________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT May 10, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 20 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... S.166 STAYING ON THE WALL? The early education bill, S.166, was discussed in the House Education Committee numerous times last week, but there appears to be too much disagreement on the bill for it to go beyond "hanging on the wall," says one House insider. S. 166 creates incentives for public schools to create preschool programs and could end up having negative impacts on private providers if there is no real choice component added to the bill. If the bill should make it out of committee, it could go to Appropriations. And, since there is talk of adjournment this week, Appropriations would have to move at lightning speed to get it to the floor. Even if S.166 doesn't make it through this year, watch for it to be reborn in the next legislative session.  PINKNEY TAKES OVER BUD MEYERS'S POSITION Elaine F. Pinkney, district leader for the Williston School District, has been named Vermont deputy commissioner of education, taking over July 1, the day after current Deputy Commissioner Bud Meyers leaves the job. According to the Vermont Department of Education press release on Pinkney's appointment, her background includes 31 years in the education field in Vermont as a principal, elementary school teacher, adult basic education teacher and bilingual education director. Pinckney earned her bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as a certificate of advanced study, from the University of Vermont. In addition, she attended bilingual education courses at the University of Laval and McGill University in Quebec, and completed education coursework at Lyndon State College. She holds a Vermont Professional Educator's License, Level II in General Elementary, Reading Coordinator/Specialist K-12, and Principal K-12. Her professional associations include the Vermont Principals' Association (president), National Association of Secondary School Principals, Vermont Council on Reading, and the New England Reading Association. She has served on various planning teams and advisory boards throughout her career, including the Gates Foundation, the Summer Leadership Academy, Results Oriented Program Approvals, the Vermont State Certification Board and the Vermont State Block Grant Advisory Committee. Pinckney also is involved in teacher leadership, including the National Science Foundation- Teacher Enhancement of the Physical Sciences.  TWO SENATORS OFFER AMENDMENT TO FUND ADULT EDUCATION Two weeks ago, Sens. Mark Shepard (R-Bennington) and Bernier Mayo (R-Caledonia) offered an intriguing amendment designed to fund adult education in a way that would help these programs without unduly burdening the property tax. Pasted below is Sen. Shepard's explanation of the amendment and its roll call. It failed by one vote. From Senator Mark Shepard (R-Bennington): ADULT EDUCATION FUNDING AMENDMENT TO H.768 To create a sustainable funding method for Adult Education for ages 16-20, while preventing a proposed Adult Education funding method that will result in an increased pressure on the property tax revenues -- high property taxes. By Sen. Shepard and Sen. Mayo The Senate Appropriation Bill (H.768) implements a funding method for adult education, which uses funds from the education fund ($0.94M), the general fund ($2.7M) and federal monies ($0.98M). The education fund was established to pay for secondary education. Funding adult education with the education fund is a departure from its intention. The primary source for the education fund is the property tax, thus funding new initiatives with the education fund results in higher property taxes. The rationale for partial funding the adult education through the education fund is that a portion of the adult students are young people who dropped out of high school and are working on their G. E. D. Yet, the school district they dropped out of continues to receive the education payment for that student for the rest of the year. The result is that the taxpayer is paying twice to educate many of these young people - once to the school district they dropped out of and once to adult education. Senator Bernier Mayo and I put forth this amendment to H.768, which offers a sustainable method to cover the cost of adult education, without new education fund (property tax) money and still leaves about 80% of the state education payment in the school district. Our proposal is that when a student drops out of school, the state will hold back $10 a day of the state education payment per school day for the remainder of that school year. This $10 represents only a small portion of the state education payment and this only takes effect after the student has dropped out of the school. The school district will get the complete education payment up until the student drops out, and which time the school district will still keep most of the payment. This money held back by the state will be put into a special high school completion fund that will pay for adult education for ages 16 to 20. In contrast to the funding method presently in the bill, which is merely an educated guess of what the needs will be, our proposal is tied directly to the students who drop out and thus is a sustainable method of funding adult education for this age group. Text of amendment to H. 768: Sec. 174a. 16 V.S.A. § 4025 (e) is added to read: (e) A high school completion special fund is established within the education fund, for the purpose of providing funds to make payments pursuant to subdivision 4011(f)(2) of this title. Whenever a student drops out of school prior to graduating and does not enroll in another school, $10 for each day of that school year that school is in session and that the student is not enrolled in a school shall be subtracted from payments due the last school district of enrollment pursuant to section 4028 of this title, and shall instead be deposited into the high school completion special fund. Vote results from the Journal of the Senate, Wednesday, April 28, 2004 (An affirmative vote protects the education property taxes): Roll Call: Those Senators who voted in the affirmative were: Bartlett, Bloomer, Canns, Cummings, Greenwood, Illuzzi, Leddy, Mayo, Mazza, Mullin, Scott, Shepard, Welch, White. Those Senators who voted in the negative were: Ayer, Campbell, Collins, Condos, Doyle, Dunne, Gander, Gossens, Kittell, Lyons, MacDonald, Miller, Munt, Sears, Snelling. The Senator absent and not voting was: Maynard.   *   *   * ELSEWHERE  FROM THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE On the Web at: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/ STUDY FINDS VOUCHERS IMPROVE PUBLIC SCHOOL PERFORMANCE A newly published peer-reviewed study by Manhattan Institute researchers Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters finds that vouchers improve public schools in Florida. The study finds that schools forced to compete with vouchers made extraordinary gains on the state's standardized tests compared with other public schools. It will appear in the forthcoming issue of the academic journal Education Next, and is already available online at http://www.educationnext.org/20043/66.html. Florida grades schools based on their performance on the state's high-stakes test, the FCAT. If a school receives two failing grades in a four-year period, its students are offered vouchers with which they can switch to private schools or other public schools. The study compared the gains in academic performance of public schools facing different amounts of competition from the voucher program. The analyses show that public schools in Florida made larger improvements when they were more exposed to voucher competition. The findings include: * Public schools that had received at least two failing grades in a four-year period, exposing them fully to voucher competition, made average test score gains between 2002 and 2003 of 5.9 percentile points above those made by all other Florida public schools on the Stanford-9 math test. * Public schools that had received only one failing grade within a three-year period, and so faced the prospect of voucher competition if they failed again, made average test score gains between 2002 and 2003 of 3.5 percentile points above other public schools on the Stanford-9 math test. * Similarly low-performing public schools that barely avoided failing grades because of an artifact of the grading formula, and so faced no voucher threat, did not make significant gains relative to other Florida public schools. * Public schools that were previously threatened by voucher competition (because they had failed once) but were no longer threatened (because the four-year window for a second failure had closed) suffered an average loss of 1.8 percentile points on the Stanford-9 math test relative to other Florida public schools. The same issue of Education Next also contains an independent analysis by Cornell researcher Rajashri Chanrararti that confirms the Manhattan Institute's findings. Her analysis also finds that low-performing public schools in Florida have responded positively to voucher competition.  FROM THE NEW DEMOCRAT'S PROGRESSIVE POLICY INSTITUTE 21st Century Schools Project Bulletin On the Web at http://www.ppionline.org THE ANTI-NCLB MESSAGE Regular Bulletin readers will know that New York Times education columnist Michael Winerip is no fan of NCLB. But after a few interesting columns about other issues, Winerip returned last week to attacking NCLB in a very disingenuous way. He profiles Florida's Lake Alfred Elementary School, which failed to make "adequate yearly progress" as defined by Florida under NCLB. Winerip notes that the school did pretty well on Florida's previous accountability system and that if the school were in Texas it would be making AYP. He doesn't bother to explain why a federal education law would allow latitude amongst the states. More significantly, Winerip bemoans the unfairness of labeling a school as needing improvement just because of low achievement by subgroups, implying that Lake Alfred would have made AYP if not for those pesky students with disabilities and the poor kids. Leave aside for a moment that these students also deserve a quality education. Winerip neglects altogether to mention that black students at Lake Alfred are also far behind, with fewer than one in three proficient in reading and fewer than one in four proficient in math. The school also has a 27 percent proficiency gap between white and black students. In fact, Winerip does not mention that Florida's requirements for making AYP are pretty low this year and still most schools in the state missed them -- not because of AYP but because of HUGE achievement gaps in Florida that the previous accountability system neglected. By contrast, in a recent Washington Post op-ed Ruth Mitchell offers a compelling look at what too often goes on in high poverty schools. Without accountability, Mitchell argues, teachers often look at the challenges disadvantaged kids bring to the classroom and -- with the best of intentions -- decide to teach down to where the students are, rather than pushing to meet the high standards and academic content all students need to succeed in the real world. As a result, Mitchell describes poor and minority students "asked to make acrostics in middle school social studies, to write eight sentences in high school English class, and to fill out endless worksheets in math class." This may seem compassionate, but in the long run it shortchanges too many poor and minority children. Mitchell's piece is a useful reality check in a debate too often driven by journalists and policymakers whose own education experiences include primarily challenging high-track courses, experienced teachers, and competitive universities, and who have little first hand knowledge about the type of schools Mitchell describes. But public support for No Child Left Behind and strong support for vouchers in many minority communities (see D.C. reform item below) suggest that lots of voters are well aware of the realities of failing schools that seem to elude many policy elites. But addressing these issues is never easy. The National Education Association has launched a new spin-off group, the amorphously named "America Learns." The goals of the new organization are to "enlarge the public policy debate about public education and zero in on No Child Left Behind." The Bulletin is pretty sure which of those two will take precedence! In light of NCLB-bashing stories dominating the news, a recent Washington Post piece by Michael Dobbs offers a refreshingly balanced look at the upside and challenges of improving literacy and math instruction. While Dobbs does not disentangle and validate whether cutbacks in art and other activities are the result of state budget issues, NCLB, or whether just adding instructional time is sufficient (instead of, for example, using data to improve teaching) he does present the other side of the coin, as bluntly stated by one principal who remarks, "It hurts me to give up art, but it hurts me even more to have kids who can't read." Of course, good schools offer their students both. Further Reading: "Making Leaps but Still Labeled as Failing," Michael Winerip, New York Times (04/28/04): http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/education/28education.html "Derby Week NYT Special: Reverting to Form," Eduwonk.com (04/29/04): http://www.eduwonk.com/archives/2004_04_25_archive.html#108321002776476021 "Dumbing Down Our Schools," Ruth Mitchell, Washington Post op-ed (04/27/04): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45015-2004Apr26.html "'No Child' Law Leaves Schools' Old Ways Behind," Michael Dobbs, Washington Post (04/22/04): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32348-2004Apr21.html  *   *   * SCHOOL CHOICE ADS COMING! Thanks to those who've sent in their ideas for school choice radio scripts. We'll be printing samples in the near future! Those who want to send in their ideas still have time. Email them to: VTBetterEd@aol.com.  *   *   * 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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