1.   Note from Editor:
  2.   Montpelier – Childhood Poverty
  3.   Burlington – School Choice, Magnets, and Integration 
  4.   Killington – the Vision of the VT State Board of Education
  5.   Britain – Choice and local control

Note from Editor:

Over the past two weeks I attended three separate meetings in which education was discussed. The next three items in this week's VER contain information about these meetings and my perspective of the conversations I heard.  I hope you will find this information useful and interesting.

Montpelier – Childhood Poverty

Background:

This past winter the Legislature created the Vermont Child Poverty Council. It is made up of 14 members including legislators, commissioners, and various other voices. They will to meet six times to take testimony and hold 14 public hearings, one in each county. They have been instructed to create a 10 year plan to reduce children living in poverty by 50%. The plan is to identify costs, programs, procedures, and priorities to enable the state to reduce childhood poverty by 2017.

According to the Legislative Summary of this bill which is now Act 68, “any procedures and priorities identified must include improving or adequately funding programs and opportunities that provide parents and children access to workforce training and development, education, affordable housing, early care and education, after-school and mentoring programs, affordable health care, treatment programs and services, childhood nutrition, and Reach-Up and other agency of human services public benefits.”

On August 22, 2007, the Vermont Child Poverty Council held one of its meetings at the State House in Room 11. The next one is scheduled for September 13, 2007.

My perspective:

I attended the morning session of the August 22nd  meeting. Testimony was being taken about the identified priorities that they have been instructed to research. The path of this council was set long before it was formed. Poverty is indeed a concern and we as a society should do what we can to mitigate its affects on children. Anything the legislature or state government can do will come down to providing a program. The questions is: “what is the program designed to do?”

I would like to make a subtle distinction between programs versus education. To raise the living standards of a child we will provide programs that give fuel assistance, health care, dental care, affordable housing, among other things. This something that we need to do. Is this enough? Without giving them the tools to raise themselves out of poverty, what have we done? Children need a good education that has given them the competencies, the core knowledge, they need to reach their full potential.

One of the members of the council is Senator Giard, of Bridport. He also sits on the Senate Education Committee. He asked a question that needs careful consideration. There is a 20 point gap in the test scores of children who receive free and reduced lunches and those that do not. He wanted to know, which came first the chicken or the egg? Is poverty driving the low test scores or are the low test scores driving the poverty? The subtle difference is between programs and education. Are we using the right educational mechanisms to educate disadvantaged children? We have all heard how preK will solve a great many problems. Is a preK program a magic bullet? PreK can answer some of the issues that disadvantaged children face but I doubt very much that preK is the magic bullet. Disadvantage children need more time on task and need to master the most basic of skills before moving on long after they leave preschool. Unless we focus on the direct education of ALL children throughout their educational years we will not have given them the tools needed.

We currently spend 1.2 billion dollars on education in Vermont. How we spend this and what we spend it on can make all the difference in the life of a child. The educational system cannot solve poverty but it can give kids the tools needed to dig themselves out of it. 

Burlington – School Choice, Magnets, and Integration 

Background:

For over a year now the Burlington Board of School Commissioners has been discussing how best to achieve excellence and equity in their schools. The commissioners are looking towards “a carrot approach” using school choice and magnet schools. They are hopeful that this will create the socioeconomic integration they are seeking without forced integration through a redrawing of the district lines. They have two high poverty schools and proposed solutions have been controversial.

On August 23rd, the Burlington Board of School Commissioners had a 3.5 hour meeting discussing what they labeled “Elements of Educational Excellence.” They considered nine questions and held a straw poll to determine where the Commissioners might like to go next. I attended this meeting. The board seems to support socioeconomic integration to expand student opportunity and diversity through the use of one or more magnet schools and parental choice.

This is all still in the early stages of discussion and development for the board, parents, and  citizens of Burlington.

My perspective:

VBE is watching to see how this unfolds because the Burlington board is considering school choice of some kind for parents in Burlington. I spoke on the phone with the chair of the board, Thom Fleury.  With two high poverty schools that need more resources than the other schools, breaking up the poverty seems to be the focus of the board. Fluery recognizes that integration will not be enough and so educational excellence will need to be part of the solution.  Providing carefully chosen magnet schools designed to attract students will take a lot of time and work to set up. Then there are also budget constraints to be considered.

VBE has always advocated for the availability of more educational choices for parents. Choice can mean different things to different people. In this particular situation, choice to achieve socioeconomic integration will require “student assignment” after parents have chosen or rated the schools they want their children to attend. However, student assignment would interfere with the real choice of the parent. For the Burlington school board, the real focus of change is integration and not choice for parents. If the plan fails it will not be because of choice. Still VBE applauds their efforts concerning parental choice in education and would encourage them to continue to seek out more choice for parents.  Any time parents are empowered to make choices concerning their children will in turn strengthen families and the communities they live in.

This has been a bumpy road for not only the members of the Burlington board but also for many parents.  Some parents have felt like they were not informed as well as they could have been by the board.  Others still question the kind of “magnets” that will be chosen for implementation in the district. Will socioeconomic integration improve the education of the poorer students? Or will it simply mix the kids up so that there are no longer any failing schools in the Burlington district? These are not easy questions nor are there any quick answers. This is by no means the end of the story. 

For further exploration:

Burlington Free Press Article
School Board discusses redistricting

Parent driven web site
Building Burlington's Future

Jeanne Collins, Superintendent of Schools
Summary of August 23rd meeting

Killington – the Vision of the VT State Board of Education

Background:

Once a year the Vermont State Board of Education has a two day “retreat.” Retreat is not exactly a word I would use to describe what they do. They actually meet all day long and discuss where they are, where they have been, and where they want to go. August 27-28 was their annual planning meeting. It consisted of 13 hours of conversation that focused on “Student Learning.” Their objective was to “provide statewide leadership for framing the future of education and success for all students.”

From 8:30 to 10:30 in the morning was the time set a side for the board to have its monthly meeting. The annual planning meeting began at 10:30 am. There was a facilitator and a very large pad of paper on which comments of the board were written. These pages of comments were then taped on the walls around the room. There was discussion on the overview and expectations for the meeting and discussion about future trends, frameworks, and strategies of the board. They had a working lunch and broke into work groups for smaller discussions that were to generate ideas for successful education and learning in the future. Day one covered “what” they wanted and day two covered “how” they might achieve it.

My perspective:

I was only able to attend day one and listened to the conversation about “what” it was that they wanted as a vision for education. More precisely put, what they wanted as an “ideal” of what education should look like. They were attentive to traditional education settings as well as alternative settings in which children learn.

They readily recognized that education is changing. One frame of a Power Point presentation showed educational progression from agricultural to industrialization to technological. Using technology in the classroom is not enough. Technology needs to become part of the education. The Commissioner showed how a language computer program was being used in a pilot program in Vermont to teach language to kids. I saw instantly that this program would work for parents who wanted to use it at home. Imagine a teacher saying this is your language homework – work on your lessons as home with a program that is on the school's computer hard drive.

It was an interesting thing to watch the members of the state board work on their “ideal” of what education could look like. Will it ever be implemented? Change is difficult. Maybe some day parts of it will be but the important thing is that they had the conversation to create a better education for kids.  The Vermont State Board of Education is not alone in having these kinds of thoughts and ideas. This is a conversation that is taking place all across this nation and beyond. The halls of the education system are not the only place this conversation is occurring. This conversation is going on at kitchen tables and in the boardrooms of businesses. Innovation and accountability must be achieved. We live in a global economy where technology rules. What skills and strengths do we have to give our kids? Once we identify them, how can we best prepare students to fulfill their potential and be able to compete in the state, the country, and the world?

I did not get to hear how the board would accomplish any of this. But if their agenda for day two is any indication it must have been interesting. The agenda contained discussion about technology and distance learning, secondary educational initiatives, and 21st Century skills. All of which must relate to student success.

Now that the annual planning meeting is over and things are back to business as usual, what will the Vermont State Board of Education do next? What focus strategies will they come up? There are those who feel a state board of education is an institution that we no longer need and place little importance on what they do.  Others see them as preventing progress and there are those out there that see them as part of the problem in education and still others support their work. Whether you like the state board or not, until laws are changed and another governing authority is created we will need to pay attention to the conversations that they have. Long before a bill hits the legislature someone, somewhere, had a conversation about it.

Britain – Choice and local control

Vermont and the USA are not the only ones to talk about choice, local control, and taking the politics out of education. ~RD
 
Schools have to change if society is to change
By David Green
08/26/2007
 
Excerpt from end of the article:
 
Disorder and learning are not compatible. Anyone who has tried to teach a class of 30 children knows that if they have to focus on controlling a disruptive pupil, little time is left for teaching the others.
 
The simplest method would be for us to emulate Sweden, but it would be better still to put all schools beyond the reach of party politics by transferring them to local community trusts.
 
Instead of running schools, the Government would confine itself to a task of which it is capable, namely giving the power of choice to every parent by guaranteeing a right to state funding.
 
Apart from the benefits to children from all backgrounds, depoliticising education would help to rejuvenate civil society. It would put the creation of our moral life back in the hands of localities. In such a society, casual shootings of 11-year-olds would be, as they once were, inconceivable.

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 255, 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 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