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________________________________________ THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT
February 28, 2006 - Vol. 6, No. 09
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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...SBOE VOTES TO KEEP TAXPAYERS ON THE HOOK FOR UNIVERSAL PREK
At its February 21 meeting, the State Board of Education approved a plan that would keep state taxpayers paying for preschool for all children while an as-yet-undefined study committee looks for the value of such publicly-funded programs.
The vote came after the SBOE's early ed ad hoc committee suggested the board adopt a policy that recommended only paying for disadvantaged children's pre-schooling. But Chairman Tom James, a Douglas appointee, balked at that and offered what he considered a "compromise" -- continuing with the status quo, with public schools drawing down Education Fund money for universal preK, while the board and others "study" the issue.
James's plan is therefore not a compromise at all for Vermont taxpayers. They're still on the hook while the study progresses -- despite James's own contention that current studies, of which there are many, don't support the value of universal preK and only support the case for funding disadvantaged students.
James's vote, by the way, was a tie-breaker, so he bears the bulk of the responsibility for this scheme. The 5-4 split fell out this way:
Voting FOR continuing with funding universal preschool: Tom James, Dianne Mueller, Rick Manahan, Lisa Cox, Lindy CaslinThe surprise of the day came when Senate Education Chairman Donald Collins (D-Franklin) showed up agreeing with James's approach. This represents a pull-back from Sen. Collins's aggressive push to move early education legislation (S.132) through the General Assembly this year. But at the SBOE meeting, Collins seemed content to hold back on legislation while a study progresses.Voting AGAINST funding universal preschool: Ruth Stokes, Chris Robbins, William Corrow, and Susan Schill
Several sources have told the VER that this study "compromise" might have been a deal brokered at least in part by the administration to keep S.132 from moving forward. In other words, S.132 doesn't move to expand prek programs but neither does the SBOE move to restrict current prek programs.
The State Board meetings are usually taped and broadcast on local community access stations throughout the state. Look for the Feb 21 meeting in your area's offerings.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW? STUDY COMMITTEE AND BUDGET BILL
S. 132, the early education bill, could still move forward but the focus now will be on this study committee. As of this writing, its composition has yet to be spelled out. According to the Vermont Department of Ed, the study committee make-up will be determined by the legislature, specifically Sen. Don Collins.
Now, let's think about this -- the Senate Ed Chairman has been pushing for universal preschool for several years now. Who do YOU think he'll want on that study committee?
If the committee is loaded up with representatives from the child care and public school community, it's hard to imagine they'd come up with a recommendation not in their interests. So much for that grand compromise SBOE chair James thought he was crafting.
Meanwhile, there's still the danger of early ed funding language being slipped once again into the budget bill. While supporters of universal preK funding continually claim that this funding was legal to begin with, they inserted funding formula language into the budget last year to "codify" the practice. That budget language expires at the end of June, leaving the legality of the funding formula ambiguous once again.
If pressure is put on Sen. Appropriations Chairman Susan Bartlett (D-Lamoille) to reinstate the preK budget language, it could put her in a tough spot. Towns in her Senate district have been voting down school budgets and some Stowe residents are annoyed because full-day kindergarten has not moved forward while preK programs have. And....it's an election year.
IN SENATE ED DOES "TBA" REALLY MEAN "SHHH...."?
COMMITTEE VOTES OUT WEAK SCHOOL CHOICE BILL WITH NARY A PEEPThose who check the Senate Education Committee schedule every week might notice that it often includes at least one day marked "TBA." TBA last week meant the committee took up S.240, the weak extension of Act 150, Vermont's school choice law that allows for limited choice among public high schools.
Not only did the committee take up S.240, they heard testimony and voted the bill out. The schedule of the committee was put up on the morning of the bill consideration.
Yet this last-minute maneuver didn't keep members of the Education Lobby from being able to testify. Apparently the Vermont-NEA's Joel Cook was prepared to weigh in (no to money following the child) as did John Nelson of the Vermont School Boards Association, Ray Pellegrini of the Vermont Principals Association and Commissioner of Education Richard Cate, who articulated the SBOE's position on school choice (which is more expansive than the proposed S.240).
Nowhere to be seen were actual school choice advocates or parents who desire more choices for their children yet cannot afford to pay tuition at schools outside their districts.
Responsibility for this quiet consideration of a school choice bill lies with Sen. Don Collins (D-Franklin), chair of the committee. Sen. Collins seems to be making a habit of pulling these out-of-the-limelight stunts. Last year, he was responsible for inserting preK funding language in the budget bill, behind the backs of his own committee. This year he showed up at the SBOE meeting to voice support for a study of early ed issues without a peep to his committee.
And now he moves a school choice bill....without letting school choice advocates know. Not exactly a profile in courage.
HOW MUCH IS YOUR SUPERINTENDENT GETTING?
An interesting article about a "golden parachute" deal for outgoing South Burlington school superintendent appeared in the Burlington Free Press on Sunday. The article, by Molly Walsh, included info on superintendent salaries in general and in Chittenden County in particular. Here's an excerpt:
From...The Burlington Free Press:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com...A Burlington Free Press public records study shows that superintendents in Chittenden County earn between $101,000 and $137,730 in taxable compensation.
While such salaries might seem high to many Vermonters, superintendents run organizations with hundreds of employees and multimillion-dollar budgets. Superintendents also work evenings in addition to days to attend school board meetings, said Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association.
"These salaries are nothing to sneeze at, but I also would say from my knowledge of what superintendents do and the market, that they are not unreasonable."
A look at the fine print of the contracts shows that salary is not the whole story. Superintendents receive a range of additional perks, payments and benefits. The trends:
Many superintendents are allowed to carry over a portion of unused vacation or sick pay from year to year. In some contracts, there is sizable compensation for unused time. These sorts of provisions are uncommon in private-sector jobs.
In addition to taxable earnings, many superintendents receive lump sum payments for nontaxable annuities or retirement accounts. They range from a few thousand dollars to as much as $30,000.
Four to five weeks of vacation is standard, plus 10 to 12 legal holidays and a number of personal days.
Contracts are often drafted with legal language making it tricky for boards to fire a superintendent before a contract expires.
The number of days superintendents are required to work during the year differs, in some cases allowing part-time work at full-time wages.
Specific contracts
The contract for Burlington School Board adviser and former Burlington schools superintendent Lyman Amsden calls for him to be paid $130,000 for 202 days of work in the current fiscal year, about 45 to 50 days fewer than a typical full-time superintendent works.
This works out to about $644 for each day worked.
Since January, Amsden has been working for the district from his second home in Florida. In a telephone interview, Amsden said he is working on contract negotiations and facilities projects and does not plan to return to Burlington until May.
Both Amsden and Jeanne Collins, who was named Burlington superintendent in January, say Amsden has agreed to contractual changes that will reduce his total work days and compensation this fiscal year. A new contract has not been finalized and the one Amsden signed June 7, 2005, remains in force.
Bruce Chattman, the former superintendent for South Burlington, is a part-time superintendent for Winooski schools. He received $141,550 in taxable compensation --- $138,050 salary plus $3,500 for vehicle use and mileage -- from South Burlington in his final year there, which ended in June. Chattman also received a sizable nontaxable severance payment from South Burlington -- $80,000 in August -- and expects to receive an additional $36,623 in August 2006.
Chattman said he negotiated the payments in his final contract as compensation for unused vacation time that built up in his first years on the job in the early- and mid-1990s, when he worked without an assistant superintendent.
"It was essentially vacation not used. It wasn't a golden parachute," he said.
The district probably saved on the order of $450,000 by not hiring an assistant superintendent during his early tenure, Chattman said. And because there was no assistant, Chattman says he had to forego approximately 15 days of his vacation time for several consecutive years. Chattman said he earned the severance benefit.
"They got their pound of flesh out of me for that money."
Unique language
Amsden and Chattman have structured their current contracts in unusual ways.
Chattman is up-front about why his $55,611 compensation this year in Winooski is scheduled to be distributed two ways: $25,000 in salary and a $30,611 contribution into a 403(b) plan -- a tax-deferred savings plan, similar to a 401(k), used by schools and other tax-exempt entities.
Chattman wanted to keep his taxable income under $25,700 -- the limit he could earn and still qualify for his pension from the Teachers Retirement Fund. The fund, which is underfunded by $138 million, has rules that are supposed to bar pension payments to people who retire from one education job and then take a similar, full-time education job in Vermont.
"If a person hasn't stopped working then they aren't retired and they shouldn't have access to the benefit," said Cynthia Webster, director of retirement operations at the state Treasurer's Office.
Chattman's total compensation this fiscal year from Winooski and South Burlington is more than $135,000 -- five times the retirement fund ceiling -- but he's collecting a pension of approximately $54,000 anyway. That's because under the fund rules, Chattman's Winooski annuity and his South Burlington severance pay do not count as salary, Webster said. Chattman checked with her office to be sure his contracts allowed pension eligibility, she added.
The retirement fund board has already changed income rules in response to creative contracts by not-so-retired administrators. Webster said that if Chattman's arrangement becomes more common, the board may need to review the rules again.
"If this were to become the newest trend we would need to look at it a little more closely. We know it's legal, but does it follow the intent of what the law is trying to do?" Webster asked.
Chattman said he was not gaming the system for his pension.
"I earned it. And I'm playing by their rules," he said.
Amsden's contract calls for his $130,000 salary to be paid in installments: $26,000 was paid between July 1 and Dec. 31; he is scheduled to be paid $26,000 in each of fiscal years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
The $26,000 payment is likely to be less than the retirement fund income ceiling in fiscal year 2007 and beyond, since the limit is typically adjusted upwards by a few hundred dollars each year.
Amsden, who made headlines for testing the rules of the retirement fund a few years ago, said his contract payment schedule was not designed to avoid annual limits on earnings.
"That has nothing to do with my pension. I just was trying to balance out my living costs until I turn 70 and my other things kick in, " he said. Amsden said he began collecting his pension Jan. 1 -- approximately $3,100 a month, he said.
Webster said Friday she was investigating Amsden's employment status with the Burlington school district to verify his pension eligibility.
"We will not let this go until we have all the answers that satisfy what we need."
For PDF files of school superintendent contracts, go to: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com
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FROM ELSEWHERE...FROM....The Fordham Foundation
On the web at: http://www.edexcellence.net/CAROLINE MINTER HOXBY--GETTING THE MOST OUT OF EDUCATION DATA
by Martin A. Davis, Jr.Fordham Foundation Editor's Note: Earlier this month the Fordham Foundation announced the winners of its fourth Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education: Distinguished Scholarship, and Valor. This week, we profile the Distinguished Scholarship winner--Caroline Minter Hoxby of Harvard University. Next week we'll profile the winners for Valor--Michael Feinberg and Dave Levin, founders of KIPP.
Harvard economist Caroline M. Hoxby isn't interested in proving or disproving anyone's agenda; she's all about applying thoughtful analysis to questions about student learning. "I like to stay out of politics and to do my research," she says. And Hoxby would have her wish were it not for one detail she's as adept a storyteller as she is a number-cruncher. And this fact, inevitably, keeps her in the media spotlight.
Hoxby caught Harvard's attention early. She completed her undergraduate work there in 1988, and the school wasted little time bringing her back as a faculty member in 1994, just after she earned her doctorate in economics from M.I.T. She gained tenure just three short years later.
She first came to national prominence in 2000 when she published "Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers?" in the American Economic Review. Though written for, and in the language of, economists, that work quickly found a broader audience, namely partisans in the school choice debate. Her paper compared urban areas having only one or a few large school districts to those with many smaller districts. She reached two broad conclusions. First, students in communities with many small school districts perform better. Second, those small districts actually spend less money per child. The reason is fairly straightforward. When parents have many districts to choose among in the same area, they'll move to the district with better schools. Moreover, because these smaller districts compete for families, they're motivated to keep their costs, and thus local taxes, within bounds.
"Neither of these results is huge," says Hoxby with academic understatement, "but there is a positive effect. This suggests there is a role for school choice." But the ensuing outcry was anything but understated. Attacks on this and later choice-related studies have been relentless, particularly from teacher unions and researchers backed with union money.
Through it all, however, Hoxby stayed focused on the results, which she relates with analogies that anyone can understand. Consequently, newspapers, magazines, radio talk shows, and television reporters besiege her for insight into the confusing world of education data.
Hoxby wants journalists to treat education research with the same level of seriousness they treat medical research. "If I were a totally quack doctor," she says, "and came up with my purple pill, and every serious researcher said 'no,' it doesn't work," the media wouldn't report that story. But in education, she continues, "it isn't like that. The purple pill study gets reported on a lot."
The problem goes beyond media. "Education schools," Hoxby notes, "have not traditionally had an emphasis on evaluation." And among the few that do incorporate evaluation into their training, the methodologies and theories taught are routinely "two decades behind."
Hoxby learned how dire the field of education research was as a student at Oxford (M.Phil. 1990) and at MIT. She wanted to do research on the economics of education, but few economists studied education at the time. Conversely, education researchers knew little economics. Fortunately, this situation has changed--in no small part due to her work.
The daughter of Steven A. Minter, a senior official at the U.S. Department of Education in the Carter administration, Hoxby isn't resting on her many laurels. In fact, she's just hitting her stride. She continues to construct studies that test the idea of school choice. Recent works of note include a "gold standard" analysis of charter students in Chicago showing that children who start off in charter schools not only outperform their traditional public school counterparts, but also that in three or four years they will close the performance gap between urban and suburban students.
As an instructor, she's no less busy. In addition to teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses, Hoxby carries a full slate of doctoral students. Moreover, since arriving at Harvard as an assistant professor in 1994, she's advised some 40 student dissertations.
On top of her Harvard duties, she directs the Economics of Education Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She also plays an informal advisory role for policy makers. North Carolina, for instance, has been collecting reams of student data for years but has done little with it. Its leaders came to her for help. "I don't tell states what to do, but show them what tools are available to them and let them choose."
Hoxby sees a brighter future for America's school children. "We've done the hard part [of education reform]--bearing the tax burden. Now, let's get the most that we can out of our schools." Hoxby is certainly doing her part by getting the most out of education data--taking new approaches to long-standing problems and gaining powerful insights from her original analyses. With decades to go in her already-prominent career, there's no telling what she might learn--and what she might teach us.
The Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education will be awarded at a reception on Monday, February 27, 2006 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in our Washington, D.C. office. For more information or to attend the event, please call the Foundation at 202-223-5452 or e-mail Jennifer Leischer, Prize Coordinator, at jleischer@edexcellence.net.
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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.
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