Dear Editor,
Writers of political opinion lately have been fond of using ball-team analogies when describing the difficult interaction between players tackling education finance reform. Allow me to continue with that approach.
Sometimes even the ball teams staffed with the highest qualified and most highly paid players (teachers) perform poorly on the ball court despite mountains of procedures and certifications (school policies). Throwing more money at the players and further adding to the coaching staff (School district administrative teams) often comes with little improvement.
History is replete with examples of such teams, and owners (the Legislature) are perplexed about what the ultimate solution might be. The owners bring in experts to examine the team (education establishment experts), and take hours of testimony from stakeholders all in the hopes of improving player success.
Oftentimes, the solution to improved performance is to throw out the playbook and start over. Starting over means drafting a new approach where players can redefine their role and contribute more to the team’s success.
Winning playbooks can be found everywhere across the U.S. where players are engaged, and one need only look and learn from successful teams. Which playbook will ultimately work well for our distinct players is unknown, but not putting in the work to find it is no solution.
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What is driving the need for change on the ball field are the community members paying large sums of money in the hopes of seeing a winning team. Especially because the price of admission goes up every year regardless whether the team performs well or not.
Education reform is complicated, everyone agrees with that, but doing nothing because the task is hard and the future uncertain is no excuse. Legislative leaders need to fix focus on the goal of achieving some significant improvement despite how voters passed recent school budgets.
Voters and taxpayers in Vermont, I assure you, have not forgotten about how property taxes are destroying family budgets. If the Democratic-Progressive legislative majority hasn’t gotten that message, then come next election more change to conservative voices will be needed.
John Clifford
Hinesburg
Read the story on VTDigger here: John Clifford: Education reform is complicated, but doing nothing is not an option.