1. Raising the Caps on PreK Enrollment
2. DC Voucher Program: How You Can Help

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: THE PREK DEBATE…AGAIN

Funding is scarce these days for many important programs. When funding is scarce, choices must be made. The money must be put where it will do the most good. The preK system is no different. On May 1, 2009, House Education voted to remove the caps on preK spending in Vermont. VBE has opposed the preK law for several reasons.

First, the most important place for children under four is at home. Commissioner Steve Dale, the Department of Children and Families and the former Commissioner of Education, Richard Cate, all agree on this. Yet there is nothing that the legislature has ever done to help families keep their children in the home with a loving adult care giver. It seems more important to Montpelier for both parents to be in the work force creating a tax base rather than for one of them to be at home when children are young. Not every family is going to want to do this, but for those that do it is next to impossible. Single parenting makes this all the harder. So the answer is to have universal preK for all three and four year olds. 

Secondly, prek advocates say those that attend preK will have higher graduation rates, college attendance rates, and earn higher incomes as well as lower prison time. I have yet to see convincing data. I keep being told it is there, but I want solid statistics, not some summary from a study that was done on 30 kids. I want to see indisputable numbers. 

Head Start should be an example. It has been around long enough. Do we see these changes in Head Start children? We know that “fade out” (the fading of any academic gains over time as the child progresses into higher grades) occurs. As recently as August of 2008, the state of Tennessee’s Controller did a study on the academic achievement of the preK children in Tennessee. They studied kids over the past seven years and, once again, documented that fade out does occur.

So what are we doing? We are experimenting on children using scarce resources. That’s what. We are extrapolating from data from small studies that this will solve all the educational problems we see. 

Sorry, but I don’t believe universal pre-K is the silver bullet that will slay our educational and social problems. I am afraid that mom and dad are still the key to the development of the children and the key to the child’s future. Government is not the answer. It is part of the problem.

Yes, children who are in disadvantaged situations need more help than the average child. PreK for them is most likely a good idea. Therefore, access to PreK should be based on need and not on a lottery if the programs in your district have too many applicants. Instead, some districts will throw out a net and draw in as many children as possible. This does not benefit all children and it will not benefit the taxpayers back in the local communities. 
 
Brain development studies are often used as a reason to have universal preK. Critical child development is occurring during the first three years. However, if we really want to use brain science as the basis for public policy, then we need to go beyond the age of three. We need to look to the ages between 11 and 21, the time in which the brain is hardwiring itself to do the things the child needs, on a  “use it or lose it” principle. When do state test scores start to fall off? At about the age of 9 or 10, which is around fourth grade.       

If we indeed have limited amounts of money, then we should be focusing this money on the 4th through 8th grade population, a time in which a child can be identified as being at risk for dropping out of school and  a time in which things can be done that will indeed help them “hard wire” their brains with needed skills and habits. 
 
Unfortunately, the legislature is set to eliminate the preK caps put in place less than two years ago. The data collection from the preK law has not even been fully done yet and needs at least another year to have useful data to work from. Yet, here we are, not waiting for the data to see if it is working. (Another thing that the House Ed committee considered but declined to do was to put the K-12 model of teaching into the preK setting where it is really about child development and an educational setting.)
 
As current law sits, preK is only available to four years olds and all school districts have a cap on how many children they can claim to get ADM funds, although there is no cap on the total number of kids districts can enroll. 
 
With caps lifted and preK enrollments set to rise in public settings, what happens to private providers? Private providers are having a very hard time becoming part of the preK system as the law states they can. Some school districts and superintendents do not want to let go and allow private providers to become part of this new system. 

If the legislature wants to fix something, why don’t they increase the power of parents and providers to put their children in a non governmental institution? Why don’t they focus scarce resources on the real problem years—4th through 8th grades? 
 
Other legislative business
 
Teen Pregnancy Education (TPE’s) has been added to the high school completion bill. The amendment merely codifies the funding structure that has been in session law over the past three years. VBE was concerned that this might remove the full school choice options available to pregnant teens under current law. Language was added in House Education to continue the choice options in addition to a teen pregnancy center option. These teens are in a tough spot being children and having children. They need all the options we can give them to succeed in life. 
 
Designation of public schools is a threat to school choice in a tuitioning town. S.127 is before the House Education committee this week. In order to protect the parental choice that these families have in towns with no schools, while providing a way for taxpayers to have some control over spending, language has been added to allow parents who do not wish to use the designated school to take the money that would have been used at the designated school to another school of their choice. Remember this is in a town that has no school. 
 
The high school completion bill (reducing the drop out rate to 0 in 2010), S.136, is being used as the vehicle to eliminate the preK caps and provide for teen pregnancy funding. This bill is looking at kids starting in 4th grade who are not progressing as they should for what ever reasons. This is a law change to encourage local schools to take a harder look at these kids and give the Commissioner of Education more power to make sure this is occurring. Finally, they are looking at the kids who are in trouble starting in 4th grade. This is where the focus should be, as noted earlier
 
Retta Dunlap

On Wednesday, May 6, supporters of the disrupted DC voucher program will be rallying in Washington, DC to reinstate the valuable program that helps 1700 needy children in the district go to private schools of their choice. This program has high parental satisfaction marks (the best indicator of quality is what a parent thinks about a school) and a recent report on the program showed academic gains among voucher students.

That didn’t keep Congress from killing the program. And so far, the President and his Secretary of Education have done nothing to revive it, despite claims to want to help needy children acquire quality educations.

Although school choice enjoys bipartisan support among the grassroots (even 62 percent of self-identified Vermont Democrats are in favor of vouchers, according to the Strategic Vision poll sponsored by VBE), Democrat leaders seem to agree with the teachers union in opposing vouchers, even if it means yanking opportunity away from needy kids who’ve been benefiting from vouchers to date.

To help change their minds, you can call your congressmen (contact info below). If you’re a Democrat, please identify yourself to the delegation as a voting member of the party. If you have Democrat friends, please urge them to contact the Vermont delegation in support of this program as well.

Here’s the Vermont delegation contact info:

Rep. Peter Welch
30 Main Street
Third Floor, Suite 350
Burlington, VT 05401 
Phone: (888) 605-7270 (toll free in Vermont)
           (802) 652-2450
Contact page of web site:  http://www.house.gov/formwelch/issue_subscribe.htm
 

Sen. Patrick Leahy
199 Main Street, Fourth Floor
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 863-2525
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

Sen. Bernie Sanders
1 Church Street, Second Floor
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 354-8732
Contact page of web site: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/comments/
 

MORE ON DC VOUCHER PROGRAM

The Wall Street Journal printed two excellent pieces, one editorial and one column, on the DC voucher program today. Here are links and excerpts from the articles:

“School Choice for the Few” by William McGurn

Some hypocrisies are apparently more equal than others. If, for example, you are a politician who preaches "traditional values" and you get caught in a hotel with a woman who is not your wife, the press is going to have a field day with your tartuffery.

If, however, you are a pol who piously tells inner-city families that public schools are the answer -- and you do this while safely ensconcing your own kids in some private haven -- the press corps mostly winks.

Tomorrow afternoon at 1 o'clock in Washington, we'll learn if anything has changed. Two groups -- D.C. Children First and D.C. Parents for School Choice -- are holding a rally at Freedom Plaza, just across from the offices of the city government. As their flier explains, "D.C. families deserve the same kind of choices that the Mayor, City Council Members, and Federal leaders with children have."

“Arne Duncan’s Choice” – WSJ Editorial

Mr. Duncan (US Secretary of Education)  is not only preventing new scholarships from being awarded but also rescinding scholarship offers that were made to children admitted for next year. In effect, he wants to end a successful program before Congress has an opportunity to consider reauthorizing it. This is not what you'd expect from an education reformer, and several Democrats in Congress have written him to protest….

…Science magazine recently asked Mr. Duncan where his daughter attends school and "how important was the school district in your decision about where to live?" He responded: "She goes to Arlington [Virginia] public schools. That was why we chose where we live, it was the determining factor . . . I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education."

SENATORS URGE ED SECRETARY TO KEEP VOUCHER PROGRAM

A Letter from Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT):
 

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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