________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT June 28, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 25 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  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... MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? Remember the fuss when some teachers in the state received letters from the Vermont Department of Education (VDOE) requesting more information on their academic backgrounds? The letters were part of an information-gathering phase as the state sought to comply with the "highly qualified teacher" component of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But NCLB teacher opponents seized the opportunity to whine to a sometimes-willing media about how terrible it was they were having their qualifications questioned after teaching for many years. Well, this sob story has a happy ending for the vast majority of the state's licensed educators. The VDOE announced recently that 94 percent of the state's teachers of core academic subjects meet the "highly qualified teacher" component of NCLB. That means they have demonstrated a content-based knowledge of their subject areas. NCLB defines "core academic subjects" as science, social studies, math, English/language arts, reading, foreign languages and the arts. What about the other six percent who didn't meet the requirement? Under NCLB, parents may request information on whether their children's teachers make the grade.  AD CAMPAIGNS BEGINNING As this newsletter has noted in the past, the Vermont NEA has used radio advertisements to promote public schools as well as to complain about the governor's support of the No Child Left Behind Act.  Now, the national office of the teachers union has begun running television ads attacking NCLB and President George W. Bush. These ads, however, are sponsored by "Communities for Quality of Education," a sub-group of the NEA. According to news reports, they are running in Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio. In case you're wondering what these states have in common, they're all considered "battleground" states where a win for either presidential candidate could help tip the electoral college scales. The following is the script for the so-called "non-political" ads: "President Bush promised to leave no child behind but his education law forces teachers to drill students for standardized tests instead of providing the smaller classes, teacher training and updated materials we know work. That hurts kids today and limits them in the future. Tell Congress and President Bush, fix your No Child Left Behind law so all our kids can get ahead.'"  OUR OWN AD MESSAGE While the NEA promotes its anti-NCLB message, Vermonters for Better Education is gearing up to start a radio ad campaign whose message is as simple as it is positive - school choice provides every child with equal access to quality. Here's a sample script: "AVO: Plant a healthy Vermont Maple Tree in the middle of the Arizona desert and it will wither and die. Because to thrive, the right environment means everything. Our children are no exception, which is exactly why they deserve comprehensive school choice. Not because public schools are bad, but because our kids are all different. And each child - rich or poor -- deserves the right to find the learning environment that's best for him or her. Which is exactly why School Choice gives a Fair Chance. Paid for by Vermonters for Better Education." Would you like to hear these and similar ads on your radio station? Then send a donation now to Vermonters for Better Education, 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701.  Thanks to some generous donations, we're planning to start these ads at the beginning of the school year. But your contribution will mean we can reach a wider audience!  SPEAKING OF ARIZONA... The U.S. Supreme Court ruled a week ago that taxpayers can use federal courts to challenge state taxes. The ruling represents a setback for Arizona's school choice tax credit program because it allows the Arizona ACLU to fight the program in federal court after already losing at the state court level. A district judge had ruled that the state court loss was the only "bite at the apple" the plaintiffs could have. The Ninth Circuit said the plaintiffs could get another bite in federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. So the ACLU will get to fight another day on this issue.  *   *   * ELSEWHERE  FROM THE FORDHAM FOUNDATION On the Web at: http://www.edexcellence.net FLORIDA: GETTING IT ALL TOGETHER? by Chester E. Finn, Jr. During a recent visit, I was, frankly, wowed by the comprehensiveness and courage of Florida's education reforms, and depressed by the crummy coverage they're getting in both state and national press, not least the heat they are now taking for holding their schools to high standards under NCLB and accepting the sanctions meted out to schools for not meeting adequate yearly progress. I suppose it has to do with the press's disdain for NCLB, the public's reluctance to accept that their school is not doing well, Florida's pivotal role in the upcoming election, and Governor Jeb Bush's relationship to the incumbent president. (He is, by the way, one of the half dozen smartest, savviest, gutsiest "education governors" I've met in the past quarter century.) What one may term Florida's purposeful education reforms--those that policy makers have intentionally put in place--can best be described under six headings. (1) Integration across levels. Florida has reorganized the structure and governance of its education system so that the phrase "K-16" means something. The same state agency runs the whole shebang, with three "chancellors" (K-12, community college, higher ed) working under a single commissioner. The postsecondary sector has been enlisted in worthy teacher-preparation initiatives, dual enrollment for high school students, and one of the country's best-engineered transfer arrangements between 2- and 4-year institutions. At the other end, Florida is embarking on an ambitious universal (but voluntary) pre-K program meant to help prepare young children to succeed in school. (2) Standards, testing, and accountability. Florida's "Sunshine State" standards are eight years old and the state test, known as FCAT, has been in place since 2001. It now covers grades 3-10, and passing it is a condition of high-school graduation. It is a high-stakes system for students at that point and, more recently, in 3rd grade --part of a multi-faceted plan to ensure that everyone is reading by 4th grade. Though the graduation requirement has occasioned protests and evasions, it's beginning to yield results. Mostly, though, the "A+" accountability plan bears down on schools, which get rated in reading, math, and writing according both to how many students meet the state's standards and how many are making gains. The result is a school grade that brings real consequences, of which the best known is the students' right to exit low-performing schools for better ones, including private schools.  Though few have actually done this, there is evidence that the mere prospect of students departing with "Opportunity Scholarships" in hand has concentrated educators' minds and boosted the results of weak schools. Whereas 28 percent of Florida public schools were graded "D" or "F" in 1999, four years later this was down to 6 percent. As best I can tell, that's with no grade inflation. (3) School choices. Besides the A+ vouchers, Florida has two other kinds. The nation's largest publicly-funded voucher program (almost 14,000 in the just-ended school year) is the "McKay Scholarship" plan for disabled youngsters, now beginning to be emulated by other states. Florida also boasts a sizable privately funded scholarship program "incentivized" by corporate tax credits. (11,500 kids benefited this past year.) Additionally, the state has several hundred charter schools (serving 68,000 children) and recently liberalized its program so local school boards won't have the last word on whether charters can exist. Plus, there's a nifty array of on-line options, including the much-praised Florida Virtual School. (4) Instructional improvement. Florida has embarked on an ambitious early-reading program that includes parent workshops, retraining teachers, platoons of reading coaches and specialists, and summer "reading camps" for low-scoring third graders. Despite some educator guff, it's also serious about the statewide use of "scientifically based" primary reading programs. (5) The education workforce. Fewer than a third of Florida's entering teachers today come straight from the state's own colleges of education. Many arrive from other states, from ambitious alternative-certification programs and from the "reserve pool." A fascinating innovation has authorized community colleges to offer competency-based teacher certification programs--and to award bachelor's degrees. (St. Petersburg College just graduated the first fifty products of its new education program.) Florida has also developed a statewide teacher career path akin to the Milken approach, giving extra pay to high-performing teachers and rewards to those with advanced certification (today from the National Board, tomorrow from multiple sources). The other day it also joined the ranks of states ready to certify teachers who pass the entry-level tests of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (and participate in a "mentoring" program"). (6) Smart, analytic decision making. Plenty of states have tons of education data, but Florida is beginning to use it for interesting analyses of school efficiency and a host of revealing disaggregations and comparisons. (For example, they can now set school grades alongside the same students' FCAT performance.) I can't tell how much use of such information is made by district and school leaders, but the folks in Tallahassee no longer operate an education system based on hunch or hope; today it's centered on imaginative uses of hard data. Let me not gush. In 2004, Florida still has a long way to go, even as its highly prescriptive class-size reduction initiative, passed by referendum in 2002, threatens to sop up all available education dollars for the foreseeable future, leaving little for reforms that might do kids more good. The state's academic standards in some subjects leave much to be desired. The choice programs have been plagued by a few high-profile scandals brought on by ill-behaving private schools --and a silly deadlock (more personality clash than policy disagreement) in the final days of this year's session kept legislators from enacting needed repairs. The charter school program is still cramped. It's no rose garden, not yet. But it might be the most impressively integrated and comprehensive set of education reforms I've seen in any big state. And there's evidence that it's starting to have a salubrious effect on student achievement, especially for poor and minority youngsters, at least in the early grades. Florida was, for example, the only state to post significant gains on the NAEP 4th grade reading test in 2003, gains that spanned the ethnic spectrum. (Math wasn't so great.) The FCAT results are brightening, too, both in reading and math and, again, mainly in the early grades and among minorities. But some high-school indicators are inching up too, including graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students. Nobody in Florida suggests that all is well, only that progress is being made, that it's measurable results-style progress, and that it antedates No Child Left Behind. Indeed, Florida suffers more than most from the layering of NCLB requirements atop its own accountability system. The state's school grades give much weight to improvement, not just absolute standards, and therefore Florida has witnessed big-time confusion as schools getting high marks under A+ are deemed to be "in need of improvement" under NCLB. Because of the Governor's unique situation this year, Florida cannot openly fuss that NCLB might have some problems. There is reason to expect, however, that after Election Day, Florida officials will embark on a vigorous effort either to get that law (and/or its regulations) revised or to win some of the "flexibility" that other jurisdictions have obtained in recent months. Based on what I've been able to learn, education reform in the Sunshine State deserves a lot more admiration than it's been getting. * * * "Resisting the tyranny of the exception," by Phil Handy, Education Gadfly, February 5, 2004 "U.S.: Forty percent can switch from failing Dade schools," by Matthew I. Pinzur, Miami Herald, June 16, 2004 "Failing schools may face takeover," by Matthew I. Pinzur, Miami Herald, June 15, 2004 "Education report expected to fuel debate," by Christina Denardo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 15, 2004 "A test in Florida," by Terry M. Neal and John Poole, Washington Post, June 15, 2004  *   *   * FROM THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION (http://www.freedomfoundation.us) WHY DON'T TEACHERS GET PAID LIKE DOCTORS?  by David W. Kirkpatrick That was a question Chris Matthews once posed to William Bennett on Matthews' program "Hardball." It's a question often posed by teachers themselves, and their unions. Bennett replied that teachers don't reach that level because their unions object to merit pay, or to some teachers earning more than others with equivalent experience and credits.  That is part of the story. But teachers didn't receive equivalent pay with doctors before there were effective teacher unions nor will they should unions disappear. For one thing, teachers don't undergo the intensive preparation required of doctors. Qualifications required to enter a medical training program exceed anything required by any of the nation's 1200 teaching preparation programs. Another reason is that there are several times as many public school teachers as doctors. Thus it would cost far more to pay teachers at the same average level as doctors. In addition, while education has more specialized certificates than any other profession, the differences don't begin to match the distinctions in medicine between family practitioners, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and so on. All of these require lengthier, more detailed and costlier training than in education, and much stricter entry qualifications. A key role that teacher unions, and most teachers themselves, play in limiting teacher salaries is their constant effort to reduce class size. Let it be clear, Class Size Does Make a Difference. But it is a difference that depends on many variables, including the subject matter, teacher qualities, grade level and teaching method. That there is a difference based on some arbitrary number - 25, 20, 15 - is incorrect. Economically this is about the most expensive "reform" that can be made. In the past few years California has spent billions of dollars reducing class sizes. Nowhere has it justified the cost and in some places student achievement has declined. The insistence that more and more teachers should teach fewer and fewer pupils is a guarantee that average teacher salaries will be lower than would otherwise be the case. By and large, the public is not concerned about the salaries of individual teachers, anymore than they are about the income of individual doctors. What does concern them is the total bill, that is, the taxes they pay.  While it won't happen, one example should make this clear. If the salaries of public school teachers could be doubled while the taxes the public pays could be cut in half, do you think the public would go along with that? Finally, while not exhaustive of this subject, teachers don't get paid like doctors because they don't get paid on a similar basis. Doctors work in a mutually acceptable relationship with their patients. With rare exceptions, such as in the military and prisons, no one is required to use the services of a particular doctor and/or pay that doctor's fees. It is the number of patients they attract, and the fees they can charge, that determine how much each doctor is paid. Parents rarely have a say as to which teacher(s) their children have, or what teachers do, and even less to say about what teachers get paid.  In brief, too many teachers, who want to be paid as much as doctors, or other professionals, are afraid to function like doctors and other professionals - on a mutually acceptable basis with those they serve. To their own detriment, they oppose implementing the constitutional right of parental choice, Pierce vs. the Society of Sisters, the U.S. Supreme Court, 268 U.S. 510, June 1, 1925. If this were widely implemented and they would have to attract students on a voluntary basis, they could then be paid accordingly. Parental, or student, choice, will free teachers, more than students or parents, just as, in medicine, it is the doctors who are freer than their patients. Doctors make the basic medical decisions, and rightly so. What patients ask, and receive, is the right, and ability, to go to the doctor of their choice. As long as teachers insist on having a captive audience and to be collectively paid on a standard basis, they will continue to be victimized by their own insecurity.  *   *   * SUMMER SCHEDULE The Vermont Education Report will not be appearing in your email box next Monday because we will be going to a summer schedule - publishing every other week. The next time you'll see the VER is Monday night, July 12 unless breaking news occurs! Please feel free to email us with information or news, however - 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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