Dean on secondary and elementary education

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This is a thread outlining Dean's position on education before college. Here is his record.

It's only fair for everybody to have the same chance in Vermont, whether you come from a small town with a small school or a large town with a large school.”


High Standards — Under Governor Dean’s tenure, Vermont developed high student standards in reading, math, and science. Governor Dean fully funded high-quality state tests. His commitment to well-funded school reform has made Vermont a national leader in education.

Education Technology — With strong support from Governor Dean, Vermont established an Interactive Learning Network that has brought video-conferencing equipment to even the most rural high schools. Vermont schools offer specialized technical education to help students develop the skills they need to thrive in the new economy.

Teacher Quality Initiatives — Governor Dean believes in teacher excellence. His Department of Education established comprehensive programs to mentor new teachers, strengthen licensure, and provide financial assistance to teachers seeking National Board Certification.


Governor Dean fought the GOP's proposal to drop the federal school lunch program and other childhood nutrition programs. “It is the most repulsive proposal I've seen in years. I'm going to fight this in Washington, and I'm going to win.”

Education Funding — Governor Dean will fight for full funding of federal education programs. He will ensure that teachers, school boards, administrators, and parents have the resources they need to provide high quality services for our children.

Reform No Child Left Behind Act — Governor Dean recognizes the importance of school accountability and reducing achievement gaps. But he opposes the unfunded mandates and intrusive provisions contained in the recent federal law.

Success by Six — Governor Dean’s early childhood initiative invests in services that cut across traditional program boundaries. Dean’s comprehensive strategy includes specialized child care, universal access to early childhood health services, Healthy Babies home visitation, and other services proven to increase school readiness and reduce child abuse, sexual abuse, and teen pregnancy.

Special Education — As President, Dean will fulfill the federal government’s obligation to give full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

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Not mentioned here but quite important in its own right is Act 60 which equalized funding for Vermont school districts and took steps to lessen the impact of property taxes for poor and middle class families.

And here is his position on No Child Left Behind

I have been steadfastly opposed to the No Child Left Behind since it was originally debated in Congress. The truth is that the real achievement gap among our nation’s youth cannot be remedied by 2000 pages of federal legislation imposing a single plan on every school, district, and state. The Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation is a draconian takeover of local and state control. While we all applaud the notion of accountability, the methods in NCLB to measure accountability and promote reform are dangerously flawed. It uses standardized tests as the sole measure of learning, forces the use of incomprehensible and invalid statistics to measure annual success, and mandates school and state operations that are estimated to cost local school boards and state education departments a significant amount of money without appropriate aid. It essentially labels schools as failures and then compels those districts to send students to other schools at the taxpayer’s expense. This represents nothing less than the beginning of the dismantlement of our public school system.

Every one of my fellow Democratic presidential candidates who serve in Congress voted for Bush’s No Child Left Behind bill. Only now that the law’s consequences are apparent do they criticize it. Their votes for this bill show that Washington politicians are not in touch with what our schools, our children, and our teachers really need.

As Governor of Vermont, I was an outspoken critic of this federal intrusion into state and local affairs because I understood that it was terribly flawed. I suggested that my state would be better off refusing the federal money and not participating, because Vermont already had accountability measures that empower our schools to succeed. Why should Vermont, or any state for that matter, participate in a system that encourages schools to dumb down standards or encourage dropouts? Time has proven that my skepticism was well founded. Implementing No Child Left Behind has driven up local property taxes, taken money away from needed school programs and made it even more difficult to pay competitive teacher salaries. Unless we seriously reform No Child Left Behind, these problems will only compound.

Recent polls of U.S citizens indicate that the public continues to have great faith and support for their public schools and trusts decisions made by local teachers much more than those by corporate or federal leaders. They believe that teachers should earn more respect and higher salaries and federal and state resources should be spread equally among all students regardless of the circumstances of birth, family, or economic class. I agree wholeheartedly.

We need to reinvigorate democracy at the local level, while preserving the federal role in closing the achievement gap. Education reform should be about investing in teachers, and assisting schools in developing and attaining standards and comprehensive assessments far beyond a single set of multiple choice tests that work without forcing schools to lower the bar to make sure they aren’t shut down. The federal government must do its job by providing full funding for programs for our poorest children and those students with special needs. Schools can only work well if students and families have such basic needs met as health insurance, personal safety, quality child care and early childhood schooling.

My vision for education in this country stretches beyond the age of five through 18. Education must be a broad, evolving process, beginning not from the moment a child enters the classroom, but from the moment that child enters the world. It requires early preparation for success, assurance of health and learning throughout the school years, and a commitment to the accessibility and affordability of higher education so that every student has the chance to live out America’s promise.

We can’t wait until kids are five or six years old to get them on track. We’ve got to help kids long before they reach kindergarten. As Governor of Vermont, I instituted programs that engaged children and their families before they even left the hospital, so children would enter the classroom ready to succeed. As President I will heavily invest in early childhood initiatives, which set up American children to thrive in school and in life, while providing more options for parents. We’ve done it in Vermont; we can do it for America.

As President, I will also work to strengthen our schools with improved student health centers, a focus on parental involvement, recruiting and retaining outstanding teachers and administrators, and resources to fund key mandates. As President, I will fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, increase funding for elementary and secondary education improvement, and oppose efforts to gut vocational education programs.

The greatest investment that America can make to ensure a thriving and participatory democracy is in the quality of education it provides for its children. We must pledge ourselves to an education plan that is more than rhetoric, mandates, sanctions, control, and privatization, but instead one of fairness, justice, and flexibility. We must give our schools back to students, educators, parents, and citizens of local communities and states to achieve the public mission of education of preparing all of our students to be wise, free, and responsible citizens.




end of quote.

Down here I am going to cherry pick some of the quotes and expand a bit.

Success by Six — Governor Dean’s early childhood initiative invests in services that cut across traditional program boundaries. Dean’s comprehensive strategy includes specialized child care, universal access to early childhood health services, Healthy Babies home visitation, and other services proven to increase school readiness and reduce child abuse, sexual abuse, and teen pregnancy.

end of quote

This is his best and most important program educationally. Yes, all children can learn. But, they can't all learn in a public school if they don't have some degree of readiness when they get there. Subbing has been an eye opener for me on the difference between kindergardeners. Some are very ready for school. They can say and write their names, do easy math, read a bit, and are able to follow along in school. Others are not even close. Some stilll are not potty trained, some can't write or recognize letters, some can't count to even 10. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which kids are going to be in physics in grade 12 and which are going to be lucky to be in school in grade 12. Public schools aren't miracle factories. Occasionally we can radically turn around students. But it isn't common. The dirty little secret of education is how difficult it is to educate special education children well and how often special education become a ghetto for those kids. One way to prevent that is to prevent kids from being behind when they get to school.

new quote

I have been steadfastly opposed to the No Child Left Behind since it was originally debated in Congress. The truth is that the real achievement gap among our nation’s youth cannot be remedied by 2000 pages of federal legislation imposing a single plan on every school, district, and state. The Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation is a draconian takeover of local and state control. While we all applaud the notion of accountability, the methods in NCLB to measure accountability and promote reform are dangerously flawed. It uses standardized tests as the sole measure of learning, forces the use of incomprehensible and invalid statistics to measure annual success, and mandates school and state operations that are estimated to cost local school boards and state education departments a significant amount of money without appropriate aid. It essentially labels schools as failures and then compels those districts to send students to other schools at the taxpayer’s expense. This represents nothing less than the beginning of the dismantlement of our public school system.

end of quote

The bold part says a mouthful. Let me provide some examples of what the problems are.

First, standardised tests. That is the sole criterian used to judge a school district a failure of a sucess. It doesn't matter if your school has merit scholars up the wazoo. It doesn't matter if your school's music program is terrific. It doesn't matter if your school's calculus class is so good movies are made about it. It doesn't matter if your school finds jobs and or college slots for all its graduates. Only how many pass, and which ones pass, a standardized test.

Second meaningless statistics. Not only must a certain percentage of your school pass these tests but a certain percentage of each race must as well. In theory this is a wonderful idea but in practice it is a recipe for failure. This is a fine and good requirement for schools which are racially diverse. But is nothing short of lunacy for segregated ones. The high school I taught at in Cleveland had only a very few white students and all of them were in special education. Thus, this school will never be anything but a failure as all their white students will fail the standardized tests. In rural areas if the one Asian student, Hispanic student, or African American student has a bad day the school is a failure. That is crazy. This is the very definition of a one size fits all solution to a complex problem.

Third, no one is exempt from these tests anymore. Thus a school which has more special ed students than they normally would (say due to having the city's only SBH unit) will get hozed. This will hurt rural and mid sized school districts which no longer will be able to combine those units at one site without having that one site be deemed a failing school. Again, no thought was given to this.

Fourth, there have been innumerable scandals involving standardized tests. Students have been lost, students have been coached, bribed, and given answers. Dropout rates in some Houston schools were under reported by a factor of 25. This isn't unique to city schools. It is a growing problem. Having these high stakes test as the only measurement gives incentive to game them. And gaming is going on.

start of new quote

We need to reinvigorate democracy at the local level, while preserving the federal role in closing the achievement gap. Education reform should be about investing in teachers, and assisting schools in developing and attaining standards and comprehensive assessments far beyond a single set of multiple choice tests that work without forcing schools to lower the bar to make sure they aren’t shut down. The federal government must do its job by providing full funding for programs for our poorest children and those students with special needs. Schools can only work well if students and families have such basic needs met as health insurance, personal safety, quality child care and early childhood schooling.

end of qutoe

Amen. Amen, A thousand times amen. If you only use tests as your measure you will only get good test takers. This paragraph sums up what we need.

It should be noted that Dean doesn't even hit what I think are the worst problems with this bill. The requirements for teaching aides will cause them to disappear while the way the failing school provision works will cause failing schools to spread like cancers in a school district. This bill was bad and Dean was right. No amount of funding will make it good.