A Rutgers University professor who recently reviewed data on Vermont’s public schools supports the push from the Legislature toward consolidation into larger school districts for educational and financial reasons.
According to a news release issued by the Agency of Education, Bruce D. Baker, professor in the Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Administration in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, and Wendy I. Geller, data administration director at the Vermont Agency of Education, collaborated in the research brief, which focused on efficiency and equity in the state’s public schools.
The agency’s research brief can be seen here.
The analysis was conducted using data on Vermont school districts, the agency said, and shows that Vermont school districts have:
• higher spending than like and neighboring states;
• higher taxes than like and neighboring states;
• and less comprehensive academic programs than could be provided at scale.
“Our purpose in sharing this brief is to provide data and analysis to inform decisions,” said Jill Remick, spokesperson for the Vermont Agency of Education on Friday. “(Baker) is a nationally recognized figure on education finance, a native of Rutland, and received no state compensation for his work.”
The news release says “high costs vis-à-vis student enrollment are most evident in tiny elementary schools and districts.” Baker and Geller also found that program “breadth and depth” may be compromised in the state’s very small high schools.
Baker says consolidation of very small districts and schools in Vermont could contribute to cost savings and improved equity in access educational options.
The report produced a vastly different set of findings than those presented in January by two doctoral candidates from the Penn State Center on Rural Education.
The Penn State researchers’ message was anti school consolidation. The doctoral candidates Daniella Hall and Ian Burfoot-Rochford called for strengthening small schools in the state. They argued small schools could help bolster economic vitality in struggling communities.
The research brief issued by the Vermont Agency of Education says consolidation options should not be taken off the table in Vermont, and the state should scrutinize small school subsidies and spending cap exemptions which reduce incentives to more efficiently organize districts.
Vermont is grappling with how to reconcile the continuing decline of student enrollment — the state’s schools have 21,000 fewer pupils than in 1997, while education spending and property taxes have continued to climb.
Timing of report questioned
Marty Strange, a member of the citizens group Vermonters for Schools and Community and the former longtime policy director for the Rural School and Community Trust, was critical of the timing of the report’s release.
H.361, the House Education Committee’s “big bill” aimed at moving the state’s 272 school districts into much larger systems of 1,100 pupils or more, unless a district obtains a state waiver, passed the House last week and is now in the Senate’s hands. The bill seeks to find fiscal efficiencies and to improve educational opportunities for students statewide.
“The case against small schools has been made on anecdotes,” Strange said. “Can there be any doubt that the release of this study on the day the school consolidation bill was on the House calendar was politically motivated, or that the emphasis on curricular quality in small schools was based on pitifully weak data that does not justify the conclusion but serves a political process? Studies like this are shameful abuses both of scholarship and of state agency integrity.”
Cyrus Patten, executive director of the Campaign for Vermont, agreed.
“The Agency of Education appears to have adopted it because it supports their policy position,” Patten said. “As the Penn State report was biased in favor of small schools, the Rutgers report was biased against them.”
Patten said of the report’s finding that small elementary schools cost $1,000 more per pupil, that “… there are 4,421 students in small schools as defined by the Agency of Education, which equates to $4.4 million, or two-tenths of 1 percent of school spending in Vermont. To pretend that small schools are breaking the bank is simply false.”
Like Strange, Patten said, one of his chief concerns with the information is, “… it was deployed by AOE hours before a critical vote in what appears to have been an attempt to influence votes.”
Remick said the research brief was posted to the agency’s website on March 9, and had been released a week earlier by the Rutgers researcher.
