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Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and non-financial outcomes. After summarizing the heterogeneity of individual SFR impacts, we then examine its correlates, identifying both policy and legislative/political factors. Taken together, this research aims to provide a rich description of variation in states' responses to SFRs, as well as explanation of this heterogeneity as it relates to contextual factors.

Vermont lawmakers had grappled with the thorny issue of how to finance public education long before the Vermont Supreme Court's 1997 ruling that the state's funding system was unconstitutional. In "Brigham vs. State," the court found that the system in effect at that time violated the state's constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law and directed the Legislature to establish a system that would afford "substantially equal opportunity" to all Vermont school children. Less than six months after this ruling, lawmakers enacted the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (known as Act 60), under which tax rates and educational opportunities were substantially equalized across school districts by redefining property wealth (for educational purpose) as a state resource. Act 60 and its successor, Act 68, both narrowed disparities in educational funding across school districts. But the issue of who pays for education remains contentious, with calls for further reform driven by the perception that education property tax burdens are unreasonably high and remain inequitable. During this biennium session, the Legislature is expected to consider a range of reform proposals, including repeal of the current system. This paper provides a broad overview of major efforts to reform education finance in Vermont since 1969. Two appendices are included: (1) Additional reading; and (2) Court rulings, legislation, and reform proposals. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

"Can You Hear Me? The Right of Young Children to Participate in Decisions Affecting Them" emphasises that participation enhances children's self-esteem and confidence, promotes their overall capacities, produces better outcomes, strengthens understanding of and commitment to democratic processes and protects children more effectively. Participation provides the opportunity for developing a sense of autonomy, independence, heightened social competence and resilience. The benefits are therefore significant, and adults with both direct and indirect responsibility for children need to acquire a greater humility in recognising that they have a great deal to learn from children. But the case for listening to young children goes beyond the beneficial outcomes. It is also a matter of social injustice and human rights. All people, however young, are entitled to be participants in their own lives, to influence what happens to them, to be involved in creating their own environments, to exercise choices and to have their views respected and valued. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

This document represents the first of two volumes presented in "Study of the Impact of the Statewide Systemic Initiatives Program" (Norman L. Webb and Iris R. Weiss). In an effort to evaluate the impact of the Statewide Systemic Initiatives (SSIs) on student achievement and the lessons that could be learned from the National Science Foundation's effort to reform mathematics and science education on a statewide basis, research studies identified the technical strategies, the political strategies, and the interactions with funders that were critical factors in the attempt to effect significant change in student learning over large populations. Documents were received on 21 of the 26 SSIs. More intensive data were collected via telephone interviews of key personnel in seven of these states and during site visits in six other states. Among a number of lessons learned were the following: It was vital to incorporate enough flexibility within the design so that information produced by research, evaluation, and monitoring could be effectively used (technical lesson); the creation of partnerships with policy organizations significantly advanced policy work (political lesson); and, SSI leaders and funders needed to develop a shared, in-depth understanding of the reform strategies as these fit the local context (interaction with funders). The following are appended: (1) SRI International Evaluation Reports; (2) Abt Associates Inc. Monitoring Reports; (3) Coding Scheme: Chronology and Components; (4) Coding Scheme: Strategic Planning, Decision-Making, and Thinking; (5) Coding Scheme: Key Challenges; (6) Interview Protocol for Telephone Interviews and Site Visits; (7) Case Report: Arkansas Statewide Systemic Initiative; (8) Case Report: Maine Statewide Systemic Initiative; (9) Case Report: Michigan Statewide Systemic Initiative; (10) Case Report: Nebraska Statewide Systemic Initiative; (11) Case Report: Puerto Rico Statewide Systemic Initiative; and (12) Case Report: Vermont Statewide Systemic Initiative. [For Volume II of this report, see ED497577.]

Since 1869, Vermont has operated a viable voucher system in 90 towns. During 1998-99, the state paid tuition for 6,505 K-12 students to attend public and private schools. As discussions about vouchers and educational reform grow, critics contend that vouchers are a new, untested concept and therefore must be implemented on an extremely limited, experimental basis. They argue that vouchers will lead to the establishment of fringe schools, skim the best and the brightest students from public schools, drain public schools of revenue, destroy a sense of community, and create transportation-related problems. Vermont's longstanding program has done none of these things. The state collects no more information on voucher students than it does on students in general. There has been no public outcry for more information to be compiled to justify the system's continuation. Overall, Vermonters assume that it is a parent's prerogative to select a child's school, and the burden of proof is on those who seek to take that choice away. Choice patterns in Vermont suggest that the voucher system expands educational opportunities by giving families access to public and private schools that would otherwise be closed to them because of residency requirements or financial barriers. (SM)

This case study examines how rural K-12 single-unit schools in Vermont have responded to the twin pressures of higher state-level standards, required under the 1984 Public School Approval (PSA) policy, and limited fiscal resources. Chapter 1 provides background information on the study population, economic and educational conditions in Vermont, and PSA standards and review processes. In chapter 2, a literature review considers the diverse, special characteristics of small, rural schools. Chapter 3 describes inputs, process indicators, outcome indicators, and qualitative characteristics of the 10 K-12 schools studied and summarizes the impact of PSA on their finances and curricula. This section also discusses how two comparable schools coped somewhat differently with school improvement mandates and limited funding. The results indicate that rural schools are facing the challenge of small size and fiscal constraints with distance learning, independent study, cross-disciplinary teaching, and multi-age groupings. Chapter 4 considers various strategies for improving educational quality at an affordable cost, including funding strategies, financial management, school-community cooperation, distance learning technologies, the 4-day school week, and integrated services. The last chapter concludes that the PSA has had a substantial impact on K-12 schools in terms of personnel appointments, curricular revisions, and facility improvements, but that these gains may be short-lived if the contingent fiscal problems are not solved. Appendices include K-12 schools statistical data, school site statistical profiles, and school site visitation summaries. Contains 101 references. (LP)

This 1987-88 study was conducted to identify, describe, and analyze the significant issues facing one of Vermont's five remaining schoolmarms. The primary subject of the study is a first-year one-room schoolteacher in a rural Vermont town. Chapter 1 offers a brief history of Vermont's one-room schools, a description of the town, the school, and the teacher's "typical" day. Chapter 2 addresses the question of scale. Advantages of smallness are great community involvement, high institutional flexibility, and close interaction among the students, teachers, and parents. Limitations are restricted school space, curriculum, pupil peer groups, efficiency, privacy, and resources. Chapter 3 discusses the schoolmarm's isolation and independence. Chapter 4 examines the issue of educational tradition (embodied by the retiring teacher) and change (represented by her first-year replacement), community expectations, curriculum, work values, patriotism, religion, morality, discipline, resources, and educational philosophy. The paper concludes that one-room pupils receive effective instruction, made possible by well-trained teachers, flexible standards, and better-than-adequate resources. Negative aspects include isolation, urban bias, limited educational options, and unrealistic community expectations. The document includes five tables of Vermont school statistics. (TES)

Writing teachers and educators can add to information from large-scale testing and teachers can strengthen classroom assessment by creating a tight fit between large-scale testing and classroom assessment. Across the years, large-scale testing programs have struggled with a difficult problem: how to evaluate student writing reliably and cost-effectively. Indirect measures, direct assessments, "holistic" scoring, and primary trait scoring (as used by the College Entrance Examination Board, the Educational Testing Service, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress) all have serious limitations. Even though not well defined, the portfolio movement provides a potential link between large-scale testing and classroom assessment and teaching. Several large-scale portfolio assessment programs are currently in place: (1) the Arts PROPEL program, a Pittsburgh school-district portfolio project in art, music, and imaginative writing; (2) the "Primary Language Record," a kind of portfolio introducing systematic record-keeping about language growth into all elementary classrooms in the United Kingdom; (3) a draft, state-wide plan for portfolio assessment in Vermont; and (4) the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GSCE) in language and literature, in which British students choose either a timed writing test plus a portfolio of coursework or simply a folder of coursework. However, just collecting and evaluating portfolios will solve neither the assessment problems nor the need to create a professional climate in schools. By coupling assessment and instruction in increasingly sophisticated ways, educators and teachers may be able to make a real difference in education. (Seventy-three references are attached.) (RS)

Historically, students have had little influence over the design of education institutions or opportunities (Benner et al., 2019; Lac & Cumings Mansfield, 2018). Decisions about school policies, programs, and structures are primarily steered by administrators, policymakers, and teachers. In recent years, however, educators and policy advocates have amplified calls for education systems to grant students--the primary beneficiaries of these systems--more capacity to direct and personalize their learning (Project Tomorrow, 2020; Schwartz, 2020). As school leaders plan the transition to the 2021-2022 school year, there is an opportunity to strengthen and incorporate promising practices to increase student agency and ownership in the classroom, which is refer to throughout this paper as student-directed learning. Two promising strategies to promote student-directed learning are described in this paper: (1) Personalized learning plans; and (2) Supporting student voice and choice The paper is organized by strategy and offers a brief description of each strategy, a summary of the evidence supporting the strategy, and common barriers to implementing the strategy. Stakeholders will also find actionable steps for implementation in schools. Although this paper describes each strategy separately, implementation of both strategies within an education system holds promise to further increase student-directed learning opportunities.

What happens when teams from 57 cities building afterschool systems gather to discuss two key system responsibilities--improving afterschool programs and using data for informed decision-making? Lots of rich discussion. This report covers a national afterschool conference held in February 2013. It details what mayors, program providers, system leaders, researchers and others had to say on matters ranging from how to measure afterschool performance to how to boost program quality. [This conference was organized by: American Youth Policy Forum, The Collaborative for Building After School Systems, The Forum for Youth Investment, the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education & Families, and the Wallace Foundation.]

Policy shapes practice, and the increasingly important realm of professional development is no exception. In order to identify effective professional development policies and strategies, a Stanford University research team examined the policy frameworks supporting high levels of professional development activity in four states. The states--Colorado, Missouri, New Jersey, and Vermont--were selected as "professionally active" based on evidence of high levels of teacher participation in professional development in the 2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, and the teacher surveys associated with the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); a reputation in the literature for enacting reforms that are consistent with the research base on "effective" professional development; and improvements in student achievement as measured in the 2009 NAEP. Students in all four states scored above national averages on the NAEP. Teachers in all four states had high participation rates in a wide range of professional development, from teacher induction to curriculum support and study groups focused on specific subject areas. While their approaches to professional development vary, the four states share a number of key characteristics and face similar challenges, which are outlined in this policy brief. All have professional development standards, induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers, and a state-level organization or professional board that oversees teacher licensing, professional teaching standards, and professional development. Most also require professional development plans for teachers and minimum levels of professional development for license renewal. All provide a range of supports and incentives for professional learning. The authors found that state policies and systems that ensure accountability and monitor professional development are critical factors in implementing effective professional development across a variety of local districts, schools, and contexts. But to ensure the quality of that professional development, it is equally critical to couple state efforts with professional associations and intermediary organizations that help extend the reach of state agencies, offer learning supports of many kinds, and provide a voice for local stakeholders and outside experts. [For the full report, "Teacher Professional Learning in the United States: Case Studies of State Policies and Strategies. Technical Report," see ED515891.]

This paper focuses on engaging and enabling educators to play new roles and take new leadership in the paradigm shift between traditional and competency-based education: a system of learning designed to ensure that all learners are prepared with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to be successful lifelong learners. The paper re-envisions professional practice, learning and development for competency-based education. It describes a teaching profession that is equity-oriented, learning-centered and lifelong, and details strategies that can help realize this paradigm shift. Throughout, the author builds on exemplars of success across the nation and explores how communities can work together to coordinate and sustain complex systems change. She begins with a reflection on adaptive change, exploring the questions, "what is the purpose of competency-based education?" and "what traditional beliefs and values does competency-based education challenge? What core assumptions about the teaching profession must we confront and shift if we want to transform it?" After engaging with these questions, specific technical changes needed to actually shift professional culture and practice at scale are explored. The author then seeks to answer the questions, "what systems, structures and policies do we need to put in place to support a paradigm shift in teaching practice?" and, "how can educators, young people and communities lead this work?" [This paper was written in collaboration with a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of national competency-based education experts.]

This paper outlines current trends, progress, and possibilities for fostering more authentic ways to assess students' competencies and mastery of skills needed for college, work, and civic life in the 21st century. It provides an introduction to performance assessments and their value. The authors highlight efforts to develop such assessments in k-12 districts, public high school networks, and independent schools, and they explore state and local policies that are bolstering such practices. This paper examines emerging higher education efforts to go beyond standardized tests in college admission, placement, and advising. It explores the opportunities and challenges associated with greater inclusion of performance assessments in college admission, placement, and advising. The authors identify steps that can build on the progress already made and help performance assessments be high quality, rigorous, and better known in the field. [For the research brief, see ED606783.]

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opened up new possibilities for how student and school success are defined and supported in American public education. States have greater responsibility for designing and building their assessment and accountability systems. These new opportunities to develop performance assessments are critically important to provide incentives for teaching the more complex skills students increasingly need to succeed in the rapidly evolving U.S. society and economy. The modern workplace requires students to demonstrate well-developed thinking skills, problem solving abilities, design strategies, and communication capabilities that cannot be assessed by most currently used tests. This paper discusses four models for integrating performance-based components into assessment systems, all of which have been used successfully at scale in states and nations around the world. It also discusses what is needed to assure validity, reliability, and comparability in the use of such assessments. These models--which can also be combined in various ways--include: (1) Performance items; (2) Curriculum-embedded tasks; (3) Portfolios or collections of evidence; and (4) Comprehensive assessment systems. In each case, the paper describes what states and some nations have done and are doing to develop and implement sound assessments in terms of design, implementation, and scoring. It also outlines what research has found in terms of productive practices in developing performance assessment practices that produce strong outcomes for teaching and learning. [For the related research brief, see ED606778.]

A significant movement is underway across the nation to design K-12 assessment systems that better equip stakeholders to provide an equitable and excellent education to each child. While some of these innovations emerged before the pandemic, the massive disruption to instruction fueled a new urgency to rethink the potential of assessments to drive better teaching and learning. States and communities are working together to create more balanced systems of assessment that better support instruction while still providing the information necessary to inform policy and resource decisions. There is much to learn from the ideas emerging across the nation--particularly where states are trying to innovate despite limitations of federal policy. The insights and innovations emerging from this paper have the potential to cast a new vision for K-12 assessment in the United States. This work details efforts across the nation to encourage, support and grow innovative state assessment systems, and represents a significant increase in recent state-level energy and action around new forms of assessment to provide deeper and more meaningful understanding of student learning. [Additional producers of this report are Center for Innovation in Education (C!E), Envision Learning Partners, and the Great Schools Partnership.]

No vision of personalized learning can be realized without support for data use. State strategies to create student-centered classrooms require critical policy conditions that allow those closest to students to access and use timely, safeguarded data to make decisions. This case study outlines steps SEAs can take to ensure the effective use of data to achieve their personalized learning goals. These recommendations are based on lessons learned from Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont--states that have taken steps to support districts' efforts to deliver a quality personalized learning experience for all students. Drawing insights from interviews with state leaders and local practitioners, case studies, and document reviews, this paper offers considerations for how SEAs can support the ability of those closest to students to use data to support student success in student-centered classrooms.

This paper presents results of a customer satisfaction survey of Vermont elementary and secondary public schools concerning satisfaction with mental health services during the 1996-97 school year. Analysis of completed questionnaires (N=233) are interpreted from a marketing perspective. Findings are reported for: (1) treated prevalence of emotional behavioral disorders (the market); (2) providers of mental health services (the competition); (3) types of services received (product lines); (4) consumer satisfaction (customer satisfaction); and (5) school characteristics (market segmentation). Findings indicate that there is a substantial unmet need for mental health services in schools, that expansion of existing "product lines" (especially home-school coordination) has the greatest potential for success, that marketing efforts should stress service quality rather than costs, and that the greatest potential for growth for community mental health programs is in poorer school districts and outlying towns. The paper concludes that standard consumer/customer satisfaction surveys can provide children's mental health program administrators with valuable information concerning potential demand for services, suggested marketing strategies, and promising market segments. (DB)

In 2009 the Obama administration announced a focused commitment to turn around 5,000 of the United States' chronically lowest-performing public schools as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This commitment came with $3 billion in funding for the School Improvement Grant program, or SIG, along with new guidelines to ensure that federal dollars are effectively invested at the district and school level. This paper takes a closer look at state grant-making strategies for federal school improvement dollars. Further, it reviews the way in which state funding practices for school improvement have changed as a result of the updated SIG requirements and how states have used their flexibility to implement a competitive grant process. Specifically, this paper details the approach that three states--Illinois, Louisiana, and Vermont--have taken in administering their grant competitions. These states illuminate the spectrum of competitiveness in the state grant-making process that has emerged as a result of the new school improvement regulations. There are five significant findings that emerged from examining these three states that call for further investigation across all states. First, it is evident that states continue to have a great degree of flexibility in implementing their grant-making strategy. Second, as other early research on SIG implementation indicates, access to SIG dollars may be more competitive in some states than in others. Third, all three states needed to provide substantial technical assistance to strengthen the quality of the applications that they received. Fourth, application rates varied substantially across the three states. Fifth and finally, the criteria that states use to monitor districts are clear but the process for grant renewal and termination could be more formal and transparent. This paper begins with an overview of how the SIG program has evolved into a more competitive process. It next takes a brief look at how all states changed their practices once the program was altered and then examines in detail how three states--Illinois, Louisiana, and Vermont--have approached the competitive grant-making process. Lastly, the paper concludes with findings and policy implications and underscores the promise of the SIG program's commitment to turn around schools and address the systemic failures that allow schools to flounder. (Contains 1 figure, 2 tables, and 98 endnotes.)

The purpose of this paper is to provide information and insight into how state assessment programs are governed, how individual state and state-consortium assessment programs actually operate, and how key policy and technical decisions on these programs are made. To address these issues, this paper is divided into three sections: First, the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) is presented in some detail as an assessment consortium that has struggled with a variety of challenges and, for the most part, has successfully overcome the obstacles. In fact, there are currently no large consortia operating that are tackling comprehensive, multi-grade, multi-subject, high-stakes assessment programs. The only current example is the NECAP Consortium developed originally by three states: New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Second, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) program is presented as an example of one state's journey in developing, operating, and maintaining a quality, high-stakes assessment program that is considered by many to be one of the best in the nation. Third, relevant features of the assessment programs in three other states (Kentucky, Michigan, and North Carolina) are briefly described to illustrate the different approaches and pressures that have helped to shape those programs.

This paper reports on an ongoing effort of the Vermont Mental Health Performance Indicator Project (PIP) to examine the relevance and utility of standardized test scores for evaluating community mental health programs. This analysis is of test scores from Vermont's first four years of statewide testing. The study is examining anonymous person-level extracts from four existing databases: the Mathematics Skills Assessment and the English Language Reading--Basic Understanding for 4th-, 8th-, and 10th-grade students during 1998 through 2001; the Vermont Mental Health Division's Monthly Service Report; and the Vermont District Court records. For mental health service recipients, performance by boys on the mathematics test increased, whereas the performance of girls decreased. This resulted, however, in similar 10th-grade performance for both boys and girls. Performance on the English test decreased between 8th and 10th grades for both boys and girls in the treatment group. Involvement with the criminal justice system was substantially greater for students who did not participate in the tests than for participants. Results support the value of educational test scores for evaluating systems of care for children and adolescents and for providing valid and reliable information on levels of school participation and school performance for recipients of mental health services. (DB)

Vermont's Act 60 received national attention not only because of the controversy surrounding the sharing pool (or recapture provision) but also because of its "potential for being the most equitable system in the country." For fiscal years 1998 to 2001, tax rates have become more equitable, and a direct relationship has appeared between spending level and tax rate at the town level. Tax burdens have also become more equitable on a town-to-town and individual basis. Education spending equity is occurring, though at a relatively slower pace than tax equity. Educational achievement equity is emerging when state test data are used as a measure. Issues are discussed include whether or not the sharing pool should be maintained and whether the recapture provision should be modified. Other issues are monetary gifts as a means of obtaining exemption from recapture, small schools, whether money should move with the child, and the need to reduce bureaucratic complexity. An important question is whether the legislature will weaken the provisions of the act and cause greater inequities or improve the deficiencies in the formula so that it can work more effectively. The paper ends with six charts illustrating financial trends for fiscal years 1998 to 2001. (Contains 11 endnotes and 9 tables and charts.) (RT)

This paper analyzes educational-finance reform in Vermont, which culminated in the passage of Act 60, a comprehensive education and tax reform measure, and the subsequent political furor the act engendered. It outlines the pre-reform background focusing on early civil-society organizations and the unique political landscape in Vermont. The article describes the political actors in the reform debate, such as the League of Women Voters and The Vermont Natural Resources Council, and the various legislative movements these groups championed. Details of failed reform efforts and the many facets of political maneuvering are provided. After elements of bipartisan support of various reform packages fell apart, deliberative discourse fell to the side and political regrouping began in earnest. Corrections through the courts were then sought by financial reformers, and a family sued the state to obtain financial equity among school districts. The resultant victory and the passage of the reform legislation, Act 60, and subsequent backlash are described. The reform process resulted in watershed transformations of political thought and culture in Vermont. Most importantly, the notion of a statewide responsibility for the education of all children was firmly established, supported by a statewide property tax; and the entrenched idea of an inequitable financial share in education was eradicated. (Contains 32 references and notes.) (RJM)

In Brigham et al. v. State of Vermont (1997), the Vermont Supreme Court struck down the previous state-funding system and directed the legislature to come up with a new system that would eliminate the inequities among the local school districts. An analysis of this decision and its consequences is offered here. The paper recaps the funding system prior to 1997 and describes how the previous finance system relied too heavily on local property taxes. As state aid dropped, per pupil expenditures varied widely, ranging from $2,961 to $7,726. This inequity prompted the Brigham case and led to a massive restructuring of educational finance in the form of the Equal Education Opportunities Act. The state drew on a statewide property tax, block grants, an income-sensitive property tax, new taxes, and other programs to fund these financial changes. With the funding in place, the legislature stipulated that local control was the best way to allocate the resources. This emphasis on local control was leavened by a state-curriculum framework, new assessment standards, standardized achievement tests, local goal-setting and action plans, and state standards and yearly progress reports. In the first year of the program, poor towns moderately increased their spending and richer towns cut their budgets, indicators of increasing financial equity. (Contains 15 references.) (RJM)

This reports presents a detailed description of curriculum reform efforts in four states that exemplify particular approaches to developing curriculum. In California and South Carolina, curriculum standards are influenced most heavily by subject-matter professionals through a top-down process; the lay public is asked to review and make recommended changes only after the standards are drafted. In Vermont and Kentucky, development of core curriculum begins with the lay public in statewide forums, with drafting committees then formed at the state level to translate those recommendations into curriculum standards. These two approaches to curriculum development are highlighted in the report. The paper identifies the two approaches as an intellectual elite approach (California and South Carolina) and a populist approach (Kentucky and Vermont). Five mechanisms that state level governing bodies could use to promote and support what schools do to improve academic learning include: 1) provide incentives to encourage the planning and implementation of reform; 2) contribute knowledge to the school reform process; 3) help focus schools' attention on desired learning outcomes and provide feedback; 4) provide assistance to schools wanting to redesign programs to improve student learning; and 5) replace traditional regulations imposed at the state level by assessment systems that hold schools accountable for student achievement (Lusi, 1994). (Contains 33 references.) (EH)

This paper describes the Vermont Interdependent Services Team Approach (VISTA), a decision-making process for determining the educational support service needs of students with deaf-blindness or other multiple disabilities. The paper also analyzes perceptions of VISTA held by experts in a variety of fields. Specifically, VISTA provides a team process for determining: (1) needed services to support a student's educational program; (2) educational relevance and necessity of the services; (3) functions of support services; and (4) frequency, mode, and location of service provision. A panel of 12 experts from major national organizations reviewed a revision of the VISTA procedures manual and found that the manual's content was relevant for students who have education support service needs, including students with deaf-blindness, and verified the content as logical, consistent with exemplary practice, and not particularly controversial. Differences among reviewers were found in philosophical orientation and approval of the manual's format. (Contains 13 references.) (DB)

This paper first compares Vermont's old Individualized Education Plan (IEP) which was designed primarily to insure legal compliance with the new family-centered IEP. It then describes the new IEP. Vermont's new family-centered IEP process emphasizes increased collaboration, reduced paperwork, and legal compliance. Three questions serve as a focus for the process. The first concerns what is known about the student, including level of performance and students' strengths and needs. The second question involves the types of special educational provisions and services the student will receive. The third question concerns evaluating whether the provisions are successful, as determined by goals, objectives, and measurable criteria. The process, which discourages the use of draft IEPs prepared before the IEP meeting, begins with an empty page consisting of three blank columns, one for each of the key questions. Final IEP team decisions are recorded after consensus has been reached, and jargon and technical terminology are discouraged. Listing interventions, services, accommodations, and transitions services in a shortened format promotes a holistic approach and a greater chance of implementing instructionally useful programming. The new process seeks to maximize parent participation. Using a creative problem solving process, team members are encouraged to generate as many ideas as possible, after which the ideas which show the greatest promise are selected. Attachments include parents and teachers comments on the new IEP; IEP Planning Guide/Checklist; and IEP Participant Worksheet. (Contains 13 references.) (SW)

This paper traces the historical context of the passage and implementation of Vermont's Act 230 in 1990, which initiated a new special education funding system to increase equity, predictability, and flexibility in program design as well as to ensure placement neutrality. Specific objectives of the funding system included increasing the use of prereferral services for children with diverse needs and the inclusion of children with disabilities in regular classes. The funding formula has three components: (1) a mainstream block grant to school districts based on total student enrollment; (2) an extraordinary service reimbursement providing compensation to districts for unusually high-cost individual cases; and (3) an intensive services reimbursement to help with all remaining allowable special education costs not otherwise covered. This paper relates this reform to special education policy, programs, and services; discusses the objectives for reform and the mechanics of the new funding system; reviews the results to date of an ongoing statewide evaluation; and presents a summary of interviews with state- and local-level constituents during the fourth year of implementation of the new formula. Contains seven references. (DB)

This report collects the results of all available empirical studies using the best available scientific methods to measure how school vouchers affect academic outcomes for participants, and all available studies on how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers do not benefit participants and hurt public schools, the empirical evidence consistently shows that vouchers improve outcomes for both participants and public schools. In addition to helping the participants by giving them more options, there are a variety of explanations for why vouchers might improve public schools as well. The most important is that competition from vouchers introduces healthy incentives for public schools to improve. Key findings include: (1) Ten empirical studies have used random assignment, the gold standard of social science, to examine how vouchers affect participants. Nine studies find that vouchers improve student outcomes, six that all students benefit and three that some benefit and some are not affected. One study finds no visible impact. None of these studies finds a negative impact; (2) Nineteen empirical studies have examined how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Of these studies, 18 find that vouchers improved public schools and one finds no visible impact. No empirical studies find that vouchers harm public schools; (3) Every empirical study ever conducted in Milwaukee, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Maine and Vermont finds that voucher programs in those places improved public schools; (4) Only one study, conducted in Washington D.C., found no visible impact from vouchers. This is not surprising, since the D.C. voucher program is the only one designed to shield public schools from the impact of competition. Thus, the D.C. study does not detract from the research consensus in favor of a positive effect from voucher competition; and (5) The benefits provided by existing voucher programs are sometimes large, but are usually more modest in size. This is not surprising since the programs themselves are modest--curtailed by strict limits on the students they can serve, the resources they provide, and the freedom to innovate. Only a universal voucher program could deliver the kind of dramatic improvement our public schools so desperately need. (Contains 4 tables and 48 notes.) [This is an updated version of the original paper, "A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on How Vouchers Affect Public Schools. School Choice Issues in Depth", published in February 2009. To access this report, see ED508324.

This report examines tax reform in Vermont. A unanimous state supreme court decision in 1997 ruled that the state's educational finance system was unconstitutional. In response to this ruling, the legislature passed a new statewide property-tax system with two tiers: a block grant of $5,010 per pupil and a guaranteed yield for spending above the block grant. The paper explores the recapture provision of the law, where the state fills in any financial shortage due to lack of local fiscal capacity or recaptures excess revenue and redistributes it through the education fund. It discusses the tax-burden cap of 2 percent of income and discusses how this cap applies to the block grant and statewide property tax. The report then turns to the controversy generated by the new spending plan and how citizens of the wealthier towns in the state have protested against the plan. Issues include litigation and the claim that the state did not have authority to tax locals. A statewide property tax as a possible solution to the controversy is being explored by some as a solution to many problems, such as those presented by communities that circumvent the recapture provision in the law. (RJM)

The most common configuration for the middle level is for grades 6-8 to be housed together. Although not a common configuration, there are some ninth grade only campuses sprinkled throughout the United States. Many of these schools were designed to address overcrowding issues either at the middle or high school while some were designed to help encourage a higher retention rate. The most common high school configuration is for grades 9-12 to be together. Schools for 11th & 12th grades seem to be mostly vocational. Although solid data on student achievement and its relationship to which configurations are thought to be the best is sparse, the research does cite areas for consideration when a district is examining various grade configurations. Cited in this paper are the areas for general consideration; the philosophy of meeting the needs of students in the middle grades according to the National Middle School Association and for high school according to "Breaking Ranks"; and some pros and cons for an 8th & 9th grade campus and a 9th grade only campus. (Contains 10 online resources.)

Vermont's Act 60 is arguably the most equitable school funding system in the nation. However, it is also one of the most controversial. The disputes are primarily focused on the recapture provision that sends excess revenues from property-rich towns to the state's education trust fund. After a 4-year implementation period, the system is now in its second year of full operation. This evaluation addresses the equity effects and the associated educational achievement trends since this reform was implemented. It also discusses the adequacy issues being brought to the forefront as a result of the February 1997 Supreme Court decision ("Brigham versus the State of Vermont") and the reforms. The major findings include equality of tax rates, equality of tax burden, variation in tax rate and spending between towns, and general improvement in state test scores. While controversies remain as well as strong efforts to repeal the recapture portion of the state funding system, Vermont's Act 60 reforms have provided tax-rate and tax-burden equity. Education spending levels have become more equitable and educational test scores have improved across the board with the biggest gains being for the traditionally lowest scoring towns. (Contains 18 endnotes and 5 tables.) (RT)

Following a national trend, school board members, administrators, and teachers in Brandon, Vermont, have developed a model for a standards-based evaluation and compensation system for teachers that does not link test scores to teacher pay. The model was developed over a period of 4 years, a necessary amount of time to establish guiding principles, affirm commitment from administrators and teachers, and translate a plan into acceptable contract language. Under the new standards-based environment, teachers present a professional portfolio, which mirrors the state's relicensing criteria, to a "moveover" committee made up of board members, administrators, and peers. The portfolio includes evaluations, evidence of meeting state standards, and a professional growth plan. All new teachers are compensated through the new system; senior teachers can choose the new system or the traditional salary system based on longevity and graduate credits. The new compensation system is managed by the personnel officer in each school. After the first year in place, the portfolio presentation was refined because teachers needed guidance in writing reflective narratives. After 2 years, early implementation, though not seamless, has been smooth because of the consistency of the moveover committees and the mature leadership of school board members, administrators, and teachers. (WFA)