Commentary

Huff: G.E.T. R.E.A.L! Education reform

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G.E.T.  R.E.A.L. is a solemn promise and a positive path forward for our state by Vermont Republicans focused on improving the quality of life of our people. It is a prescription of policy proposals, and this is the third in a series of essays explaining the program.

by Bill Huff

Vermont’s K-12 public education system is broken. When Vermont passed Act 60 in 1997, our schools consistently performed in the top five nationwide. Since then, spending has exploded while student counts have dropped from 106,000 kids to less than 80,000, and test scores have been steadily falling for the past decade and a half. 

The results, or lack thereof, speak for themselves in the latest NEAP (a.k.a. the National Report Card) scores that show dramatic declines in math and reading throughout the system. These include a 4-point decline in reading and 9-point decline in mathematics. Compared to the 2012-13 school year full a decade earlier — well before Covid began in 2020, so that’s not a valid excuse — we see a decline of 7 points in reading and 14 in math.

While there are certainly many factors involved in student outcomes, we can’t dismiss the fact that increasingly our public schools have become hyper-politicized with issues such as climate change, critical race theory, gender and sexuality, and anti-second amendment rights taking on a higher priority for faculty and staff than the core subjects of math, reading, writing and science. As we write this, Outright Vermont and the Racial Justice Alliance of Montpelier High School are organizing a “School Walkout for Palestine” on March 27, which is sure to be more fun than taking geography class about where Israel and Gaza appear on a map. 

With this kind of behavior and culture – disrupting class and disrespecting and degrading the learning process through temper-tantrum political activism – not just tolerated but encouraged by faculty and staff not to mention our majority political class, is it any wonder that discipline of any kind in the classroom is deteriorating to the detriment of not just learning but also student safety? The politicization of education is damaging our children in very real ways. 

And what about the mental health crisis? Beyond the falling test scores, is it any surprise that when the focus of a child’s eight-hours-a-day, five days-a-week public school experience is a constant message that the planet is on fire, your country is evil, everyone’s a racist or a victim of oppression, you may be a boy trapped in a girl’s body or vice versa, and the adults in charge don’t care about the future we’re going to leave you that we are witnessing increased mental health issues in our young people, manifesting in higher rates of depression, addiction, and suicide? The politicization of education is damaging our children in very real ways. 

Seven Days recently ran an in-depth article, Too Many Vermont Kids Struggle to Read. What Went Wrong…,that discovered Vermont public schools have been using a trendy but totally ineffective method of teaching reading for over a generation. How did this happen? The article explains, “…the politicization of literacy — with phonics often being thought of as a Republican cause — is one reason that scientific knowledge about reading hasn’t been put into practice widely.” 

Again, the politicization of education is damaging our children in very real ways. So, Vermonters need to get real about the damage this approach to education is having, who is behind it, and how to fix it. 

First and foremost, we need to get politics out of the classroom and restore a culture of academic excellence in core subjects: math, reading, writing, history, and the sciences. We need to get back to teaching our kids how to think, not what to think. And we need to restore discipline and mutual respect to the classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and faculty lounges. 

To this end, the legislature should repeal every curriculum mandate not associated with those core subjects and discourage via its power of the purse any public school activities that abuse the captive audience status of children in school to promote or oppose partisan political agendas. We need to give teachers the tools they need to establish and maintain discipline in the classrooms and hallways. And we need to support students who excel academically just as we need to support those who need extra help. 

All of these unacceptable results come despite increased spending year after year, and the escalating property taxes to fund those increases topped off by this year’s surreal 20 percent average property tax increase. (If there has been a more vivid “Get Real” moment than that, we don’t know it!) This is as unsustainable as it is irresponsible, and we will discuss education finance reform in a future GET REAL essay focused on Affordability.

 Bill Huff Orange County Republican Committee chair on behalf of all the Republican County Committee chairs. 

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Categories: Commentary, State Government

14 replies »

  1. get real//// you all went along with the covid shut down and the kill shot//// now//// get real//// stop blowing smoke up every bodies …//// you bunch of frauds////

  2. The public education monopoly cannot and will not change in order to benefit all students as long as it remains a monopoly. Period!

  3. Excellent article Bill. Having been a substitute teacher a few years ago, I witnessed all of it first hand. In some instances the diligent students that want to learn, and be good students, suffer due to poorly controlled classes. Another issue that affects the overall test scores is the fact that NO student is ever required to repeat a grade. When I once asked “why?”, the answer was “because it would make the school look bad”! Who suffers in the end? The student! I know someone that graduated from HS, but is not able to read.

  4. As a former lifelong teacher, I give a big “Amen” to this comment from the article: “First and foremost, we need to get politics out of the classroom and restore a culture of academic excellence in core subjects: math, reading, writing, history, and the sciences. We need to get back to teaching our kids how to think, not what to think. And we need to restore discipline and mutual respect to the classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and faculty lounges.”

  5. Bill, I suggest Get Real/GOP align and engage with a large voting block of all VT Parents and Parent Teachers Groups to state its policy on enacting VT’s Parental Bill of Rights. We watch as legislators erode Parental Rights- the sacred rights and freedoms of parents to know and inform their own children’s education as it is being challenged dozens of times inside Vermont. Parents get very real when it comes to their children and perhaps will run for legislative offices to advance Parental Rights in education and upbringing. Michael Ramey, President. the national Parental Rights Foundation already has Vermont on its radar. And agreed to further work with Vermont and Vermont Family Alliance on Parental Rights to “ defend, support, and advance the right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their minor children” Filed mostly by Republicans, today 63 Bills have been filed in 24 states. VT’s new Secretary of Education has had successful first hand experience in Florida’s on the passage of Parental Rights. Link provided is to Parental Rights Model Bills and can be found here : https://parentalrightsfoundation.org/. Link below is the state by state legislative tracker. Lets Get Real. https://www.quorum.us/spreadsheet/external/GZLbbeqXVUwTykGftneP/

  6. This will require deleting the concept of “equity” in our schools which has become the priority of the educational industrial complex among other aspects of our society. Sorry folks, equity driven policies never have and never will lead to success.

    • you may find some people or ,more equal than other….just sain’

  7. Here is a good video to watch, these changes have been long term, purposeful and planned…

  8. My ex was a teacher for 30 years. A couple of years ago I asked her how she’d like to be teaching today. “My God, I’d be in jail.”

  9. The notion of undoing decades of propaganda-based, nonsensical, biased, manipulative “education” is quaint, but impossible. The horse ran out of the barn a long time ago. As other nations are way far ahead of our deadman’s education curve, it will take a miracle of divine intervention and much heavy lifting to undo the damage all ready done. First, the embedded fraud and corruption needs to be annihilated. Good luck with that one.

    • The scary and hard to correct part is that many of the educators are a product of the same two generation flawed education product