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by Bob Frenier
Almost 40 years after the VT Supreme Court rendered its Brigham decision, supposedly ensuring equal educational opportunities for all Vermont kids, the opportunities to be academically proficient in Vermont schools remain decidedly UNequal. Milton’s elementary and middle schools collectively tested 35+/- points below proficient on the 2025 state achievement test while right next door in Westford the average was 24 points above proficient. That 60-point differential was typical: Middlesex averaged 80 points above next-door Berlin; East Montpelier scored an average of 96 points above neighboring Barre City and 59 points above Barre Town; Montgomery scored 100+ points above the nearby towns of Richford, Bakersfield and Troy. These scores are taken directly from the Agency of Education’s data, and the list of unconscionable disparities goes on and on. Scores for low-income kids are even worse, and those kids are 35%+/- of the total student population.
The recent legislative brouhaha about education funding and redistricting made absolutely no difference to this disparity in the quality of classroom instruction. The kids got lip service, but nobody did nuthin’ to improve their opportunity to achieve academic proficiency. What makes the situation even more egregious is that the recent VT Supreme Court Vitale decision made it clear that Vermont kids have a “fundamental right” to an equal educational opportunity that is supposed to be guaranteed by the state’s “fundamental obligation” to provide it. Does anybody in state government have the moxie to claim these disparate scores indicate our children’s right to equal educational opportunity is being adequately protected?
I suggest that it’s time for parents to pay attention to the school choice lawsuit that will be filed in the early Fall by the public service law firm Liberty Justice Center. A key part of the argument will be that the state has failed its “fundamental obligation” to provide a “substantially equal educational opportunity” to all Vermont children, and the huge disparity in test scores between too many neighboring towns will be a central part of the argument. Any parent who is unhappy with the quality of their child’s education can be a plaintiff in this suit and there is no cost to them. Learn more by emailing advocacy@EdWatchVT.org
Nobody should worry about what will happen when the lawsuit succeeds and Vermont kids can attend the school that work best for them. The VT education system is a overbearing monopoly, just like the old Bell Telephone Company that many of us remember for its clunky rotary-dial telephones that were wired to the wall. When the courts broke up the “Ma Bell” monopoly, we customers could not begin to imagine the astonishing cell phone revolution that would replace it. When the VT Supreme Court breaks up the AOE/NEA monopoly, look for multiple, innovative education entrepreneurs to bring similarly imaginative solutions to the education problems we face today. No government is smart enough to figure it out.
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I dont think parents (in the Williamstown-Northfield School district) even know about the lawsuit. I’m sure many of them are unhappy with the education their children are getting but can’t do much to change things. They can’t afford to send their children to a private school and if they are paying high rents, mortgages and property taxes —well they just can’t swing everything and put food on the table too. I’m sure that they want school choice but are too afraid to speak out. Vermont is unaffordable and those who stay are stuck!
Get on the agenda’s of scheduled school board meetings as other business and advertise it asking parents to attend — I bet it would get around and the turnout might be just what you need. It would be discrimination if they didn’t allow it and who’s benefiting the most-the children of course. Many parents would come and listen. They come for their kids concerts, teachers conferences, sporting events-they will come for this.
Selectboard Public Comment period might be a good place to get the word out, as well. SPEAK VT might also be willing to spread the word!
Interesting results out of Arkansas. “It’s amazing what can be done when schools focus on teaching basic things like reading, writing, and math.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/06/arkansas-governor-sarah-sanders-announces-big-gains-test/
I’m sure they’ll all be well prepared for life – in Arkansas.
One thing that would help is the rapid adoption of phonics-based K-3 reading instruction. Way too many students fall behind from the start when taught the conventional “3 cueing” method which uses pictures to teach words instead of breaking down words into the letter sounds and their combinations. Most students will learn to read with any benign approach but for those on the dyslexia spectrum (+/- 20%) phonics is essential.
Act 139 (2024) requires this change but does not provide sufficient support for teacher training or rewards for teachers whose students test scores improve. The money saved on special education programs for failing readers would easily cover the cost of rapid adoption.
I was very fortunate to have one teacher in 6th grade that taught phonics (way back when), and it has helped me all of my life. I have never been able to understand why it was dropped. IMO it would seriously help with reading and writing, but who am I? Not an educator.
Time to stop pretending equity=equality. The AOE has switched the language from equality (opportunity based, as the Supreme Court ruled) to equity (result orriented, always ends in a net decline). I would suspect the schools with lower proficiency scores have bought into and focused on the socialist buzz word equity whereby critical theory is slipped into every subject while the schools that have a more equal opportunity focused curriculum allow those students that can excel to do so. Check the language your district is using in their mission policies and see if there’s a correlation. God bless y’all!
You would suggest that based on what? That kind of comment illustrates nothing but your own bias and does nothing to further the conversation.
“VT Supreme Court Vitale decision made it clear that Vermont kids have a “fundamental right” to an equal educational opportunity that is supposed to be guaranteed by the state’s “fundamental obligation” to provide it. ” Another case of the (bar) legislating from the bench. The court has no delegated authority, other than what they assume, to dictate law, only to name the distinctions of law. The Legislature is the branch for expressing the ‘will’ of the people; the Executive is the branch to execute that will, and the judicial, the intended weakest branch is the branch to declare what law is. In each case, every branch is limited in scope by the Constitution, and may not infer what isn’t written. Casus Omissus. If it is not expressly delegated it is not intended. Our VT Constitution does not in any place state that the private property owners hold the responsibility of educating the population’s kids, nor does it instruct the state to do so either. It weighs in on the matter with a key word: ought.
§ 68. [Laws to encourage virtue and prevent vice; schools; religious activities]
Laws for the encouragement of virtue and prevention of vice and immorality ought to be constantly kept in force, and duly executed; and a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town unless the general assembly permits other provisions for the convenient instruction of youth. All religious societies, or bodies of people that may be united or incorporated for the advancement of religion and learning, or for other pious and charitable purposes, shall be encouraged and protected in the enjoyment of the privileges, immunities, and estates, which they in justice ought to enjoy, under such regulations as the general assembly of this state shall direct.
This instruction does not match the execution of public schooling. Straight up, our constitution instructs public servants to hold the right to private property untouchable – unattachable. It uses three descriptors: Natural, Inherent and Unalienable to describe our right to private property, very strong and specific. IN practice the legislature does not support equally all educative efforts, it plunders private property owners in rebellion of the Constitution to deliver a system of programming youth for compliancy, thus the alarming number of drugs delivered to the youngest of us. In fact schools have become a factory farm for Big Pharma, the latest crime to evolve is to program the children to be confused and suspicious about the validity of their born gender, and to turn to big pharma to (not) solve it.
Childhood vaccines? a ready market, no marketing needed, no liability for harms, no reporting of facts, and the entire scheme a rebellion against our constitution. Since the 1986 vaccines liability act was passed in violation of the Constitution, our children has been subjected to greater and greater loss of healthiness. The economy is concurrently destroyed by plundering private property again under duress and assumed force, shutting it down for the act of war against the people, the lockdown and subsequent coercion and experimentation on the basis of a fraudulently implemented test administered with settings to provoke positive outcomes. After collapsing the economy, the municipalities who didn’t have the right to charge it in the first place, doubled the property taxes- in this town at least.
Mark my comment was based on my personal time in public education, observing and working with staff and administrators guiding local policies with framework set by national organizations championing the concept of the socialist buzzword “equity”. Equity is why kids are collectively failing down. It’s not successful or proficient but as a matter of consolidating education results, the failure is more equitable. That’s the same result any equity driven policy, be it educational, economical or whatever always produces…..net decline.