Editor’s note: This commentary is by Scott Thompson, of Calais, who is a U-32 board member, Act 46 survivor, and recovering elitist.
[I]f you have had better things to do over the summer than follow the latest plot twists in the saga of Act 46 (the 2015 law promoting school district consolidation in Vermont) — and I hope you have — you may not be aware that the Scott administration is proposing to force mergers on districts where consolidation will do demonstrable harm.
The battle lines are starkly drawn between the Agency of Education’s forced consolidation plan and the loyal opposition’s riposte, “Unfair and Unwise.” I urge you to check out what could be happening to you, or to a neighbor near you. The stakes are much higher than commonly thought.
The State Board of Education is the final arbiter of this contest under the law.
It was a dramatic moment, therefore, when towards the end of an ultra-marathon session at the Statehouse on Aug. 15, the state board let its hair down and got real.
Board member and former state senator John Carroll led off a remarkable discussion that should gladden the heart of anyone who might have been losing faith in the possibility of civilian control over governing bureaucracy.
Yet just before adjourning the meeting, board chair Krista Huling observed that the testimony the state board had heard throughout that very long day was “identical” to the 1890s, the era of the so-called Vicious Act of 1892.
It hasn’t been the 1890s for quite a while, of course, nor will it ever be again. No living person remembers the real 1892. But the idea of 1892 has taken a surprisingly firm hold on the minds of many otherwise reasonable people, especially (though not exclusively) in state government. In particular, the spirit of ‘92 provides the model and inspiration for the state’s plan to force total consolidation now, even where this fails the goals of Act 46.
So what is going on here? Have state officials fallen under some kind of spell? A spell that can make a Vicious Act look virtuous? Or that can glamorize the perpetrators of a Vicious Act as heavy-lifting, once-in-a-century reformist heroes?
The study of history ideally expands our human sympathies across barriers of time, space, class, culture, and much more.
But it can narrow them too, if we succumb to the temptation of historical analogies that flatter our self-image and provide ready-made schemas which trick us into thinking we understand the present.
Misuse of history is a partial explanation of the perennial riddle, how it happens that good people just doing their jobs within an organization can so easily reconcile themselves to hurting others in order to further the aims of the organization, inflicting damage they would never dream of causing on their own.
Putting history to better use may soften at least some of the future reckoning with “things ill done, or done to others’ harm, which once you took for exercise of virtue.” For the crucial element in history is evidence, and evidence is a potent counter-spell.
No less a champion of consolidation than John Alberghini, superintendent of Chittenden East, lamented last year, “No Vermont case study that compares actual budget and student performance data before and after consolidation has been located.”
Our State Board of Education now has the opportunity to go down in history, celebrated in scholarship and song, as the one such board ever to contribute to the actual advancement of knowledge. It can do Mr. Alberghini one better.
The state board need merely set aside the forced consolidation plan and approve all of the alternative governance proposals lawfully submitted under Section 9 of Act 46. In so doing, the state board will not only have honored the people they serve, who bring our democracy to renewed life every day with immense effort and devotion. It will also have enabled a great social science experiment.
Researchers can already glean evidence from before-and-after comparisons amidst the crop of mergers approved so far. They ought next to be able to gather it from side-by-side comparisons over time of similar regions organized differently, perhaps finally settling basic questions that have been debated inconclusively for more than 100 years, such as which system works better and more cheaply, under what conditions, and why.
The state’s plan to impose total school district consolidation by force may for its part receive a decent resting place in the archives, with thanks for having taught us a valuable lesson. A Vicious Act might have been just the thing for 1892. But it is entirely wrong for us in 2018.
