Amy Fowler, deputy secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education, speaks during the Legislative session to the House Education Committee in 2015. File photo by Amy Ash Nixon/VTDigger
Vermont’s education policies earned the Statehouse a spot on the cover of a new national report.
A review of all 50 states’ policies by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) ranked Vermont first among 10 states with the most comprehensive competency-based education policy environments.
Vermont earned top billing in the report, “Promising State Policies for Personalized Learning,” for the comprehensive education reform initiatives embedded in Act 77, the 2013 Flexible Pathways law and the state’s Education Quality Standards approved by the State Board of Education.
These combined policies have set the stage for personalized learning plans, proficiency-based graduation requirements, dual enrollment, early college and work-based studies. The other nine top ranked states are: Arizona,Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio and Oregon.
Despite national praise, Vermont schools are struggling to meet deadlines for the new policies.
Local school districts are responsible for setting specific graduation requirements for students entering 9th grade this fall. Requirements must reflect the state standards in a host of subjects, including literacy, math and science.
Every school system is implementing it differently, according to Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe.
“We are getting a ton of variation in how this is being articulated locally,” Holcombe told members of the State Board of Education at a meeting in May.
Under the concept, a student who chooses a workplace-based experience could earn a math credit, an English language arts credit and perhaps a science credit. The teachers at the school in those subjects would supervise and validate that the credits were acquired by the student.
Personalized learning has been hailed as a way to close learning gaps and increase equity because students are able to take charge of their education and find more engaging, meaningful and hopefully challenging ways to learn as well as express their mastery of subjects and standards.
Proficiency based graduation requirements move away from course credits. Instead, students must demonstrate mastery in multiple ways — such as delivering a multimedia presentation or writing a paper in order to pass a course, move to the next grade or graduate. The time each student spends in a grade becomes a variable. Students can graduate quicker or take more time, but in the end everyone graduates.
The Agency of Education is setting minimum expectations for graduation requirements. Deputy Secretary of Education Amy Fowler told the board that at the state has not set up a process to review new graduation requirements developed by each school system.
“We currently do not have that process for existing graduation requirements. We will create a new process of review that previously didn’t exist,” Fowler said.
AOE has posted sample graduation proficiencies and performance indicators for all EQS subjects. But, SBE member Krista Huling, a high school social studies teacher, is concerned because the state has not finished developing the rubrics used to measure the indicators. That means that schools will end up coming up with varying scoring methods.
“This isn’t done yet. Ask the schools, the work is not done at the state level,” Huling said. She added that schools are trying to create a pathway for students to graduate without all the information they need. At her school, she said teachers have been asked to figure out how to do proficiency this summer.
“We need to address this,” Huling urged. She said that it is irresponsible to welcome ninth grade freshmen to high school this fall and tell them that “we don’t have the rules for you for graduation.” She said she doesn’t relish telling parents that the school isn’t exactly sure how their son or daughter will graduate because we are in the midst of changing the rules.
“As teachers we like having a plan for the next four years,” she said.
Fowler confirmed that the state’s role is to provide guidance or guardrails, but the responsibility to implement the graduation proficiencies lies with the supervisory unions and supervisory districts.
“My biggest concern is every school has to figure out how to make this work in their own way. I worry about the capacity of schools to complete this since so much has been asked of them over the last couple of years,” Huling said.
Huling is referring to the schools being immersed in implementing big governance changes required by Act 46 and universal pre-K required by Act 166 while they are trying to make a nationally recognized innovative education reform “go live” this fall.
“This transformation to a proficiency based system is a full-time commitment,” said Fowler, “It is the same people tasked with the same work on multiple levels. They are doing triage. In some of these (supervisory unions) it is three people doing everything, the business manager, the superintendent and the special education director.”
“There is a lot of punting going on,” said Huling, before asking again if the board should reconsider the timeline. “Should we change the policy to allow schools to implement this with fidelity?”
The timeline will never be long enough, according to Fowler. “It won’t matter what year you pick for the year of implementation, all school systems will not be ready even a decade from now,” she said.
Rainbow Chen, the student representative on the SBE from Winooski High School also expressed concern about the timeline.
“I feel like too many schools are hopping onto a weak branch and it could fall at any time. So many students are worried that they won’t graduate on time and won’t have what they need to go to college,” Chen said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont gets top billing in education policy ranking.
