|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
It’s time to hold the Unions accountable.
by Rob Roper
This is not breaking news but deserves repeating. Mill Moore, writing for Campaign for Vermont exposed this startling new reality earlier this month in a terrific article highlighting Vermont’s decade-long public school performance nosedive, which has coincided with an upward trend in math and literacy scores in Mississippi. Yeah, that Mississippi. The (formerly) “Thank God for Mississippi” Mississippi. The Mississippi whose students now perform better than ours.
As Moore points out, “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.” Another astute Vermont writer on this subject, former State’s Economist and UVM professor Art Woolf, dug deeper to show that when accounting for demographics, Vermont’s scores look even worse with non-Hispanic white Vermonters (that’s about 90 percent of our student population) scoring 47th and 48th compared to their peers nationally in math and reading.
That’s really bad.
But here’s the kicker Moore and Woolf didn’t mention: Mississippi is achieving these stellar results while spending around $12,500 per kid. Vermont spends nearly $29,000. Overall, we are the 2nd highest spenders in the nation and Mississippi is 45th (Source: NEA). Yet they are improving and we are deteriorating. Makes you wonder.
The excuse we hear in Vermont for this failure is most often “poverty.” Yet Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation with the lowest per capita income, and their schools are still managing do a better job for their students. Vermont per capita income ranks 16th from the top. Please explain!
The other day I heard an educrat in Vermont lamenting our “teacher shortage.” But Vermont has by far the lowest student to teacher and student to staff ratios in the country at 10.5 to 1 and 4.3 to 1 respectively. Mississippi is getting by with a 14 to 1 student to teacher ratio. The national average is 15.3.
And who pays their teachers more? That would be Vermont. According to the NEA, Vermont’s average teacher salary is $69,562 and Mississippi’s is $53,704 – 51st in the nation! Out of 50! (Well, there’s DC, but the point is made.) So, teachers’ salaries aren’t the issue.
What about blaming the parents for not preparing their kids at home? Vermont has the fifth highest number of citizens per capita with a college degree or better. Mississippi? They rank 49th. There’s also significantly more crime in Mississippi than in the Green Mountains. The list goes on, and… for crying out loud, it’s Mississippi!
But somehow with far less money, fewer teachers (and those working for less pay), less educated parents at home, more children living in poverty and all the issues that come with that, Mississippi public schools are doing a significantly better job of teaching their kids to read, write and to math than ours. Well, tip your cap, and W…T…F!
In a press release put out by the Vermont Agency of Education following this embarrassing juxtaposition with the Magnolia State, Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Erin Davis, said, “…I know how important it is that we resist the urge to assign blame….”
Sorry, but no. Consider that urge no longer resisted. There needs to be consequences for this level of systemwide failure. It’s not just our students who are being robbed of a quality education and any future that requires one, but taxpayers are being driven into bankruptcy to pay outrageously for this bloated failure factory.
And we know exactly who is to blame: The Vermont Teachers’ Unions, the Superintendents Association, and the Principals’ Association, the State House lobbyist equivalent of Cerberus, the three headed monster guarding the gates of the underworld, also known as The Blob. Here their job is to keep the money flowing in ever-increasing bucketloads while reducing their accountability for performance to non-existent. Or, in other words, to ensure we all just pay up and “resist the urge to assign blame.” In both of these endeavors they have succeeded.
Of course, the Blob couldn’t have achieved this level of political and financial success despite this catastrophic failure to do their job without their total ownership of the majority Vermont Democrat Party. In the 2024 elections the VTNEA endorsed around 120 candidates for state House and Senate – almost all were Democrats. The payoff for this support was putting The Blob in charge of reforming the education system The Blob has destroyed and has no incentive to reform.
This took place with the farcical Vermont Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont, which was tasked in 2024 with coming up with cost savings measures for legislators to discuss in 2025 – and they just didn’t do it. And now the School District Redistricting Task Force which was supposed to develop maps for more streamlined and cost efficient school districts for discussion in 2026 – and they just didn’t do it. They’ve very purposefully wasted eighteen months, spending even more taxpayer money, to spike reform that was supposed to save taxpayers’ money. Oh, the irony! Welcome to Montpelier.
It’s deliberate sabotage. But until this dynamic is fixed by the voters, breaking the Democrat/VTNEA cabal that has turned public education into little more than a lucrative grift, our taxpayers will continue to be robbed blind, our students will continue to be deprived of a quality education, and our schools will continue to be a punchline… in Mississippi.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Commentary, Education
Proof that more money does NOT fix the education problem. Time to re-think how things are done in this state.
Oh wait! I know! The Left will throw even MORE money at the problem!
John, your statement lacks an analysis of the monies spent by Vermont that Mississippi doesn’t spend. You might be correct, but without that analysis it’s impossible to know.
David, what you feel John missed is clearly stated in the article….
Headline fixed:
Vermont’s public schools are now worse than Zimbabwe’s
Other headline: Vermonts Future Lies In Mississippi.
“They’re” not trying to ‘educate’ in the traditional sense of the word.
“They’re” focused on shaping the worldview of the young. Shaping their consciousness into a global, socialist worldview.
In large part, “they” do this by the corruption of language and hence thought.
“They’re” succeeding.
Spor on. They are creating the biological foundation for socialism. A requirement to destroy capitalism per the neo-marxist, communist Herbert Marcuse.
Yep. You get it, Christine…
As the Mamdanification process of our society proceeds, those who run the education establishment know that there is no need for yoots to learn mathematics, science or proper english language skills to make their way in life. All necessities will be provided by equitable taxation of “the rich”. The schools now take on the role of indoctrinating the skulls full of mush in much more important concepts like celebrating diversity, empowering those with demonstrable victimhoods and promoting alternative lifestyles such as gender fluidity and decorating one’s body with ink, metal and wood to the point of creating the perfect unemployable personhood.
Perfectly stated!
One potential game changer that Dems should agree to is a rapid switch from widely used, but disproven “3 Cueing” reading instruction to evidence based phonics instruction. Most K-3 students will learn to read from any benign approach but some need phonics or they will rapidly fall behind and wind up in Special Education. 40% of Special Education referrals today are for reading failure.
Special Education has grown to be one of the top drivers of escalating school budgets and corresponding property taxes. Let’s use the method that has the greatest success with all students and watch Special Education budgets decline, saving tens of millions a year.
Not just money is at stake. Prisons are full of people who cannot read beyond 4th grade level. The cost to society from Vermont’s poor reading scores is the lost human potential of students who could have learned to read if only they had been taught properly.
The data in my school district shows that special education costs decline when parents have the option to choose the school they believe best meets the needs of their children. The problem is that school districts (the education special interest groups) can charge taxpayers more money when kids are coded as being disabled. This is but one of the reasons why the top disability today is ‘behavioral’.
The fix is as plain as the nose on our faces. For many reasons, Vermont’s school choice tuitioning program improves student outcomes and decreases costs. Which explains why Act 73 is eliminating tuitioning as an available alternative. The education establishment wants our money. Clearly, they only care about our children to the extent that they can indoctrinate them to serve the establishment.
But it’s up to the voters. If we don’t elect an administration and legislature that support school choice tuitioning, we get more of the same. Please do everything you can to promote the H.89 School Choice Act currently languishing in the House Education Committee’s trash heap.
All are very good points about the issues with education in Vermont. It is so upsetting and sad. We suffer financially, but the students suffer because of all of the important items they do not receive in school.
I used the “hooked on phonics” course with my 3 year old son (1989) When he entered kindergarten, his teacher pulled me aside to let me know, he read the book aloud, that she was reading to the class. We also read no less than 5-6 booked every day. You teach a child to read, and they feel empowered to do great things. Why is this so difficult to understand?
But I’m sure Vermont’s kids excel at alphabet and white colonialism studies!
Bet even 6th graders can recite all 50 Genders!
I must be cautious here and not include any names, but I wonder how the children of some of the folks that influence the education in Vermont do when they go to college.
They fit right in because college these days is nothing but an indoctrination machine.
Instead of instantly adopting the Mississippi method of improving English and math prowess at a lower cost, lets spend a few years studying it. No hurry.
Al in all just another brick in the wall.
Thank you NEA. For good measure, throw in some lack of parental accountability. Not quite a recipe for a world class education competing on the world stage.
I had the exceptional privilege of hearing Katharine Birbalsingh from the UK at a recent conference. She recognized the failing school system in London, and established a school for the inner city children. The results are outstanding! The students are outperforming the other city schools, and they are happy. She is an exceptional headmistress.
I could tell you much more, but check out the school: https://michaela.education/
The US should adopt some of this school’s techniques.
What were the stats before Convid-19? We should not forget how lockdowns, masks, shots and mass hysteria made learning, comprehension, or retention nearly impossible. Education was flipped to social engineering and bio-engineered ingestation of chemical laden food and big pharma scripts. All good for brain development and healthy bodies, so we are sold in mass quanities. No where else – only in the USA – a country of free ranging lab rats – from cradle to early graves.
So, what fraction of total school spending is special education? SE funding is buried in non-SE funding, to blur and prevent seeing the staggering amounts we spend on comparatively few kids. It would make any taxpayer blanch.
But what this does is drive parents to get their kid classified as a needs child, to make sure they get their share of the sacred-cow pie.
In SE, it is not uncommon to spend $80-100k per child, per year!! How sustainable do you think that is?? Add in the self-serving teachers union, and actual cost-per-non-SE student is probably on the order of $3,000 per kid.
Some hard questions need to be asked, and hard answers need to be given.
Re: “So, what fraction of total school spending is special education?”
Pat: In Vermont, statewide, Special Education (SPED) costs are a bit less than 20% of what are called “General Education” costs. However, SPED costs are only about 11% of total school district spending. And what makes these statistics even more confusing is that approximately 54.6% of SPED costs are reimbursed to the spending school district the following year. In other words, half of all SPED spending becomes additional revenue for the school district the following year.
The problem is the tendency for school districts to inflate SPED spending to increase future revenue. When I served on one of our local school boards, the Agency of Education (then called the Dept. of Education), audited my school district and found that 40% of the students in SPED programs had been ‘inappropriately’ coded. Instead of having bona fide disabilities, those students simply hadn’t learned to read and write. And when they fell a year behind in grade level proficiency, they were automatically coded as being learning disabled.
Yes. In the move to increase revenue through SPED reimbursements, schools were incentivized to create students who could not meet grade level proficiency. Again, it’s a ‘protection racket’.
Prediction: Because no one understands this nuanced public school governance financing Ponzi scheme, no one will comment on it. The public school system has, for the last 30 years, done an amazing job indoctrinating society and limiting critical thinking skills.
My head is still spinning from what you wrote H. Jay!!!
organicjude: Your comment doesn’t count. Simply admitting that you’re confused, while honorable, doesn’t constitute an exception to what I predicted to be a qualified response. 🙂
On the other hand, I suspect you understand more than you’re letting on.
If you have a specific question, let me know. I’ll be happy to take a shot at answering it.
From kindergarten to 3rd grade kids are “learning to read”. From 4th grade on they are “reading to learn”. If you can’t read by 4th grade, you can’t learn. Mississippi’s focus was on making sure all third graders could read. That was their turn around. Thats what Vermont needs to do as well. No redistricting, no teacher cuts. Teachers, administrators, and parents all need to be on the same page and commit to this for several years. More tutors, and emphasis on phonics.