By Michael Bielawski
The governor’s top education official spoke to lawmakers on Wednesday on their new five-district school governance proposal, including the possibility that school choice options be expanded.
Editor’s note: a VDC interview with Vermont Agency of Education Secretary Zoie Saunders will air on Friday at Four today at 4 PM.
“At the high school level, we currently have school choice,” Secretary of the Agency of Education Zoie Saunders said to the House Education Committee. “So that is a practice that has been longstanding. Part of the recommendations that we are putting forward is that there be some additional consideration to school choice for a high schooler [to attend] an independent school.”
The hour-long committee session can be seen here.
Saunders was joined by the AOE’s general counsel Emily Simmons and their interim deputy secretary Jill Briggs Campbell.
Not everyone happy
Some lawmakers in the committee were skeptical that school choice would allow for fair access for all in terms of the opportunities they can access.
Rep. Erin Brady, D-Williston, said, “It seems like this school choice plan really exists on the premise that every single student in Vermont has someone at home that’s invested in their education and knows how to shop for schools or that they already have had a talent or a skill or an interest cultivated.”
Saunders disputed the notion that certain groups are left behind with school choice.
“I think we can look at research across the country, a lot of students in poverty exercise school choice and are looking for different options,” she said. “So I actually think that’s kind of a different assumption than what’s happening in practice.”
A screening process
Independent schools would go through a screening process. It would be done through the State Board of Education and they would “evaluate the ability for them to deliver public education to every student in their district and then they would be able to come up with a plan that makes sense for their district.”
She said that some areas of the state rely on independent schools so they should remain an option.
“So there would be the option for the districts to choose for a school of choice to be an independent school assuming they’re prequalified through the criteria established at the state,” she said.
Specialized programs and lottery process
She suggested that focused programming and curriculum will guide policy.
“The way we are thinking about choice in this context is really more specialized programming, so that would be up to the district to determine what’s the right configuration for their school,” she said.
Some schools are “able to specialize in a really specific area so maybe it’s an art school or an avionics school. And so there may be some operational considerations that you would look at in the overview of the education quality standards,” she said.
She said there would be a lottery process regarding who gets into which school.
A new accountability system
She suggested an accountability system that will be more transparent and based on student outcomes. She said that the current accountability system is “as confusing as our funding system.”
“We need to develop processes around measuring performance and if schools aren’t meeting performance objectives, that we have a very robust [support protocols] in place,” she said.
Campbell downplayed concerns about underperforming schools potentially getting shut down.
“We’re really looking at growth as a really critical way to measure student performance, in a way that we don’t actually do today,” she said.
Saunders added, “We have been working with U.S. Ed [the Department of Education] to amend our plan to ensure that those smaller schools can be part of that in a different way.”
Money going out of state?
The administration proposes eliminating the sending of state tuition money to schools out of state. One lawmaker suggested that could be problematic.
“Eliminating tuition out of state, that I know is a concern in the far reaches of the Northeast Kingdom where the New Hampshire Schools are closer in those nonoperating [no school available] districts,” Rep.Beth Quimbly, R-Lyndon, said.
Saunders responded, “It needs to be practical,” if education dollars are to follow students out of state.”