Vermont’s K-12 public education system is broken. When Vermont passed Act 60 in 1997, our schools consistently performed in the top five nationwide. Since then, spending has exploded while student counts have dropped from 106,000 kids to less than 80,000, and test scores have been steadily falling for the past decade and a half.
The results, or lack thereof, speak for themselves in the latest NEAP (a.k.a. the National Report Card) scores that show dramatic declines in math and reading throughout the system. These include a 4-point decline in reading and a 9-point decline in mathematics. Compared to the 2012-13 school year full a decade earlier — well before Covid began in 2020, so that’s not a valid excuse — we see a decline of 7 points in reading and 14 in math.
While there are certainly many factors involved in student outcomes, we can’t dismiss the fact that increasingly, our public schools have become hyper-politicized with issues such as climate change, critical race theory, gender and sexuality, and anti-second amendment rights taking on a higher priority for faculty and staff than the core subjects of math, reading, writing, and science. As we write this, Outright Vermont and the Racial Justice Alliance of Montpelier High School are organizing a “School Walkout for Palestine” on March 27, which is sure to be more fun than taking geography class about where Israel and Gaza appear on a map.
We want to thank Bill Huff for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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With this kind of behavior and culture – disrupting class and disrespecting and degrading the learning process through temper-tantrum political activism – not just tolerated but encouraged by faculty and staff, not to mention our majority political class, is it any wonder that discipline of any kind in the classroom is deteriorating to the detriment of not just learning but also student safety? The politicization of education is damaging our children in very real ways.
And what about the mental health crisis? Beyond the falling test scores, is it any surprise that when the focus of a child’s eight-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week public school experience is a constant message that the planet is on fire, your country is evil, everyone’s a racist or a victim of oppression, you may be a boy trapped in a girl’s body or vice versa, and the adults in charge don’t care about the future we’re going to leave you that we are witnessing increased mental health issues in our young people, manifesting in higher rates of depression, addiction, and suicide? The politicization of education is damaging our children in very real ways.
Seven Days recently ran an in-depth article, Too Many Vermont Kids Struggle to Read. What Went Wrong, which explained how Vermont’s public schools have been using a trendy but totally ineffective method of teaching reading for over a generation. How did this happen? The article explains, “…the politicization of literacy — with phonics often being thought of as a Republican cause — is one reason that scientific knowledge about reading hasn’t been put into practice widely.”
Again, the politicization of education is damaging our children in very real ways. So, Vermonters need to get real about the damage this approach to education is having, who is behind it, and how to fix it.
First and foremost, we need to get politics out of the classroom and restore a culture of academic excellence in core subjects: math, reading, writing, history, and the sciences. We need to get back to teaching our kids how to think, not what to think. And we need to restore discipline and mutual respect to the classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and faculty lounges.
To this end, the legislature should repeal every curriculum mandate not associated with those core subjects and discourage via its power of the purse any public school activities that abuse the captive audience status of children in school to promote or oppose partisan political agendas. We need to give teachers the tools they need to establish and maintain discipline in the classrooms and hallways. We need to support students who excel academically just as we need to support those who need extra help.
All of these unacceptable results come despite increased spending year after year, and the escalating property taxes to fund those increases topped off by this year’s surreal 20 percent average property tax increase. (If there has been a more vivid “Get Real” moment than that, we don’t know it!) This is as unsustainable as it is irresponsible, and we will discuss education finance reform in a future GET REAL essay focused on Affordability.
Bill Huff, Orange County Republican Committee chair, on behalf of all the Republican County Committee chairs.
G.E.T. R.E.A.L. is a solemn promise and a positive path forward for our state by Vermont Republicans focused on improving the quality of life of our people. It is a prescription of policy proposals, and this is the third in a series of essays explaining the program.
