Campaign for Vermont has assembled education data into a new research tool in advance of Town Meeting Day on Tuesday, March 4.
The online Education Research Tool (ERT) shows school districts’ total budgets along with pupil head counts to calculate average spending per student. A separate page shows each school’s NECAP test scores by the percentage of students who score as proficient (or above) versus partially proficient (or below).
“Campaign for Vermont is pleased to provide this resource to voters so that they have another tool at their disposal when voting on their local school budgets,” said CFV co-founder Tom Pelham.
The data do not include the “equalized” per-pupil spending in school districts, which accounts for cost factors such as English as a Second Language and students in poverty.
Pelham said voters should seek detailed information about their districts’ proposed school budgets before casting their votes.
Campaign for Vermont’s goal, he says, is to spark a data-driven conversation about education finance that starts at its most basic components: The total number of dollars spent, the number of students, and test results.
Joel Cook, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association, who had not yet seen the tool Tuesday afternoon, did not initially sound impressed.
“I don’t know what that comparison is supposed to show,” Cook said. “And outcomes are not synonymous with test scores,” he added.
Vermont education finance manager Brad James said that nationwide studies have yet to tie money to educational outcomes.
Pelham is sanguine about the questions the ERT raises along with the data it provides.
“The basic fact is, the number here is what’s spent in the school district, and the scores are the results for that school district,” Pelham said. “We’re not trying to oversimplify it. We’re just trying to start.”
Vermont’s education finance system is a complex web of definitions and statutory formulas that many lawmakers are trying to simplify as dialogue continues about how to curb the growth of education property taxes.
In addition to the data, Campaign for Vermont, a 501c4 organization, hopes to inform that dialogue with several additional tools it has made available: a list of town meeting locations, dates and times; an education-funding flowchart; and a glossary of terms.
The group also presents a brief history of Vermont’s education system and its own education reform proposal, Putting Children First.
