Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ward Heneveld, Ed.D., who is retired in Enosburgh after a career in education as a teacher, administrator, planner and program officer in Vermont, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and throughout Africa where he first taught in Kenya. He has worked in Vermont as a professor of education, as executive director of a community action agency, and as director of the School for International Training. After more than 10 years at the World Bank he was program officer for the Quality of Education in Developing Countries joint initiative of the William and Flora Hewlett and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations.
Dear Gov. Scott,
This open letter which I will share with others offers ideas on how you, with the rest of us Vermonters, could follow up on your suggestion that we rethink the design and policies of Vermont’s education system. I enthusiastically agree with your observation that Chancellor Jeb Spaulding’s proposal to close three state college campuses and the Covid-19 impact on education delivery present a unique opportunity for Vermonters to think holistically about the state’s overall education system.
When I heard of the VSC proposal, I first thought of it as another example of Vermont’s inability to plan effectively for the future of its education system. Judging by Vermonters’ reactions to the proposal and statements from VSC, before the proposal was announced there was little or no analysis of the closings’ impact on learners, communities, and Vermont’s future prosperity. Decisions on Vermont education without considering the consequences have been happening for a long time. Again, we find a semi-autonomous part of the system proposing an organizational change because of financing problems and without careful assessment of the repercussions or alternatives.
I’ve been watching Vermont’s whack-a-mole approach to solving education problems for almost 50 years, starting when I taught prospective teachers at Johnson State. Most of my time since then has been spent helping ministries of education in Africa and Asia plan and implement improvements in their education systems. My closer observation of Vermont education when I led the School for International Training in the 1980s and since coming home 20 years ago had almost made me conclude that Vermonters cannot think holistically and out of the box about the state’s education system. I was delighted when you suggested during the Covid-19 briefing on April 20 that the Vermont State Colleges’ proposal and the coronavirus’s challenge to education provide “the opportunity to rethink our education system in its entirety.”
The proposal to close the VSC campuses has been withdrawn. What next? I write to wholeheartedly support your suggestion that all Vermonters step back, take a deep breath, and start a discussion that would produce a comprehensive Vermont education policy. Let’s stop patching up a system that is not excellent and plan the renewal of the system so that it will be effective and affordable. As you said at the Covid-19 briefing, Vermont is small and nimble enough to take on this challenge successfully. I agree with you, if the will is there.
The education system that I refer to in this letter includes early care and learning (preschool), K-12, the state college system, the University of Vermont, and private schools and colleges. A Vermont education policy covering all levels of the state’s education system would need to establish goals for the system and its subsystems for the next 10 years plus. A Vermont education policy would set general priorities for changes in the overall education system’s design and operation for the system as a whole and at each level of the system. The priorities would be justified by the extent to which each will contribute to achieving the goals that we Vermonters set. And the policy would provide guidelines and a schedule for detailed planning of reforms throughout the system.
First, before charting the course of action to reform the education system, there needs to be a statewide consensus on the system’s goals. Discussions could start with consideration of your suggestion on April 20 that Vermont seek “the best education system possible.” Most important of all, the education system’s goals must explicitly take into account the state’s overall social, economic, cultural, environmental, and “branding” goals. What do Vermonters want Vermont to be like in the 2030s? Also, what should be learners’ priority capabilities for making an effective contribution to the state’s future? The goals need to be in plain language and few enough for all Vermonters to understand and identify them as appropriate for Vermont. Vermont educators and others find achievement tests and proficiencies helpful, but they are too detailed and too many to qualify as goals for the public.
Second, a comprehensive Vermont education policy will include clear priorities as to how to reorganize the system and how to improve student learning outcomes in primary, secondary, and tertiary education institutions. The priorities would outline courses of action that will produce identified learning outcomes that Vermonters need to contribute to the state’s overall goals. What’s prioritized will need to respond, with trade-offs among them, to conditions and needs in different parts of the state (rural-urban, north-south, borders-interior), across institutions at each level, between public and private education institutions, and among different ethnic, economic, and gender groups). Education priorities will also need to be balanced with the social welfare functions that education institutions have accumulated as family and community life have weakened. This issue alone could lead to significant changes in the state’s organizational chart and perhaps to budget allocations that address the whole child.
Third, the Vermont education policy would include a rough estimate of the total funds available to finance the reformed system. As you said, Vermont’s K-12 education fund has roughly $1.8 billion and higher education receives over $100 million, and public funds have started supporting early childhood care and development. The total of these expenditures, roughly $2 billion per year, could become the envelope with which to finance a new system configuration that would be established when we “think outside the box” together. Identifying changes and costing them will be a much more ambitious exercise than just reducing the K-12 budget so that more can be spent on higher education.
What will it take to prepare a systemwide education policy? Nowhere that I have worked to improve education has significant change occurred without committed and passionate political leadership, a champion from the political/civil servant community to lead the change process, and a professional group fully empowered to monitor, assess, and propose a plan for comprehensively reforming the education sector. You as governor would have to make education reform one of your top priorities and involve all of the governor’s Cabinet members through at least the next electoral term. As a group, you would have to be both committed and passionate. I have the impression that past education reforms have been dominated by the education establishment. In my view this has fostered processes and mind-sets that could impede preparing a policy that is based on broad societal considerations. I don’t think that the effort that I am proposing can succeed unless you insist that this time the process will be analytic, fully participatory, and cognizant of Vermont’s overall goals. In addition, I think that the Legislature must provide resources for this work outside normal budget and legislative deliberations.
The champion to lead the work I’m proposing ought to bring experience, vision, and authority that has been gained as much from beyond the education sector as from within it. The mission of an education system is to serve and support the society it is part of. As I observed above, I think past efforts to reform Vermont’s education sub-systems have not adequately taken the larger context into account, in good part because non-education contextual conditions, other than money, have not played a very significant role in planning. For example, neither the district consolidation reform established by Act 46 nor the latest VSC proposal to close institutions seriously considered the impact of the changes on Vermont’s sense of local community and local economies. Also, a comprehensive education policy will have to explicitly take into account Vermont’s overall employment, social, and environmental needs at a level of detail and with alternative changes that could meet those needs. The late Con Hogan comes to mind as an appropriate person in this leadership role, but he’s no longer with us.
Besides strong leadership, there needs to be a group of professionals and stakeholders with a one- to two-year charge, both as volunteers and paid consultants, working on developing the comprehensive policy proposal. The participants should come from a broad swathe of Vermont’s citizens from outside the education community and within it. Fortuitously, there may be an existing body that could take on this temporary role. As you know the State Board of Education’s administrative role was eliminated when the Education Department joined Vermont’s other departments under the governor’s responsibility. I understand that the State Board has started a process to assess its future role, if there is to be one. A few months ago I suggested to John Carroll, chair of the State Board, that the board might consider proposing to take an oversight role for Vermont education. As with him, I have promoted to others Vermont’s need for an entity without education management responsibilities that would monitor and assess progress towards education goals and suggest improvements to education policies and programs when appropriate. How about assigning the State Board to test this role, now that the uncertainties about education delivery have provided an opportunity to think creatively about the design and priorities of Vermont’s education system? Vermont’s leadership and Legislature could use this one-off assignment, with one-off funding, as a trial of what a policy and planning body’s longer-term role might be. Of course, the board’s current terms of reference and its membership would need to be adjusted to reflect the charge that you and the Legislature would give it.
I am grateful that you have had the insight that Vermont needs a comprehensive education policy for pre-K through higher education. I thank you for the courage to introduce this need publicly, and I urge you to follow through on starting the process towards such a policy. I know that it will require buy-in on a lot of fronts; it will take time and require funding; and it comes at a crisis-ridden moment. However, it provides an opportunity for Vermont to develop a plan to become “the best state education system possible.” I will be glad to help in any way I can.
