1.Vermont Education Policy/Legislation Update
2. School Choice Round-Up Part Two:
3. School Choice in the Netherlands
4. Vouchers Survive – but barely – in DC
5. School Choice in Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Illinois 

POLICY AND LEGISLATIVE UPDATE…by Retta Dunlap

June 17, 2008 -- The Vermont State Board of Education met in Burlington for their monthly meeting. The new acting Commissioner, Bill Talbot, was in attendance along with the outgoing Commissioner Richard Cate. For the past year the State Board has been talking about a Transformation of Education in which they are seeking ways to make education more child centered. All throughout the year they have invited students, parents, teachers, principals, superintendents and others to talk about what kind of changes would they like to see made to the current educational system. This meeting had departmental staff in attendance to explore ways that they could facilitate these changes. 

To further explore how the department could expedite changes, Com. Cate invited Dean Fixsen, Ph.D., from the National Implementation Research Network to talk to the board and Department staff about "Systems Change and Implementation." He gave an hour long Power Point Presentation in which he described ways the department could provide a framework to not only implement change but also to follow up on it even though staffing may change.

It is now time for step two in the transformation – change with in the department. The Commissioner has created a Secondary Education Transformation team headed up by Bill Romond. They will create a framework that will help keep everyone on track in trying to make meaningful changes to the education system in Vermont. 

If you would like to view agendas and minutes of previous State Board meetings you may do so by following this link. 

Update on passage of S.220 – Library Privacy law – As you know VBE lobbied on this bill (which spells out individuals’ rights to privacy when borrowing materials from a library) and requested that the age of privacy in the bill be raised from age 13 to 18, so that libraries did not impinge on parents’ rights. In the end, the legislation was a compromise concerning the age.The records of children are available to parents until the age of 16. This means that some Vermont libraries will need to take a look at their privacy policies. 

The town of Woodbury has a community library that serves as a school library and the public library. Their computer system does not distinguish between the two sets of records. The policy for parental access has been age 18 for both. With the new law the library trustees needed to revisit their policy which they have done in a most thoughtful manner. 

Among the concerns are just how much responsibility should a volunteer have to shoulder to fulfill requests of patrons for records and should there be procedures required for parents to access information such as written request or phone requests for children under the age of 16. They are working hard to make sure that privacy is maintained and that parents with children under the age of 16 do have access to records should they need them. This is made difficult by the fact that this is also the school library. In a school library the parents have access to the records until age 18. 

The last edition of the Vermont Education Report explored the many school choice opportunities available to students in specific states and outside the U.S. Featured in that issue were descriptions of school choice programs in Sweden—one of the most socially progressive countries in the world—and in the U.S. in Arizona where several programs seek to help children in need most of all. 

This week: a look at school choice in the Netherlands and in Washington, DC where a popular voucher program hangs on by a thread in spite of massive pressure from special interest groups (the National Education Association in particular) to shut it down. And we also include more round-ups of what’s happening in other states –Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Illinois.

It’s interesting to note that school choice programs are spreading, surviving, and even flourishing in diverse lands and political climates. Critics cannot claim that school choice is an idea only embraced by political extremists on the right. When countries like Sweden adopt such policies, and when they are cherished by parents in places like the District of Columbia, it’s time to admit that such programs are beneficial to kids, schools and parents and should be valued in a "post-partisan" world.

As stated in the previous VER, Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights says:

In Holland, public and private schools have been treated equally for nearly a century. The government funds independent schools on equal terms with public ones and parents can choose among public and private schools with a very small fee as financial penalty if they choose private ones. Support of both public and private schools is high.

This system began near the close of World War I when various religious and cultural factions couldn’t agree on what public schools should teach. The Dutch came up with the idea of funding a variety of schools, allowing each parent to choose which was most appropriate for their child. 

According to school choice critics, this system should have resulted in a "Balkanization" of the public as groups sought to be with their own religious or ideological kind. But it was the institution of the Dutch voucher program that actually avoided such Balkanization. After all, it was factional tension that was disrupting support for the schools in general. Once that tension was eased, people united.

Approximately three-quarters of all Dutch children attend private schools with financial assistance from the government. Academic performance soars, with Dutch students scoring in the top tier of all students worldwide. Low-income students, in particular, benefit from the vouchers. 

For a good overview of the Dutch program, follow this link. 

The nation’s capital, the District of Columbia, has one of the highest-spending school systems in the country. Depending on which source you use, DC spends between $13,000 and $25,000 per pupil, yet consistently ranks at or near the very bottom on tests measuring academic proficiencies. 

In January 2004, Congress passed The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003, establishing the first federally-funded voucher program in the country. The vouchers are worth up to $7,500 each, available to low-income students, and can be used at the private school of a parent’s choosing, including religiously-affiliated schools. The money appropriated for the vouchers is above and beyond what would have gone to the public schools. Approximately 2000 vouchers are available each year.

A recent report on the program found some gains on reading tests among vouchered students, but high parental satisfaction. (For a summary of the latest report, follow this link.)

In fact, perusing the actual report on the DC voucher program is reminiscent of reading the yearly reports on Vermont’s own extremely limited public school choice program, embodied in Act 150. Just as with Vermont’s Act 150, the DC voucher program law contained a mandate for reports, ostensibly to measure the program’s effectiveness but perhaps also to determine if harm is done through these voucher plans. Just as in Vermont, the sky has not fallen because some low-income DC kids got to go to a school of their families’ choosing. While academic gains might yet be modest, critics certainly can’t argue to shut the program down based on that criteria. If they did, virtually all of DC’s PUBLIC schools would have to close, too, based on small academic gains (if any) each year. 

And yet….opponents of the program did argue to cut off its funding. A June 13 email from the National Education Association urged supporters to "Tell Congress: End the DC voucher experiment!"

The NEA and its allies are powerful. Many of its allies are now in Congress. And the DC voucher program renewal came up for discussion on June 17 in a Congressional subcommittee, unlikely to receive wide coverage in the news during this season of presidential campaigning. Such conditions should have combined to make a "perfect storm" for the opponents of the voucher program to be successful, allowing them to kill the vouchers quietly and effectively. 

Yet, fortunately, they did not prevail. The Congressional subcommittee in charge of allocating money for the District of Columbia is allowing the program to continue—for another year, at which time the battle begins again. This is a testament to the strength of the school choice idea. Even a Congress sympathetic to the NEA couldn’t bring itself to do away with a school choice program for poor kids in DC.

Listen to what parents and students say about the program at www.VoicesofSchoolChoice.org

The following summaries of school choice programs in other states are from the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation’s excellent round-up of what’s happening around the country:

FL   McKay Scholarships Program for Students with Disabilities

Any disabled student whose parents are unhappy with their assigned public school are eligible to receive a McKay voucher to send their child to a private school or another public school. Started in 1999 as a pilot in Sarasota County, the program originally was capped at 5 percent of eligible enrollment. It was expanded statewide in 2000 and the cap was removed For further information go to the McKay Scholarship Program website.

FL   Tax Credits for Scholarship Funding Organizations

Florida provides a tax credit on corporate income taxes (the only type of income taxes the state collects) for donations to Scholarship Funding Organizations (SFOs), privately run non-profit organizations that support private-school scholarships. SFOs provide scholarships worth up to $3,500 for low-income students. They also may provide students with funds for transportation to another public school. Businesses get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions up to 75 percent of their total tax owed. The overall size of the program is capped at $88 million.

GA   Georgia Special Needs Scholarships

Any disabled student in Georgia public schools can get a voucher to attend a private school. The program is modeled on Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program.

GA   Tax Credits for Student Scholarship Organizations 

Georgia provides a credit on both personal and corporate income taxes for donations to Student Scholarship Organizations (SSOs), privately run non-profit organizations that support private-school scholarships. Individual taxpayers contributing to SSOs may claim a dollar-for-dollar credit of up to $1,000, and married couples filing jointly may claim up to $2,500. Corporate taxpayers may claim a dollar-for-dollar credit worth up to 75 percent of the taxpayer’s total tax liability. The program is capped at $50 million in tax credits per year.

IA   Tax Credits for Educational Expenses

Iowa provides a tax credit covering educational expenses for students in any private or public school, including tuition, books and lab or activity fees. The credit is worth a maximum of $250. This makes it a little bit easier for families to choose a private school for their children.

IA   Tax Credits for School Tuition Organizations

Iowa provides a credit on personal income taxes for donations to School Tuition Organizations (STOs), privately run non-profit organizations that support private-school scholarships. The credit is worth 65 percent of the value of the donation. The value of the tax credit is also limited by a statewide cap. A maximum of $7.5 million in tax credits is available. Each STO is able to grant tax credits to its donors up to its share of this statewide limit, with each STO’s share determined by the enrollment at the schools it serves. There are 11 STOs.

IL   Tax Credits for Educational Expenses

Illinois provides a tax credit covering educational expenses for students in any private or public school, including tuition, books and lab or activity fees. The credit is worth a maximum of $500. This makes it a little bit easier for families to choose a private school for their children.

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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