Democrat leaders refuse to fund a proven literacy program in Vermont.

by Rob Roper

There is political spat brewing under the Golden Dome regarding a $700,000 appropriation – or lack thereof – for a childhood literacy program called Read Vermont. In a nutshell, the program funds “literary coaches” who train teachers how to use phonics, phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension to teach kids how to read. This is important because right now the kids can’t. Or not many of them.

In Vermont’s public schools, only 31 percent of 4th graders and 29 percent of 8th graders are proficient in reading, and for economically disadvantaged students those numbers drop to 18 percent and 17 percent respectively. It’s a real crisis. One born of a decision back in the 1990s by Vermont educators to buy into a loony-Left idea out of Columbia University to scrap phonics and embrace something called “balanced literacy,” which essentially says if you leave a child in a room with a bunch of books they will learn to read through osmosis. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one. (There was a great article by Seven Days that explains how this happened in depth.)

So, if we want our kids to learn to read, first we need to re-teach our teachers how to teach them how to do it. States like Mississippi, part of the “Southern Surge,” have embraced this approach wholeheartedly and leapfrogged Vermont in student outcomes as ours continue to decline. You’d think our “for the children” politicians would be all over this. But those in the majority are not.

Democrats on the House and Senate money committees are refusing to fund the program for FY27, despite having passed Act 139 – An act relating to supporting Vermont’s young readers through evidence-based literacy instruction in 2024. They, so they say, just can’t find the money. And blame the governor and his staff for not lobbying harder to get it into the budget, which is a total crock.

That’s the background; and here are the many points where I call BS, and few others where I have questions.

First, Read Vermont comes with a $700,000 price tag. The Vermont state budget is $9.4 billion. $700,000 represents 0.0074 percent of the budget. It represents 0.0292 percent of $2.4 billion education budget. How is it when we have a major crisis in child literacy, we can’t find $700,000 for a proven program to help fix this problem. And why when we are spending $2.4 billion to educate fewer than 80,000 students does a reading program require any additional appropriation at all? Isn’t teaching reading, like, kind of a core function of public education? Shouldn’t this program just be part of what we are already paying top dollar for?

According to Seven Days, Jay Nichols, executive director of the Vermont Principals Association is quoted, “[Principals and superintendents] often lament that more and more gets added to the plate every year.” How in the name of Sam Hill is teaching children to read something that is being “added to plate” of public education?! Well, given the outcomes Nichols and his colleagues are producing, I guess it is. What’s all that money being spent on?

Senator Andrew Perchlik (D-Washington) who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee was quoted by VT Digger, “Either because of timing or all of the swirl around education transformation, it’s been hard to make that [literacy program] a priority.” Okay. 83 percent of financially disadvantaged Vermont children can’t read proficiently, and it’s just not a priority for these jerks. That… is… telling.

Perchlik’s next excuse: “At this point [in the budgeting process], the $700,000 has been spent. We’d have to take it from somewhere else.” Here’s one suggestion: take it from the $1.1 million more you just voted for the Burlington safe-injection site in H.660 that’s already blown more than $700,000 over the past two years paying consultants to find out the obvious, that nobody wants the thing anywhere near anything. But it appears despite “all the swirl” in the legislature a taxpayer funded place to shoot up IS a priority? Kids learning to read, not so much. Nice to know where you stand.

Both Perchlik and his counterpart in the House, Appropriations Chair Robin Shcheu (D-Middlebury) both play the “we don’t know enough” about the Vermont Reads program to warrant funding it. Baloney. They learned enough about it to pass Act 139 in 2024 and fund it through FY26. Perchlik was, in fact, a sponsor of that law, so if he doesn’t know enough about it that’s a confession of another level of incompetence.

And, finally, these Democrat leaders and their colleagues try to blame the governor for not pushing hard enough to get the program included in the budget. To which I would respond, A) nonsense, look at the record, and B) given the nature and extent of the literacy crisis facing our children, contributing to the fastest declining test scores in the nation in our public schools, why weren’t YOU pushing for these reforms AT ALL?

And speaking of not pushing for the Read Vermont program AT ALL. Where in all this kerfuffle were the army of lobbyists representing the VTNEA, the Principal’s Association, the Superintendents’ Association and the School Boards? This is arguably the most powerful special interest block in the State House, responsible for actually educating our children, and they had nothing to say about this program with a proven track record of success in multiple states that are now running academic circles around Vermont? No sense of urgency to fight for the program? Again, telling.

Folks, these people – none of them – are looking out for the best interests of your children. They are – all of them – happy with the status quo, skirting accountability, bilking taxpayers, and cheating our kids out of the quality education they deserve.

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