The legislature passed its long-awaited bill to reform the way Vermont finances pre-K to 12 education. What it neglected to consider is what to do about the quality of the state’s education system.
Ask any legislator, or your neighbor, or yourself, how good Vermont’s schools are, and you’ll find near unanimous agreement that our schools are at the least very good, and most likely excellent.
Ask me, and I’ll say they are below average. Why? Because I go where the data take me.
There are, unfortunately, not many ways to compare the education systems across 50 different states. They differ in the number of students who don’t speak English as a first language. Child and family poverty rates differ, as do incomes. So do racial and ethnic compositions of the student bodies.
One would expect all of these to have impacts on measures of student outcomes. Consider two measures of education quality: high school graduation rates and scores on the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests.
Nationally, 87% of students graduate from high school. Vermont trails the nation at 83% and only nine states have a lower graduation rate than Vermont.
It’s important to consider that Vermont’s student population is very different from the U.S. Fewer than one-half of all U.S. students are non-Hispanic White (NHW), while in Vermont nearly 9 in 10 students are.
Nationally, Blacks and Hispanics, the two largest minority groups, have poorer outcomes than the NHW population. Minority adults have higher unemployment, lower incomes, poorer health, and their children are more likely to be raised in single parent families, to name but a few differences that negatively affect educational performance.
Nationally, minority students have lower graduation rates than NHW students and a higher percent drop out of high school. Vermont’s Black graduation rate is lower than the national Black average and our Hispanic graduation rate is only equal to the national average.
The U.S. Department of Education’s NAEP tests, given to a sample of 4th and 8th grade students in reading and math in every state, are another way to compare the states. Vermont’s unadjusted raw scores for all students in the 4th grade math and reading tests are below the national average and we rank in the bottom third of states.
In 8th grade reading our students’ average scores are below the national average. In math we are slightly above the national average but 20 states’ scores are above Vermont’s.
It's hard to argue that Vermont’s performance is excellent, or even very good, compared to other states given these rankings. But after adjusting for Vermont’s different student demographics, Vermont ranks even worse.
The number of minority students in Vermont is so small that the federal statisticians cannot report meaningful numbers for Black or Hispanic students. But they do report scores for NHW students and in an apples to apples comparison we can look at NHW Vermont and U.S. students.
On the 4th grade reading and math tests for NHW students, only three states’ scores are below Vermont’s. Vermont’s scores for 8th graders are a little better, but not much. Vermont’s rank puts 8th graders in the bottom eight states for math and the bottom four for reading.
Vermont also does not do a good job at educating NHW students from economically disadvantaged families. For 4th grade students, Vermont ranks 48th in the nation for math and 47th for reading. For 8th grade, only 11 states’ scores are below Vermont’s in math and we rank 46th in reading.
What about NHW 4th grade students from middle and upper income families? Vermont’s scores put us at 45th in the nation in math and 46th in reading. For 8th grade NHW students our math scores are 40th in the nation and 34th in reading.
It’s hard, or impossible, to put a positive spin on any of these rankings.
Vermont’s high property taxes are a function of the state’s high level of education spending. We spend more per student than any other state except New York. But that high level of spending does not give our students high education quality, especially after we adjust for the differences in the Vermont student population compared to other states. Vermont ranks in the bottom half of the states, and by many measures close to the bottom.
The numbers tell us our outcomes are not good, and they are trending in the wrong direction. Given our high spending level, our money is not well spent. More important, our children deserve better. As we look to changing our education funding system, we need to focus as well on our students’ education outcomes.
Voters and taxpayers should challenge policymakers, the public education establishment, school board members, administrators, and teachers to chart a path to a better and brighter future for our school children.
Art Woolf lives in Westford and is an economist who taught at UVM and was State Economist for Governor Madeleine Kunin.