Education agency admits a years-long failure as student performance nosedives
by Mill Moore
Vermont elementary school students’ reading scores have fallen below the national average and show no sign of trending back upward. Mississippi on the other hand has ascended to a level above the national average after many years of serious under-performance.
Standardized test reading scores for Vermont fourth grade students have declined by the equivalent of 1.5 grade levels since 2015 when Vermont students had been scoring among the top five states in the U.S. In other words, fourth graders are now, on average, reading as if they were still in second grade.
The decade-long nosedive in Vermont elementary school student performance has occurred in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standardized testing program (otherwise known as The Nation’s Report Card).
The Vermont Agency of Education’s reaction to the 2024 NAEP scores was extremely unusual. It admitted to significant policy and operational failures extending over several years. In an October 2 news release, AOE Chief Academic Officer Erin Davis stated “the state has failed to support the implementation of key pieces of education policy.”
The situation is similar for fourth grade math. Vermont students’ average scores have fallen below the national average while Mississippi has climbed out of the cellar and into a top ten ranking.
NAEP scores also are available for eighth grade students. Their performance is little better than that of Vermont’s fourth grade students.
Again, traditionally bottom-ranked Mississippi has soared in the NAEP results after implementing significant instructional reforms. Mississippi is now ranked at ninth among all states in math and sixteenth in reading while Vermont now ranks a very mediocre thirty-sixth for both subjects.
The AOE released new test data from its own in-state VTCAP assessments on October 16. Education Secretary Zoie Saunders commented: “[the results] are consistent with recent performance on the NAEP …” In other words, nothing has changed and until some changes are made the downward trend is likely to continue.
The NAEP data show for about a decade Vermont elementary schools have been graduating large numbers students with reading and math skills so deficient that their performance on the NAEP assessment is beneath what the NAEP terms “basic.”
The NAEP defines “basic” as showing “some understanding of the material” but being likely to “struggle with more complex tasks or applications.” A sub-basic score means students have little to no understanding of the material.
Forty-two percent of Vermont fourth grade students were below basic in reading skills and 25 percent were below basic in math in 2024. Since fourth grade enrollment at the time was about 5800 students, about 2400 students were without even basic reading skills and 1400 students without basic math skills in just one year. Counted over the ten-year period in which Vermont scores have declined sharply; the total number of affected students is around 20,000.
How could so many students have failed without teachers, administrators, school directors and the AOE noticing?
Worse, what happens when students with serious skill deficiencies move on to higher grades or even into high school? Schools continue to advance these struggling students to higher grades.
Perhaps remedial programs are offered, though solving a problem after it has occurred is more costly and often less effective than prevention in the first place. Students whose early elementary years failed to prepare them properly can be disadvantaged for life.
The Mississippi experience, now being emulated in other deep South states, shows there’s nothing exotic about turning around a failing program. Mississippi made a commitment to give students a proper education by using proven instructional materials and teaching methods, with schools held accountable for results. Can Vermont do the same?
If admitting to failure is an essential first step to correcting a problem, then the AOE may now have gathered itself to make a positive response to this very alarming problem. Education Secretary Zoie Saunders has recently reorganized the Vermont AOE, in part to address dismayingly low student performance.
Recently named Chief Academic Officer Erin Davis has the task of leading the agency’s plans to support and train local school teachers and administrators. Davis says the agency has over 30 specialist staffers ready to deliver professional training at the local level.
Though the spotlight currently is on the AOE, its role is secondary to that of local school boards. School boards are ultimately responsible for their students’ performance. State law requires school boards to adopt annual improvement plans and to evaluate the results of previous years’ plans. If it is actually being completed, this annual exercise appears to have had no impact on improving elementary school reading and math instruction.
Compelling school boards to focus on student performance is greatly complicated by the pending Act 73 process to create school district consolidation plans for the entire state. An effective plan already in place in a particular district may not survive after that district is swept into a greatly enlarged consolidated district.
Plus, administrators must focus on establishing new administrative relationships with an enlarged district community while also addressing the failing K-3 learning problems.
Vermont legislators deserve credit for passing Act 139 last year, a law requiring schools to use evidence-based reading instruction and screening for students in grades K-3. Successful implementation depends on a strong leadership commitment to improvement at the AOE, within individual school boards and among district and supervisory union administrators. Unfortunately, Act 139 has two problems: it provides no funding and it ignored math performance.
Additionally, the Act 139 measures to ensure compliance are limited only to requiring schools to report to the AOE their number of below-proficient students and the assessments used to identify students at risk for reading difficulties. The act does not set up accountability for effective follow-through. The AOE itself can encourage and support change, but its tools to force change are limited and have rarely been used in the past.
However, passing a law requiring something “shall” happen is some distance away from prompt and faithful execution of legislative wishes. Educational reforms often meet grudging compliance in the field. School boards and administrators often claim they have priorities other than those desired in new legislation and few resources to deal with new requirements. The system inherently resists change.
The lack of clear performance accountability standards at the state, school district, and individual school levels is a significant weakness, both in evaluating past practices and in planning future improvements. School administrators’ responsibility for improving student performance is not clearly defined.
Citizens or taxpayers wishing to hold the AOE and schools accountable find local level NAEP and VTCAP test results either are unavailable or restricted from public disclosure due to recent changes in privacy protections. Though some student data are available through the agency’s web site, the process is unnecessarily complicated and many AOE web pages are far out of date. District-level and school-level assessment data are generally unavailable.
In June of next year Vermont’s elementary schools will graduate another cohort of 2400 near-illiterate and near-innumerate students, as they have done for the last several years. The imperative for change is obvious.
To its credit, the AOE is taking steps in the right direction. Next, the schools and the General Assembly must act—the schools to make instructional change a priority and legislators to create an Act 139 duplicate to address math education and to put strong accountability teeth in both pieces of legislation.
Avoiding action by making excuses about COVID impacts, social media influences, student use of cellphones and other such distractions is not acceptable. Mississippi has succeeded despite these problems. If Mississippi can succeed at this then Vermont surely can also.