Last week the Vermont Agency of Education released its Vermont State Report Card assessment results, school accountability ratings, and the list of schools identified for targeted support and improvement.
Before that report hit inboxes, Governor Phil Scott was out with a statement noting that the results of that assessment demonstrate that this report somehow affirms that Vermonters are failing students because the Legislature did not enact his proposal to combine Vermont’s 100-plus school districts into five districts.
Recall that the Scott’s handpicked special committee met last fall and early December on his proposed district reduction (Act 73) and basically concluded that the plan would not save money or improve educational outcomes.
It’s disappointing that Scott is taking this opportunity to play politics with educational outcomes. We all want improved educational opportunities for Vermont families, and we all want the Legislature to overhaul the way the state funds education. (Understatement of the year).
What we don’t need, is our governor conflating test results with a foregone conclusion that he wants to be true. It’s really not helpful at all and in fact it just muddies the already muddy waters.
Last week’s report does not provide information that is valid at the level the Agency of Education and Scott are trying to assert. It does not support the claim that our schools are bad, and kids aren’t learning.
Without digging into where those assessment numbers come from it’s not possible to make the claim that five school districts would fix these problems. That’s disingenuous and disappointing.
The report is fraught with flaws, and the conclusions the AOE and Secretary Zoie Saunders draw from it do not support five school districts. Educational assessment is far more nuanced than Saunders or Scott are acknowledging and the governor’s press release and the AOE press release sparked immediate backlash from professionals in the field, educators and administrators alike.
What we’re facing here in Vermont in terms of shrinking enrollments, skyrocketing property taxes (caused by a broken education funding system and maybe not by the number of school districts) and health care costs is bad enough without playing politics.
