The Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) is soliciting feedback from stakeholders and the public on the draft Building for the Future: Vermont’s Plan for Education Recovery and Beyond. The plan is a requirement of Vermont’s Act 74 and the Federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARP Act).
University of Vermont professor Aaron Kindsvatter took to the stage this weekend to warn Vermonters that the education system at all age levels is being used to indoctrinate young minds into judging peers by the color of their skin.
According to the group, “38.1% of Republican voters say parents who oppose Critical Race Theory should remove their children from public school if CRT becomes part of their children’s curriculum – compared to 20.9% of Democrats and 22.9% of Independents.”
Last week Reason.com published an update on school choice developments in the states. It’s not too late for Vermont to catch up.
Meritocracy ensures the proper functioning of our systems and institutions. Throughout history, various civilizations have concluded that merit-based systems best contribute to the flourishing of a society. Both the imperial and post-Mao Chinese states, as well as the United States, are clear examples.
“I’d like to talk about something called ‘gaslighting.’ It’s happening right now in Vermont. It’s happening to people of any political persuasion who dare question the critical race theory and new racism being taught in Vermont schools.”
The “remedy” of concerned citizens regaining control of curriculums only rarely succeeds. A better solution: let objecting parents send their children to independent schools, taking a large fraction of their public school equalized per pupil cost of education with them.
Powerful teacher union bosses saw shuttered schools as an opportunity to extract billions and billions of additional dollars from hard-pressed taxpayers for the unionized government schools that they largely control. The shakedown scheme succeeded to an extent they never could have imagined pre-COVID-19.
Carson v. Makin states the question this way: Does a state violate the Religious Clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by prohibiting students participating in an otherwise generally available student-aid program from choosing to use their aid to attend schools that provide religious, or “sectarian,” instruction?
Vermont, Mississippi and Puerto Rico all saw enrollment fall by more than 5%, while Washington, New Mexico, Michigan, Kentucky and Maine lost between 4% and 5% of enrollment. The average 3% drop represents some 1.5 million students according to the preliminary report.
Megan Tuttle says the plan will siphon limited money and resources from traditional public schools and force cities and towns to raise property taxes to make up for the loss of state funding. She said the union “remains open to all options regarding potential legal challenges.”
Lawmakers recently passed a bill that begins the process for a major expansion of state-subsidized childcare for birth to 5-year-olds rolled out over the next few years. The new law, crafted and pushed by the special interest group Let’s Grow Kids, could have major negative consequences for children, families and taxpayers.