1.   Autism Spectrum Disorders Public Forums
  2.   Home-Schooling Numbers are Up
  3.   School Choice and Racial Balance
  4.   Montpelier – PreK Rulemaking Process
  5.   Editorial - Not Ready to Learn

Autism Spectrum Disorders Public Forums

The Vermont Department of Education (DOE) and the Vermont Agency of Human Services (AHS) have released the schedule for five public forums on autism spectrum disorders to be held across the state over the next two months. Act 35, An Act Relating to Autism Spectrum Disorders, passed by the 2007 Vermont Legislature and signed into law by Governor Douglas, requires AHS and DOE to gather public input for developing a plan to provide services to individuals with autism spectrum disorders in their homes, schools and communities. All interested parties are invited to attend. The meetings will take place:

September 17th, 7-9 p.m.;  4th Floor Pavilion
Conference Room, 109 State St., Montpelier

September 25th, 7-9 p.m.; Hunt Middle
School Auditorium, 1364 North Avenue,
Burlington

September 24th ,10 a.m. –noon; Northeastern
Vermont Regional Hospital, Conference
Room 127, St. Johnsbury

October 3rd  10 a.m. –noon; Asa Bloomer
State Office Building, 88 Merchants Row,
Rm. 266, Rutland

October 4th, 10 a.m. –noon;  Springfield
State Office Building, 100 Mineral St.,
Springfield, 1st Floor Conference Room
(people will need to park in the lower parking lot, unless handicap accessible parking is required).

Contacts:

DOE – Jill Remick, (802) 828-3154 or jill.remick@state.vt.us
DOE – Claire Bruno, (802) 828-5116 or claire.bruno@state.vt.us
AHS – Heidi Mohlman Tringe, (802) 241-2222 or heidi.tringe@state.vt.us

Home-Schooling Numbers are Up
By Molly Walsh, Free Press Staff Writer, September 10, 2007

WESTFORD -- A rooster crowed from the barn next to the Brown family's log cabin home shortly before 8 on a recent morning, but the four Brown boys didn't need the classic rural alarm clock. They were already up, dressed and ready to start home schooling with their mother and teacher, Tammy Brown.

Just as Vermont public school pupils are back in school, so are many of the 2,215 home school students in the state. Instead of getting on a school bus, many of these students just walk downstairs to a study, or in the case of the Brown family, to a basement converted into a cozy school room with desks, maps, comfortable chairs and a wood stove ready to be stoked when the temperature dips.

[snip]

But home study is not completely ungoverned in Vermont. In order not to be considered truant, students who engage in home study programs must adhere to various state regulations. Parents and guardians must enroll home study children annually with the Vermont Education Department and in most cases provide the department with an annual report demonstrating how the students will meet minimum course requirements in reading, writing, math, history, the natural sciences and other subjects.

Each home study student must be assessed annually and these assessments must be provided to the department. Options for assessment include standardized tests, a portfolio of the student's work or a report by a licensed Vermont teacher certifying proficiency. Vermont's mandatory assessment for public school students -- The New England Common Assessment Program -- is not currently one of the approved standardized tests for home study assessments. That's likely to change, however. "It will be allowed," predicted Vermont Education Commissioner Richard Cate. The department is in the process of rewriting home study rules so that they accommodate the NECAP's fall test date, which is out of sync with the home study enrollment deadlines.

Vermont's home study regulations are lengthy, but in practice they allow home school parents wide latitude in the way they teach their children. Some families opt for a traditional approach with workbooks and texts. Others believe in the "unschooled" philosophy and let their children lead the way in choosing studies that appeal to them.

In rare cases, the state denies home study enrollments or revokes them mid-year after a hearing. But almost all programs are approved and the Vermont education commissioner is confident that most home school students are learning.

"I think that the vast, vast majority are getting an excellent education," Cate said. "It's just different than what students might be getting inside the classroom. There's some really good things going on in some of these situations."

Read Full article here.

VER Editor: Fall testing of home study students is problematic. The time frame for enrollment notices found within the Home Study law does not accommodate easily for fall testing dates. Home Study does not have a rule making process that governs how the law is to be applied and therefore the 'rules' can not be rewritten. The department is taking a look at how to allow for the use of the NECAP by homeschoolers. This in conjunction with communication with homeschoolers may require a statutory change.

School Choice and Racial Balance 
By Paul Peterson, The Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2007
 
Schools that admit students on the basis of race run afoul of the Constitution, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the recent Supreme Court case, Parents v. Seattle. Over-subscribed schools may not use race as a tie-breaker when deciding which students to admit.
 
Paul Peterson is is director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
 
But according to Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his decisive concurring opinion, racial segregation remains such a serious public issue that explicit race criteria might be used, if all other means for achieving racial balance have been explored. Seattle's error was not to have first tried other, less draconian options for achieving diversity.
 
Both views are correct. And the solution is simple: To achieve racial balance, let parents choose their school, and let oversubscribed schools admit students by lot. If parents of all races and ethnicities seek admission to a particular school at the same rate, then a lottery will ensure that the school's social mix reflects that of the school district, the very goal Seattle said it tried to achieve.
 
It will be objected: Won't white parents apply to good schools at a higher rate than minority parents will? Won't some schools have larger concentrations of white students, leaving minorities packed into schools elsewhere?
 
Such questions imply that minority parents are not equally capable of figuring out what's best for their child. Yet, when parents can choose and schools use a lottery, minority parents are quite willing to look for options.
 
Read more here.

Montpelier – PreK Rulemaking Process

Background:

This past winter the Legislature passed H.534, Prekindergarten Education, into law. It governs how tax dollars flow from the education fund into the hands of both public and private providers. Two of the findings stated in the law are:
 
a) The family plays the most important role in the life of a young child.  Families have the primary responsibility and right to nurture and provide for the early childhood development and education of their children.
 
b) The provision of early care and prekindergarten education through high?quality private providers is one of the most crucial elements supporting the strength and stability of the system serving young children.
 
The law created a rulemaking process in which to work out many of the details needed to fulfill the intent of the new law. The departments of Education and Children and Families are to jointly create these rules with input from the various stakeholders found within Vermont.
 
Over the past couple of months, many department meetings and two open meetings have been held and nine drafts were created in an attempt to write these rules. The latest draft will be seen by the State Board of Education and the Legislative PreK Study Committee in the coming weeks. More drafts will follow and eventually time for public comments.
 
The drafts covered the definitions of terms used, community needs assessments, contracting with private providers, what is a qualified prekindergarten education program, staff qualifications, reporting the cost and effects of prekindergarten, and grounds for administrative appeal. 

My Perspective:

I attended the two open meetings. I commented on version 2 on August 30 and version 9 on September 11. These meetings were long and covered many difficult aspects to this new law.
 
1. The full spectrum of stakeholders in the prekindergarten debate was not represented in these meetings. Not because the powers that be prevented it, but because these particular stakeholders are busy working and do not have time to deal with this kind of process. Those that were missing were the ordinary folk, the parents whose children are supposedly going to benefit from this and the small home based providers. Yes, many in the room are parents and have or had prekindergarten aged children, but it is my impression they were there representing differing interests and many of them were paid to be there, including me. Many of my comments concerning the language of these rules centered on the balance of power between parents and the system.
 
2.  I do not see these rules as something that protects the parents ability to carry out their “primary responsibility and right to nurture and provide for the early childhood development and education of their children” as stated in the findings of the law. This is about the disbursement of money and contracts, not about a parent finding the best provider for their child. Assumptions are being made that the providers will get on board with these rules in plenty of time for the parents to choose from them, thereby exercising parental responsibility. A quality prekindergarten education can be provided outside of these rules.
 
3.  I have been told on more than one occasion that one of the reasons for the law was to get money into the child care system to improve its “quality” by paying for prekindergarten education programs. The debate is far from over about the results connected with prekindergarten educational programs. I hear statements and read articles all the time that 'prekindergarten is proven' to work. I also hear and read the opposite. The prekindergarten supporters in these meetings understood that they made some promises about what prekindergarten will do for children. One even wanted the rules to reflect a higher bar than even the law allowed for. These rules talk about the effectiveness of prekindergarten and require at least two assessments of the children during the school year. Accountability should also include the ability to follow these children in K-12 and see if prekindergarten produced the desired results.
 
4.  This law and these rules are not about lowering the cost of childcare or prekindergarten programs for families or providers. They will most likely not see much of a reduction in their costs. Providers are to calculate their actual total cost, which will include the new costs associated with the new rules. Then the local districts will decide how much they are willing or able to pay for prekindergarten education programs on a per child basis. The difference between these two numbers will be what the parents will have to pay for childcare. The ADM money provided for by this law is going into the system to pay licensed teachers to either provide oversight or provide the prekindergarten programs themselves.
 
5.  Considering the fundamental and philosophical problems with the law, the rulemaking process is proceeding as well as can be expected.

Editorial - Not Ready to Learn

The news reports I've read on the topic quote K and first grade teachers saying the children come to school without kindergarten readiness skills. The children have behavioral problems -- that is, they don't know how to take turns, stand in line, take direction from authority figures, and share. Many do not know colors, numbers, letters, and how to write their own name. Many have not been read to or talked to so their language development is slow.

Interestingly, 70% of preschoolers already attend voluntary private and/or government-funded preschool programs. We have already tried the preschool social experiment and according to the teachers -- it hasn't worked. So, why on earth would they suggest doing more of what doesn't work?

The answer given is that the children have not been enrolled in "quality" preschool programs. They would have us believe that only the state can provide quality preschool programs (presumably evidenced by "quality" public school K-12 programs).

Kids need copious amounts of individual one-on-one time with the people who care about them the most -- and in most cases that means mom and dad. Academically structured preschool programs are completely inappropriate environments for little kids. Research shows the programs are harmful to kids from middle class and upper class families. These kids wind up with social/emotional/behavioral problems -- defiance, unwillingness to cooperate, depressed, unhappy, unmotivated, etc.

While poor/at-risk kids may gain some cognitive development during a year of preschool attendance -- research shows the benefits wear off within 2 years of attending regular school!

So, if preschool programs typically have these results on preschoolers, and teachers can plainly see the kids are coming into classrooms unable or unprepared for kindergarten/first grade -- then why are they pushing this agenda?

The answer is money. It has nothing to do with what is best for young children.

Diane Flynn Keith 
Founder, Universal Preschool.com

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