioral effects may differ depending on whether or not the child continues on in kindergarten in the same school as the pre-kindergarten program. From these findings, the authors conclude that for maximum effectiveness, further expansions of pre-kindergarten should be mainly focused on children who are disadvantaged or who will go on to attend low instruction schools. In 1990, governmental leaders endorsed as the first of eight national educational goals that "By the year 2000, all children should enter school ready to learn." Nonetheless, the enrollment of disadvantaged children in early education programs remains relatively low - despite an increase in overall state spending on pre-kindergarten of 250 percent to $1.9 billion by the turn of the century. Currently, the authors write, most state funding initiatives do target at-risk children, but funding falls far short of providing all eligible children with entry into these programs. Extra money to give these children an early education experience is likely to improve their early academic skills, they add. In referring to the negative effects of early learning on behavior, the authors offer two important qualifications. First, classroom behavior is not necessarily indicative of behavior in other settings, say, being more aggressive at home. Second, the absolute levels of aggressive behavior found in this study were typically quite low, even for children who attended pre-kindergarten. Similarly, the levels of self-control were quite high, even for children who attended pre-kindergarten. Nor does the federal Department of Education data used in the study -- a newly available, large, nationally representative sample of children who entered kindergarten in the fall of 1998 -- provide information on the long-term educational outcomes of children, for example whether low levels of problem behaviors do any damage to their level of achievement in later years. The behavior of the children was measured by how frequently a child fights, argues, gets angry, acts impulsively, or disturbs ongoing activities. Self-control was measured by how frequently the child respects the property of others, controls his or her temper, accepts peer ideas for group activities, and appropriately responds to peer pressure. As a possible explanation for the behavioral effect, the authors note that pre-kindergarten programs usually have relatively high quality, as indicated by teacher education and pay, and probably are more academically oriented. This emphasis on basic skills, such as reading and math, may lead to a less positive social climate, with children receiving less individual attention and more punitive discipline. -- David R. Francis  *   *   * COMMENTARY... MAKING IT HAPPEN by Libby Sternberg Let's start from this premise - we all care about "the kids." Let's add this - we all care about "the future." And now let's face an unpleasant fact - caring about "the kids" and "the future" doesn't mean we are all going to agree on what's the best way to ensure all children have bright futures. Disagreeing on methods doesn't mean we disagree on the premise. At an early education conference co-sponsored by the Vermont Department of Education this week, speaker after speaker talked about the need for quality early education programs. All presenters spoke with passion. All were clearly filled with a zeal to do what is right. If you are to believe some of the presenters, however, the only way to ensure we do what is right is to design and fund universal preschool programs rooted in our public system. Anything short of that will keep us stuck in the current paradigm where the gap between low-income children and their peers equals the distance between failure and success in life. Vermont's Commissioner of Education believes so strongly in this theory that he went so far as to say he is "absolutely convinced" that quality early education - whether provided in the home, at school, or by another provider - is "the ONLY way to close the achievement gap" between rich and poor, between at-risk children and the general student population. Lest anyone misunderstand him, he elaborated -- there is "no way," Commissioner Cate said, that we can undo any developmental activity that did or did not happen before the child enters the K-12 system. One can only assume that Cate wasn't using the royal "we," but was instead referring to the thousands of teachers and school employees in the state who toil every day to close the achievement gap, not realizing their efforts are for naught. Cate's message is troubling. On the surface, it can be distilled into this one sentence - Vermont's Commissioner of Education has given up the fight. He doesn't believe it's possible for the K-12 system of highly-trained professionals licensed by his very own department to educate children of all backgrounds and capabilities. He doesn't believe that system as it is now constructed can close the achievement gap, and so he believes it's necessary to reach outside the system for a solution.  Even if you believe quality early education programs have value for at-risk children, Cate's message is still disturbing. And that's because some important and credible research (see NBER story above) indicates that any achievements gained by children due to quality early education programs are lost in subsequent years of schooling. Those pesky K-12 years still stand in the way of ultimate success.  Sorry, but we can't give up on K-12. And we certainly can't use lack of adequate preschooling to cover failings of the K-12 system. As we have often said on these electronic pages in the past, a quality education is the poor's most important means of social advancement. But quality education requires a commitment from the public to fund the educational needs of each child, regardless where those needs are best met. Ironically, in response to a questioner, the Commissioner briefly touched on this last point. When asked about public and private providers, Commissioner Cate expressed frustration with battles over "turf," saying "if we truly care about kids," we shouldn't worry about those matters, but instead, just "make it happen." Good point. But what if "it" wasn't just early education? What if "it" was school choice, merit pay for teachers, truly streamlined alternative teacher licensing, a commitment to rigorous curricula and the will to stand up to turf battles over discredited reading techniques and teachers' union objections to choice? Alas, it's a lot harder to fight K-12's current turf battles than it is just to ask for more money for new programming.  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

---

Return to Education Report Index | Return to VBE Index | Vermonters for Better Education Homepage

---

........