1. Session’s Over: More School Choice
2. DC Voucher Program Lives For Now

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: SESSION’S OVER - MORE CHOICE

The Legislature has finished its business and gone home and there’s good news for school choice advocates in this year’s work—small steps toward more choice. Here’s a quick round-up of issues, with some explanations.

-- Public school choice at the high school level has been codified. It will have its own chapter in the statutes and be permanent. This means that the automatic sunset was removed. This is the very limited high school choice program enacted about ten years ago. Opponents ran out of persuasive reasons not to let it go forward when year after year, reports showed that a) the sky hadn’t fallen; and b) parents and students liked the opportunities it offered.
 
--  The funding mechanism for parenting and pregnant teens to attend a teen parent education program has been codified. This means that the long standing funding mechanism used to support teen parents’ choices in schools is now permanent and the sunset on the mechanism has been removed. Also, the statutes have stated for years that these teens had full school choice. This choice had been placed in jeopardy during committee consideration of this issue but the language was strengthened and kept in place. Parenting teens are still allowed to have the choice of any school in the state or they can choose a teen parenting program in their district which has been approved by the State Board. It is in the best interests of these teens and Vermont that they get into schools and programs that help them to succeed. 
 
--  The designation of public high schools will now be allowed. As previously reported, some tuition towns “designate” a school as their district’s school. Before now, these towns could only designate independent schools. Now they can also designate public schools. Obviously, if a town designates any school, parents in that town lose the ability to choose a school, as they can in other tuition towns. VBE fought to include a provision in this bill that would have allowed parents to retain that choice even if the town designated a school—public or independent. The Senate included this provision; however, this language was removed from the bill at the insistence of the House Education conference committee members. Now, towns that do not have school can designate a public or independent school. Parents will still be able to go to the school board and request a different school even under designation. However, the concern for VBE is that parents may be in a more weakened position to request a different school especially if a public school has been designated and they wish to use an independent school. If a board does grant the request of the parent, how much the taxpayers must pay is limited.

-- Parents now have an additional tool to use, due to geographical considerations, in getting their child enrolled an elementary school that is closer to home but not in their district. This section of law now reinforces what is in the best interest of the child by allowing parents to appeal to the Commissioner of Education when the parents and local school board can not reach agreement on the request of attending a school closer to the home of the child which is not in the child’s school district.  
 
--  Up until now, parents at the elementary level in towns without schools could choose from any public school, but not necessarily independent schools (they could request the school boards tuition to independent schools, but, as stated above, the boards rarely let this happen). Now elementary school parents in tuition towns may choose among public or approved independent schools, by simply notifying the school boards of their choices. In the case of an independent school they must notify by April 15. In other words, parents no longer have to “ask permission” to have their kids tuitioned to an approved independent school in towns without an elementary school. The amount of tuition paid by the district for an independent school has also been clarified for these situations.

-- When a child is in state custody under Department of Children and Families, they would be moved from home to home and school to school even during a school year. New law was passed that these kids can complete the school year in the school they were enrolled even though they have been moved out of that district to a different home. This is an attempt to give kids more stability in education. This is a common sense law that has the best interests of the child at heart.  

-- The caps on preK enrollment funding will remain in place, for now.

--  VBE has said for years that while preK services for disadvantaged children is important and that universal preK is not a solution to future success of children, there is something else that needs far more attention to improve outcomes of many children. Finally, the Vermont Legislature, at the insistence of Senate Education Committee, has taken a look at students who are in trouble and at threat for becoming drop-outs. This threat begins as early as 4th grade. Once in high school it is too late to deal with why a student wants to drop out. The Commissioner of Education has been given more authority to pursue issues that may put a child between the 4th and 8th grades at risk of dropping out of high school. VBE has said for years that something is happening around 4th grade please look at this instead of mandatory preK services. Finally, they did. And guess what? It does not have a cost associated with it but a better use of current funding and giving someone some authority to do something about it.

Retta Dunlap
Executive Director

Two thousand voucher supporters rallied in Washington, DC last week to urge Congress and the President to continue the DC voucher program, which helps around 1,700 students go to private schools.  The rally was a success—the president has announced he will seek to continue the voucher program for the students who are currently enrolled in it.

While this is great news for the students who had faced losing their educational opportunities, it does nothing to help students who might have qualified to join the program. So the next step is to try to re-open the door to continuing, even expanding the DC voucher program.

Here’s a statement from the Alliance for School Choice:

President’s Action is a Good First Step - More Work Must be Done

The Alliance for School Choice today issued the following statement:

May 7, 2009 (Washington, DC) - The announcement yesterday that President Obama will seek to extend the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for current participants was a good first step and creates hope for current families that their children will not be forced back into the failing schools they left behind.

Yet, it is only a first step and it falls well short of President Obama's and Education Secretary Arne Duncan's stated goal to pursue a non-ideological approach to education reform.

“We must close the achievement gap by pursuing what works best for kids, regardless of ideology. In the path to a better education system, that's the only test that really matters,” Duncan wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 20, 2009.

Four consecutive studies show overwhelming parental satisfaction and a high demand for scholarships that vastly outpaces supply. A fresh report from the Institute of Education Sciences once again demonstrated that children receiving Opportunity Scholarships are making academic progress. This evidence proves that the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program works. 

As a result, the OSP should be reauthorized and the low-income families who are waiting in line to participate should not be denied access to the program.  Those who applied and were accepted for 2009-2010 school year should be given scholarships immediately.

By pushing Congress to extend this program—and not mandating its slow death—President Obama can stand up for the low-income families of Washington, D.C., put the politics and special interests aside, and fund what works. Children waiting in line are no less deserving of a scholarship than current participants—or any other child whose parents were able to exercise choice.

[VBE – Isn’t education supposed to be about what is in the best interest of the child?]

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The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education PO Box 255, 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