1.  The Vermont Education Report is BACK!!!
  2.  H.534 -- An Act Relating To Prekindergarten Education
  3.  National Institutes of Health - Study on Prekindergarten
  4.  A Voucher Victory
  5.  Editorial
  6.  Website Update 

The Vermont Education Report is BACK!!!

Hi, my name is Retta Dunlap and I am the new Executive Director of Vermonters for Better Education and editor of the Vermont Education Report. Rob Roper has gone on to be the Chair of the Vermont Republican Party. I look forward to working with Vermonters to create an educational environment in that is vibrant and filled with educational choices for families. Please bear with us as we work to get back up to speed after the changing of the guard.

Feel free to email me anytime!

Thank you ~ Retta
VBE@comcast.net

National Institutes of Health Study on prekindergarten

The National Institutes of Health just released an analysis of a long-term NIH-funded study which emphasizes the following three things. You can read the release from NIH at: http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/mar2007/nichd-26.htm

   1. Children in high quality care before kindergarten had better vocabulary scores than kids in low quality care.

   2. The more time children spent in center-based care before kindergarten were more likely to have 'problem behavior' such as arguing and fighting.

   3. Even though these increases in vocabulary and problem behaviors were small, parenting quality was much more important in child development than where the child received child care or the quality of it.

A Voucher Victory
by Andrew J. Coulson 

Andrew J. Coulson is director of the Center for Educational Freedom, and author of Market Education: The Unknown History.

Three percent of Utah students currently attend private schools. In the Netherlands, the figure is 75 percent. The difference? The Dutch enacted their universal school voucher program in 1917, and Utah's passed just last week.

To read the rest of this story go to: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7871

H.534 -- An Act Relating To Prekindergarten Education

Your tax dollars will in one way or another be asked to pay for this. The schools are funded mostly by the property tax but also through any other monies we pay out in the form of taxes or fees which end up in the general fund which in turn are given to fund educational expenses. 

H.534 is a House Education Committee bill which will go the full House on Tuesday, April 3, 2007. "This bill proposes to:  (1) require the state board of education and the secretary of human services to adopt joint rules regarding prekindergarten education; (2) clarify that a public school choosing to offer prekindergarten education services to three- and four-year-old residents may count those children receiving ten hours of service per week within its average daily membership, with a weight of 0.46; (3) limit the number of prekindergarten students that a school district may count within its average daily membership; (4) clarify the authority of the state board of education and the secretary of human services to regulate prekindergarten programs; and (5) require the commissioners of education and for children and families to report to the general assembly regarding the cost and effectiveness of prekindergarten education programs."

You can read the bill text at: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/legdoc.cfm?URL=/docs/2008/bills/intro/H-534.htm

Editorial

I have concerns about the legislature's solution to the prekindergarten debate. Early educational programs that provide 'learning experiences' to disadvantaged children can help. However, the evidence does not show that this is advantageous to children who are not at a disadvantage. Is this kind of expenditure warranted in Vermont? Will the benefits really outweigh the cost? Evidently the House Education Committee says yes and the full House has added its approval. Some of the reasons given as to why this is necessary include a reduction in criminal activity later on and raising reading scores.

We understand that not all children learn to read at the same rate. Some read very early and some do not 'get it' until they are 8 or 9 or older. Parents have started homeschooling because of the early emphasis on academics being pushed on children earlier and earlier. If kindergarten is becoming 1st grade what will prekindergarten become? Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) has been touted as a way to bring up reading scores by getting children ready for school. Yet UPK has been in Oklahoma since 1998 and Georgia since 1995 and their National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 2005 scores have fallen since 1992 to place them in the bottom 10 states. Is Vermont heading down the same road? Earlier is not necessarily better.

H.534 bill will make the present preK system financially transparent. It will limit the growth in prekindergarten educational expenses but allows for growth just the same and authorizes, through statute, for educational monies to be used to pay for this. These kids will get a percentage of the average daily membership per child. This will pay for approximately 10 hours a week of "…developmentally appropriate early development and learning experiences based on Vermont’s early learning standards…" This includes both public and private settings.

It is good that the private providers are considered in the bill but they will have to fight to stay in the game. Will they have the time and money to do so? Many parents must work and need quality child care. This is a given and we should be sensitive to this need but this bill is not about quality child care per se: it is about funding prekindergarten learning experiences. Many on House Education Committee, both the Commissioners of the Department of Education and the Department of Children and Families and others are saying that the best place for these kids is to be at home with one parent for nurturing and care.

The one thing that nearly all the studies on early education have in common is that parental involvement is essential. Is it possible that the savings of reduced criminal activity can be attributed to parental involvement rather than prekindergarten programs public or private? Good parent/child relationships are required in later years to guide adolescents and these relationships are built in the early years.

Parents are more than qualified to deliver these prekindergarten learning experiences to their own children in their own homes. What can Vermont do to make this a reality for more parents? This bill does not address this issue at all.

Website Update

We are in the process of updating our website. While we are doing so you may encounter some dead-end links and missing pages. We will do our best to eliminate these problems as quickly as possible. Right now our material is split across two websites: SchoolReport.com and http://vermontersforbettereducation.com/

We do!  Please 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, PO Box 72, Woodbury, VT 05681. VBE is a nonprofit organization and contributions are tax-deductible.

The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education PO Box 72 Woodbury, VT 05681 - 802-472-5491. The Vermont Education Report may be reprinted with the editor's permission. For more information contact: VBE@comcast.net or visit us on the web: http://www.schoolreport.com

VERMONTERS FOR BETTER EDUCATION 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.

Retta Dunlap, executive director
VBE@comcast.net