National test scores are out for our K-12 students, and the results – again – are not good. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that in 2024, barely half of high school seniors had a basic proficiency or better in math, and a third scored “below basic” in reading. This trend of declining public school outcomes goes back over a decade and a half, was exacerbated by the Covid school closures, and, despite billions poured into the system to fix “pandemic learning loss,” there hasn’t been much bounce back to speak of.
As bad as the national numbers are, Vermont is doing worse. Speaking at the Governor’s press conference, Education Secretary Zoe Saunders said,
“We are concerned about the declining performance as it relates to reading scores…. We started seeing a decline in our literacy outcomes before the pandemic, and while there continues to be a decline nationwide we are seeing some really considerable drops for Vermont, which is concerning. In fourth grade reading we used to score in the top for the country and in the last results we dipped below the average.”
Amid this bad news, the Wall Street Journal notes, “One silver lining: scores at charter schools mostly didn’t fall.”
This statement is backed up by the results of the latest (2023) Stanford CREDO study, gold-standard research that has been digging into charter school vs traditional public school (TPS) outcomes for thirty years. Here’s a key takeaway from the 160-page report:
The majority of charter schools provide better year-to-year outcomes for students compared to their traditional public-school options. Most of these schools perform better to such a degree that the difference is statistically significant. The results stand up to deeper investigation. Charter schools produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population than their adjacent TPS. They move Black and Hispanic students and students in poverty ahead in their learning faster than if they enrolled in their local TPS. They are more successful than the local public school alternatives across most grade spans and community settings. These results show that charter schools use their flexibility to be responsive to the local needs of their communities. (p.13)
I just want to reemphasize that last bit, “flexibility to be responsive to the local needs of their communities. So, if you’re really following the data and want to improve student outcomes, the way to do it is to move away from the current system and inject more customer-focused, operational flexibility – the ability to experiment, adopt successful programs and staff, and quickly discard the unsuccessful – at the school level. AKA school choice.
Charter schools, independent, and private schools are freer/free to do this. Public schools, a state-controlled monopoly dominated by public sector unions and motivated not by customer needs and satisfaction but by politics, are neither designed nor incentivized to do this. It’s a bad, ineffective, deteriorating system. Just look at the data!
But it’s the system Vermont’s current education reform effort, Act 73, is more than doubling down on, while actively dismantling the generally better-performing, lower-cost independent tuitioning system Vermont has had for over 150 years. This is the opposite of what the data says to do! Vermont does not have charter schools, but our tuitioning system for towns that do not operate public schools operates similarly, with public funds following students to independently operated schools.
The programs offered by independent schools are diverse (as are their student bodies). You can choose from traditional college preparatory programs, Waldorf curriculum, Montessori, Christian, special needs-focused, and more. Some of these schools are small, and some are large, allowing students to find not just a curriculum, but a learning culture that best suits their needs. And, unlike their public-school counterparts, if independent schools fail to produce results, their customers can leave, and they go out of business. That is the “incentive to perform” the data says is critical for progress. We need more of this, not less.
But Act 73 actively knocks out over half of all the independent schools currently allowed to participate in the tuitioning program and reduces the flexibility of those remaining. That is an anti-data approach to solving either of our education crises: the property tax crisis and the quality/student outcomes crisis. Act 73 solves neither and will likely make both worse.
These are not data-driven decisions, but political. The politically powerful teachers’ unions basically own the legislative majority Democrat Party, and that party is working to consolidate that political power, funnel more taxpayer money, and wipe out its competition from lower-cost, higher-performing independent schools. Kids and taxpayers be damned. And for some incomprehensible reason, Republicans seem content to operate within those parameters rather than challenge them. The result is what we got with Act 73: a literal rearranging of the deck chairs (school district redistricting) coupled with a deliberate smashing of the lifeboats, so fewer students are able to escape the sinking ship.
