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by Jarrod Vaillancourt
The recent VDC article, “Moore: Mississippi students now outperform Vermont students,” raises the question, “What has changed since 2015?” As the article correctly concludes:
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.
https://vermontdailychronicle.com/moore-mississippi students-now-outperform-vermont-students/
So, what has caused such a drastic and frankly embarrassing decline in academic achievement in Vermont? It is not a lack of spending taxpayers’ money. I suggest that one relevant factor is the passing of Act No. 1 of 2019. The Act created the “Ethnic Studies and Social Equity Working Group,” and the subsequent implementation of their requested recommendations, many of which appeared in Vermont schools shortly thereafter. The recommendations became fully effective on July 1, 2025, as a part of the revised Vermont State Board of Education Rule Series 2000 – Education Quality Standards (EQS). https://education.vermont.gov/sites/aoe/files/documents/sbe-final-adopted-rule-2000- clean-version-06-18-24.pdf
What are the measurable effects of the EQS? Has implementing these changes over the past six years, now fully effective, achieved the desired results? One of the stated goals of the EQS is teaching students how to develop metacognitive and social emotional skills that improve their academic outcomes. Have student academic outcomes improved? The resounding answer to that is clearly NO.
The EQS further indicates that educators shall be supported in examining their own identities and biases. Educators will also be supported in fostering a learning environment that recognizes multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial perspectives; presents and critiques historical counter-narratives; and encourages students to examine issues and expressions of social equity within and beyond the classroom or school.
A review of the EQS reveals that it is replete with left-leaning jargon and doublespeak. For example: equitable, anti-racist, culturally responsive, restorative practices, marginalized, social justice, etc. Anti-racist itself is mentioned twelve times. Ibram X. Kendi, one of the leading anti-racist activists, wrote the book: How to be an Anti-Racist. Kendi states that,
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Why are we promoting practices that are clearly divisive in nature?
The Act also appears to be partially responsible for the creation of a seemingly unaccountable albatross in Vermont’s education system that consists of highly paid DEI directors and their support staff who look at everything through the lens of identity. Again, what is the measurable benefit of spending taxpayers’ money on these practices?
Vermont needs to reevaluate its educational priorities. On October 27, 2025, Defending Education, a national parents’ group, along with dozens of local parent groups including SPEAKVT, sent letters to state officials calling on state legislative and executive leaders to conduct a statewide audit, “of their education laws and policies to ensure compliance with federal civil rights and constitutional protections.” The parent groups, “urged states to repeal or revise policies that discriminate based on race, sex, national origin, or religion, and violate federal law, before those violations jeopardize student safety, parental trust, and access to federal funding.”
The Vermont letter, Auditing of Vermont Education Laws, was sent to Speaker of the House Krowinski, Senate President Pro Tempore Baruth, and a copy went to Education Secretary Saunders.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Ericka Sanzi, senior director of communications at Defending Education, said, “It has become common practice for states to violate federal law in the name of diversity.” She believes, “With so many ideological bullies in state government and in our schools, cowardice and ignorance have ruled the day for far too long. State laws, regulations and practices that promote (and even require) race and sex-based discrimination must be exposed and eliminated. It’s time that every state cleans up the mess they’ve made in the name of DEI.”
Vermont’s EQS is failing miserably at its goal of enabling each student to achieve or exceed the performance standards approved by the State Board of Education. Vermont students are struggling with basic educational concepts, and there is no evidence that EQS is improving academic outcomes. It is unconscionable to continue to promote and spend taxpayers’ money on these programs.
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Categories: Commentary, Education
Headline fixed:
State education standards replete with Communist indoctrination
Whenever I read items like this, I shudder. Basically, our students aren’t learning much of anything in the elementary schools. Compare the current curriculums of these schools with the general curriculum used by elementary schools here in Vermont during the 1940s and early 1950s. There is no comparison. We oldsters who participated in the curriculum of this early period generally know more than a child participating in the current curriculum offered today in our schools.
Come on Forrest, our school kids have learned the mommy can have a pen*s daddy needs tampons and boys are allowed in the girls restrooms
This is spot on. And Tom is also right. Now, where are the people who will stand up and be a voice to remove all the sex ed and gender confusion, voices that call for racial preferential treatment over academic performance, and social emotional learning over academics, and along with that let’s just ignore things that teach about our national heritage and foundations and even the pledge of allegiance? These all play into the communist/socialist agenda – and wake up Vermont – this leads to tyranny. You like free speech now, but you won’t have it much longer unless you wake up to how our public schools are indoctrinating our children with these ideas and letting them ignore the challenges of academics and critical thinking.
Parents and community members, use your critical thinking and step up – Run for school board positions, take leadership roles in PTO, be voices of concern at school board meetings.
Yes AND…
You need an opposition party to name this indoctrination for what it is, face the inevitable slings and arrows, and to make it a point of emphasis.
Take on the teachers’ unions in VT? Godspeed.
AI and Siri have nothing to do with this, right?
Political, State and Ed elites and bureaucracies will refute challenges to the DEI policies not on rational grounds ( the it helps students perform academically) but on the ground that they are inspired by out-of-state ( ie foreign, alien) interests; ‘that’s not who we (vermonters) are.’ And they will endeavor to exclude any evaluation or even discussion of this issue in legislative councils. Silent is the golden rule for them, while naturally claiming they are the champions of democracy.