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Cuz the data says more charter schools, flexibility to adapt and incentives to perform.
by Rob Roper
National test scores are out for our K-12 students, and the results – again – are not good. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that in 2024 barely half of high school seniors had a basic proficiency or better in math, and a third scored “below basic” in reading. This trend of declining public school outcomes goes back over a decade and a half, was exacerbated by the Covid school closures, and, despite billions poured into the system to fix “pandemic learning loss,” there hasn’t been much bounce back to speak of.
As bad as the national numbers are, Vermont is doing worse. Speaking at the Governor’s press conference, Education Secretary Zoe Saunders said,
“We are concerned about the declining performance as it relates to reading scores…. We started seeing a decline in our literacy outcomes before the pandemic, and while there continues to be a decline nationwide we are seeing some really considerable drops for Vermont, which is concerning. In fourth grade reading we used to score in the top for the country and in the last results we dipped below the average.”
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Amid this bad news, the Wall Street Journal notes, “One silver lining: scores at charter schools mostly didn’t fall.”
This statement is backed up by the results of the latest (2023) Stanford CREDO study, gold standard research that has been digging into charter school vs traditional public school (TPS) outcomes for thirty years. Here’s a key takeaway from the 160 page report:
The majority of charter schools provide better year-to-year outcomes for students compared to their traditional public-school options. Most of these schools perform better to such a degree that the difference is statistically significant. The results stand up to deeper investigation. Charter schools produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population than their adjacent TPS. They move Black and Hispanic students and students in poverty ahead in their learning faster than if they enrolled in their local TPS. They are more successful than the local public school alternatives across most grade spans and community settings. These results show that charter schools use their flexibility to be responsive to the local needs of their communities. (p.13)
I just want to reemphasize that last bit, “flexibility to be responsive to the local needs of their communities. So, if you’re really following the data and want to improve student outcomes the way to do it is to move away from the current system and inject more customer focused, operational flexibility – the ability to experiment, adopt successful programs and staff and quickly discard the unsuccessful – at the school level. AKA school choice.
Charter schools, independent, and private schools are freer/free to do this. Public schools, a state controlled monopoly dominated by public sector unions and motivated not by customer needs and satisfaction but by politics is neither designed nor incentivized to do this. It’s a bad, ineffective, deteriorating system. Just look at the data!
But it’s the system Vermont’s current education reform effort, Act 73, is more than doubling down on, while actively dismantling the generally better performing, lower cost independent tuitioning system Vermont has had for over 150 years. This is the opposite of what the data says to do! Vermont does not have charter schools, but our tuitioning system for towns that do not operate public schools operates similarly with public funds following students to independently operated schools.
The programs offered by independent schools are diverse (as are their student bodies). You can choose from traditional college preparatory programs, Waldorf curriculum, Montessori, Christian, special needs focused, and more. Some of these schools are small, and some are large, allowing students to find not just a curriculum, but a learning culture that best suits their needs. And, unlike their public-school counterparts, if independent schools fail to produce results, their customers can leave, and they go out of business. That is the “incentive to perform” the data says is critical for progress. We need more of this, not less.
But Act 73 actively knocks out over half of all the independent schools currently allowed to participate in the tuitioning program and reduces the flexibility of those remaining. That is an anti-data approach to solving either of our education crises: the property tax crisis and the quality/student outcomes crisis. Act 73 solves neither and will likely make both worse.
These are not data driven decisions, but political. The politically powerful teachers’ unions basically own the legislative majority Democrat Party, and that party is working to consolidate that political power, funnel it more taxpayer money, and wipe out its competition from lower cost, higher performing independent schools. Kids and taxpayers be damned. And for some incomprehensible reason Republicans seem content to operate within those parameters rather than challenge them. The result is what we got with Act 73; a literal rearranging of the deck chairs (school district redistricting) coupled with a deliberate smashing of the lifeboats, so fewer students are able to escape the sinking ship.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com
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Categories: Commentary, Education
Like many issues about raising children, parental involvement is key. Yes, charter schools tend to have higher scores because parents have to take an active role in applying to the school to have their child accepted. These are the same parents that monitor homework, adequate sleep, healthy diets, cleanliness, etc. If your parents don’t really care about these things and just send you off on the bus everyday so they can do drugs, then, ya, chances are your not going to do very well in school unless you’re exceptional. Today’s Teachers are saddled more and more with rearing children where the parents have neglected to, to say nothing of the social work they’re now expected to do. Remember the threat of the Truant Officer coming to your house? Well it’s pretty much non-existent today. Most of these issues boil down to parental involvement and responsibility.
Re: “Today’s Teachers are saddled more and more with rearing children where the parents have neglected to, to say nothing of the social work they’re now expected to do.”
Are teachers ‘saddled’ with this dystopia? Or are they complicit, preferring instead to do whatever they’re told to do in order to receive their paycheck and lucrative retirement benefits?
Parental involvement IS the key. So instead of complaining that teachers are ‘saddled’ with rearing the children of others, why don’t teachers support the governance Rob Roper points out as a proven mitigation – i.e., School Choice? If we want parents to accept responsibility, enable them to choose the education they believe best meets the needs of their children for a change.
Hi Will,
While it’s true issues at home can and do affect student outcomes, those issues — single parent households, parents lacking education, poverty, etc — tend to be LESS a factor in Vermont than other states as we have higher than average incomes, top five in the nation for college or better population, better than average two parent households, and we spend more money per pupil than anybody but maybe one other state…. So why are our schools/teachers doing WORSE than those in states with higher degrees of these challenges and less funding to meet them? Blaming the parents is a cop out. See my earlier article here: https://robertroper.substack.com/p/face-it-vermonts-public-schools-are
But if the nature of students and their families is changing, it would seem that the current system is structurally ill-equipped to deal with these changes, and should be scrapped for one this is suited to successfully educate children from more challenged backgrounds. No? This challenge is being met in places through the charter schools and school choice programs. They are called “Gap Buster” programs.
As for VT teachers being “saddled” it seems to me they’ve been lobbying hard for the role of rearing children for decades as they are working systematically to take over birth to 5 childcare — with a massive price tag, I’ll add.
A thief says he didn’t do it.
A murder pleads innocent.
What do you expect them to say?
They are money driven, first and foremost.
They are ideologically driven, by the money.
Their masters, they do not know, but they are the New World Order, Marxist pimps.
Here is a woman that knew what was going on long ago, how perfectly here book predicts what is our current educational crisis in Vermont.
The entire public education system practices Munchausen by Proxy syndrome. Breaking down and diminishing our children so they can be created as the Left wishes.
Yup! Useful idiots, good little worker bees for the collective. Control them with fear, control them by lust……control them by their smart phones.
The only reason why they are banning smart phones in school is because they don’t want to get caught.
The solution would be for kids to bring mini cameras/video equipment to school, but no phone. See what the reaction to that would be!!!! lol.
We have to be wiser than snakes and more innocent than doves.
They want us dumb and compliant. That’s what all slave masters want, after all you will own nothing and be happy, they will own everything. 🙂 (they leave that part out)
The 10 people who run this state need to come out of the closet. We need to out our Oligarchs!!!!! That’s not a bad thing, that’s called freedom.
Then look to their masters!
Who are they, Neil?
Well, Rob, I don’t think it’s a cop out! Having a spouse who taught for 35 years could probably teach you a thing or two about the difference between students who do well, and those that do not based on parental involvement. I didn’t mention single parents, parents lacking education, poverty, etc. These are your qualifiers. Sorry, but bad parenting spans across all socioeconomic levels, if the parents don’t care, the kids won’t care. Tell me the message that was sent by Trump by dismantling the Department of Education. Keep them stupid so they can be easily manipulated! And by the way, teachers are not trying to rear your kids. In most households most parents have to work, and therefore have to send their kids to preschool, or probably nursery school in your case. Gee, we wouldn’t want them to learn anything before kindergarten!
Re: “Having a spouse who taught for 35 years could probably teach you a thing or two about the difference between students who do well, and those that do not based on parental involvement.”
Meanwhile I, as an employer of many of these students (hundreds in fact), for nearly the last 50 years, might also teach you a thing or two.
And as a parent myself and former school board member, who also worked, and with a spouse who is a teacher still, might teach you another thing or two as well.
But only if you are willing to reconsider your presumptions. Otherwise, you will only live and learn more of the same dystopia.
“There are people who are so presumptuous that they know no other way to praise a greatness that they publicly admire than by representing it as a preliminary stage and bridge leading to themselves.” – Friedrich Nietzche
Will, I did not deny that students who have a healthy home life are in a better position to learn than their peers who don’t. But, statistically speaking, Vermont students overall come from better home situations than students in other states, and, on top of that, our schools are given significantly more financial resources to address problems than their colleagues in other states. If you’re insisting that Vermont students are doing worse than kids in other states because our parenting in Vermont is worse, please back that up with something resembling evidence.
As for the dismantling of the Department of Education, question: since its inception in 1980 has public education in Vermont improved or declined? It’s declined. Ergo is is not a productive investment of taxpayer funds. And it makes much more sense to spend the resources wasted on an ineffective bureaucracy in classrooms, which is the objective of this policy.
Pre-K in Vermont… If the kids were actually learning something during those years, how come their 4th grade NEAP scores are worse than those of the students who took the test in the years before Vermont went all in on universal pre k?