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________________________________________ THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT
March 20, 2006 - Vol. 6, No. 12
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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
FROM THE EDITOR...A Note to Readers: I'm out of town this week so this edition of the newsletter contains a few long "from elsewhere" items in addition to local education news. Nonetheless, it's good reading with relevance to Vermont. The two pieces from the Fordham Foundation -- about special education and the governor's race in Oregon -- offer material to think about.
The special education article, written by a special ed teacher, focuses on a topic that's of grave concern to serious education reform activists -- the numbers of children who might be classified inappropriately as "learning disabled" when in reality they simply have not been taught to read properly.
The brief mention of the Oregon race for governor offers what we hope is a bellwether. None of the six DEMOCRATIC candidates in Oregon has yet earned the teachers union's endorsement. Maybe that's because even these traditional allies of the union recognize that what the union wants isn't always what's best for taxpayers, students or schools. We hope it's a trend. On these pages, we've speculated that a day might soon come when the VT-NEA endorsement (or help) in a campaign could turn into a liability rather than an asset. Who, after all, wants to be aligned with an organization that constantly cries for more money and less accountability? If even the Democrats in Oregon are getting this, surely the Democrats in Vermont will catch on eventually.
Libby Sternberg, editor
NEWS & ANALYSIS...YET ANOTHER TOWN VOTED AGAINST UNIVERSAL PREK
Over the past few weeks the VER has reported on several towns that voted for resolutions calling for funding of only preschool for "at risk" students. Add the town of Belvidere to that list. Belvidere voted on the broader resolution to limit education fund money to K-12 but added an amendment specifying that funding for PreK should be limited to "at-risk" students only.
SPEAKING OF PREK
S.314, the "compromise" early ed bill passed by a three-two vote out of Senate Education, will be on the full Senate's agenda this week. This bill calls for more study of the early ed issue so that "models" can be developed for use in Vermont. It also ties the hands of the State Board of Education, restricting the SBOE from doing anything to expand or restrict early ed funding until 2008. If you'd like to tell your Senators your thoughts on early ed, now's the time. Go to www.leg.state.vt.us for the full Legislative Directory and how to contact your particular State Senator.
SPEAKING OF PREK SOME MORE
Rep. Harry Chen (D-Mendon/Killington) sent out a "Town Meeting Day Update" in which he discussed early education. Here's how he covered the reason why the state is now funding all preK students at public schools instead of only those deemed "at risk":
"Initially, school districts did not receive state funding for including non-handicapped students in early education programs. Beginning in the late 1980's that changed. Educators, parents, and, especially, special education advocates persuaded the Legislature that these students were essential to the programs' effectiveness. Under state law, schools must coordinate early childhood programs with other agencies and private providers.
"With the revisions to school funding that came with Act 60 and Act 68, the process for counting students enrolled in early education was formalized."
Rep. Chen's choice of words is interesting -- the funding process for universal preschool "was formalized." Usually, approving public funding of an ongoing program requires the endorsement of taxpayers' representatives -- in other words, the legislature. But that's not how the funding process for universal preschool happened in Vermont. Instead, it was begun when the un-elected State Board of Education made a rule about the funding several years ago. Rep. Chen might describe that as "formalizing." Others might describe it as illegal.
SENATE ED READY TO VOTE ON A FEW BILLS
On this week's Senate Education schedule are a few bills slated for mark-up, the prelude to a vote. These bills have already passed the House:
- H.710 makes some minor changes to statute allowing for changes to the organization of supervisory districts.
- H.538 is an interesting bill that directs superintendents to annually make a list of information that school boards and districts MUST make available under state and federal law to taxpayers and parents. It also requires superintendents to inform secondary students and their parents or guardians of their right to opt out of providing information to military recruiters. And it also directs superintendents to inform parents and students of their available options for school choice. If this bill passes, it will be interesting to see which of these information directives superintendents apply the most vigor to.
- H.630 adds some directives to statute about teaching of depression and suicide awareness.
- H.611 directs schools to be more vigilant in regard to food allergies afflicting certain students.
S.240 IN APPROPRIATIONS
S.240, the school choice bill promoted by Senate Education Chairman Donald Collins (D-Franklin), has now moved to the Senate Appropriations Committee. S.240 is a weak extension of the already restrictive Act 150 -- a law that allows a handful of students in each district to choose another public high school that their own public high school has formed a "collaborative" with.
S. 240 forces schools to form multi-school collaboratives but does nothing to increase the number of students allowed to choose and places an extra burden on districts -- forcing them to devise "transportation plans." Although some money can follow the child under this bill, that provision has little teeth to it.
All in all, this is a very weak bill and the cynical observer might conclude it was introduced to allow an otherwise anti-choice party (the Democrats) to say they supported a school choice bill.
Or not. Rumor is the bill could stall in Appropriations.
Meanwhile, several elegantly crafted school choice bills (including one drafted by the State Board of Ed) languish in both chambers' education committees, proving once again that the Democratic Party in Vermont cowers before the Vermont NEA but turns its back on individual students.
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FROM ELSEWHERE...FROM....The Fordham Foundation
On the web at: http://www.edexcellence.netWHY CAN'T LEARNING DISABLED STUDENTS READ?
Guest Editorial by Jim Williams
Americans are generally supportive of "special education." Educating disabled children so they can live independent, satisfying lives appeals to our sense of fairness and shared responsibility.
But too often, special education inflicts harm by keeping children from reaching their potential. Instead of giving these students an extra hand, the special education bureaucracy unnecessarily segregates them while passing them from one grade level to the next, irrespective of how well they've mastered material. The result is a system that creates in these students a crippling sense of helplessness and entitlement. This is certainly the case for the least well-defined subgroup of special ed students, learning disabled (LD).
Though the LD label is used for a wide array of learning problems, there is a thread that ties these diagnoses together: students whose "basic psychological processes," which are required for spoken or written language, are flawed. In other words, students who don't listen, think, speak, or read on grade level are often labeled LD. Any number of disorders can cause a breakdown in listening, reading, or writing. Some, such as acute brain injury, are legitimate medical conditions that require special attention. Too frequently, however, the only problem a child has is that he or she never learned to read and write effectively in the lower grades. (The primary culprit here is trendy, "progressive" teaching methods. See Louisa Moats's Fordham report.) A child with poor reading skills finds learning increasingly difficult beginning in 3rd or 4th grade, when school shifts from learning basic skills to acquiring knowledge in various content areas. Struggling readers hit a performance wall over the next few grades and experience failure in class after class. Significantly, many of these students become disruptive and disinterested (especially boys), and/or they withdraw (especially girls). These behaviors and the poor performance driving them most often appear at ages 10-12, when they're tested for LD.
Unfortunately, the tests used to diagnose LD aren't designed to recognize reading deficiencies. Many of them are built on the "discrepancy model," which measures individual intellectual ability and achievement to determine if a "severe" gap exists between the student's ability and achievement. In short, before a reading problem is diagnosed, students must establish a record of "low achievement" (i.e., failing) before anyone bothers to ask why they are not learning.
In 2002, the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) recommended abandoning the intellectual ability-achievement discrepancy classification method because of the problematic measurement and conceptual problems surrounding it. Nevertheless, it's still the basis for LD classification in most educational jurisdictions. The latest version of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) made some progress on this front, allowing (though not requiring) states to move away from the discrepancy model and supporting early identification and intervention. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education has failed to complete the law's regulations, so the old, flawed method marches on.
The co-occurrence of serious reading difficulties with LD classification raises a fundamental question: What is the root cause of these students' difficulties? In a very real way, classifying as LD a struggling reader who has fallen behind in academic performance (using the discrepancy model described earlier) is little more than an institutionalized way to escape the fundamental question: Is the student legitimately handicapped, or just incapable of reading well? In addition, because special education places no meaningful emphasis on remediation, but rather on "accommodation" to help students progress to subsequent grades, a high proportion of LD students never acquires effective reading skills.
Interventions for struggling readers that produce significant and comparable performance improvement results for both "disabled" students (classified as LD) and general education students are readily available. A growing body of research on these interventions clearly locates the cause of reading difficulties (and consequent academic underperformance) in the child's educational experiences, and not in something deficient in the child. In other words, the child's capacity to learn to read is not the problem.
This is not an indictment of special ed teachers (I'm one of them, after all), who work under oftentimes outrageous institutional constraints and demands imposed by public education. Instead, it's an indictment of a system that has refused to measure and test students adequately, so that reading problems are caught early and dealt with.
NCLB is helping. Special education students are now required to participate in statewide testing to determine whether schools are making "adequate" progress and performing effectively. The system is far from perfect. But the test has administrators demanding that special education teachers immediately address (and solve) the academic performance shortfall of their students. Rather than resisting the expectation that students must be measured against the same standards, educators might more productively argue that--because many special ed students have been left behind--school officials should be prepared to accept responsibility for working with these students to meet the standards, but on an appropriately modified timetable.
A clear-eyed assessment of special education shows that it is bedeviled by the same cultural and institutional constraints that explain the inadequate performance of public education in general. Special education is an extreme example of the shortcomings of public education as a whole: the lack of accountability, preoccupation with process rather than results, and hostility to change and innovation resulting in squandered resources. These shortcomings reduce the chances for millions of children to complete public school with the skills and capabilities to live independent, productive lives.
Jim Williams is a former business executive turned special education teacher, now teaching in Northern Virginia.
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SELECTION BIAS
Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Oregon just aren't what they used to be---at least in the eyes of the Oregon Education Association. The teachers union spent Saturday auditioning six likely contenders for the Governor's Mansion, but decided to delay its endorsement because none of the six made a match as the union's candidate. The editorial board of The Oregonian offers an explanation: "In our view, no responsible, electable candidate for governor could fully satisfy the teachers union.and still win office in November... Not if the teachers union holds to its general position that nothing ails Oregon schools that more money would not solve." The editorial then issues a call to "change the school debate." It's a start, and The Oregonian now joins a growing number of editorial boards that question union orthodoxy and rightly wonder whether simply handing out more money will improve public schools (it won't). As for the OEA, it can always endorse a green party candidate, or maybe a communist?
"Speaking truth to the teachers union," The Oregonian, March 14, 2006 http://www.oregonlive.com
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FROM....The Atlanta Journal Constitution
March 14, 2006MORE MONEY WON'T MAKE SCHOOLS BETTER
When a school system presents a stack of tattered, obsolete dictionaries as evidence of funding inequities, my reaction is this: Either somebody's lying or somebody ought to be fired.
The particular stack, represented as a reflection of the plight of rural public schools in South Carolina, is offered to illustrate the funding inequity between rural and other districts. States across the country, including Georgia, are being sued to force legislators to give them more money.
The Georgia suit is yet to come to trial. In South Carolina, after hearing 102 days of testimony, a judge ruled that the state had failed to provide a "minimally adequate" education to children in the third grade and below.
For the courts, suits such as these are a real test of judicial restraint. The temptation still, as it's been for decades, is for activist judges to find magic in their own grandiosity and to fashion a personal education policy from the bench -- mostly involving more money.
Jay P. Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of an important education reform book published last year, "Education Myths." He addressed the issue recently in an appearance before the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an Atlanta think-tank.
"Myths are not lies," noted Greene. "They're the plausible stories that people tell that have some bits of support, but just don't encompass the entire truth. Myths are the assertions we make that are simply inconsistent with the broad consideration of the evidence." Said he:
"The first myth is the most common myth and the one least well-supported by the evidence. It is called the money myth. The money myth is the idea that schools would perform better if only we gave them more money. If there's one thing we know about education, this would be it. And, unfortunately, it's not very well supported."
There are two ways to measure the impact of money, said Greene. One is over time. The other is across place.
"Over time, we're not finding a relationship between spending more and getting more achievement." The most reliable long-term indicators are math and reading scores, as measured by the National Assessment of Education Progress test, constituting the national report card.
When the reading test was first given to 17-year-olds in 1971, students scored 285. In 2004, the average was 285. No change. When tested in 1973, students scored 304 on math; in 2004, it was 307. Statistically insignificant.
Or high school graduation rates. In 1971-72, it was about 75 percent; in 2001-2002, 72 percent.
Looking across place and adjusting statistics for "the advantages and disadvantages kids bring to school," an examination of 162 studies concluded that 129 revealed "no statistically valid relationship between spending and results," said Greene.
While it's certainly better to have more money than less, "over the last 30 years in the United States, we have doubled per-pupil spending adjusted for inflation, so that we now spend more than $10,000 per pupil per year on average. That's twice as much as we spent per pupil three decades ago, adjusted for inflation."
Spending's doubled. Outcomes are flat. "Any industry that has doubled its efforts and achieved nothing more in return would be an industry that would be out of business," he said.
In education, though, said Greene, "Resources are not attached very well to outcomes. The amount of resources that educators get does not vary in relation to how well students achieve." The way to get more money is to fail.
In South Carolina, a wise Gov. Mark Sanford took note of the judge's findings and declined the obvious: tossing more money. The judge's decision, he said, is a starting point. "But before we spend more money, we need to take inventory of what we are spending and how we are spending it. I think we need to be more contemplative."
That is, frankly, where every state should be. Suits such as South Carolina's should never be settled by allowing advocacy groups to write remedies.
Instead, states should "be more contemplative" and find alternatives: consolidations, vouchers, charter schools, more private-sector experiments, more intense examination of why some local schools are failing, including what they're doing with the money and who they're hiring. We should look, too, at improving the quality of graduates from the colleges of education.
Spending more on the system as it exists is another 30-year formula for failure.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
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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.
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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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