New Brunswick's Lesson for Vermont

What will Vermont education look like after a few years of Act 60? The act's critics claim that we are on the road to a centralized, state-run, bureaucratic, and disastrously mediocre public education system. The act's defenders tout the funding equity made possible by the statewide property tax and per pupil grants, and even argue that Act 60 actually increases local control of our schools. Both sides should examine an almost exact parallel to Act 60 that has taken place just 250 miles from Montpelier.

In 1967 New Brunswick (population: 725,000) adopted an education finance law - the "Equal Opportunity Program" - that made it unique among Canada's provinces. Up to that time, public education was controlled by local school boards and financed by local revenues. In words familiar to today's Vermonters, the 1967 law "ensured that New Brunswickers had equal access to educational opportunities, and equitable funding wherever they lived. "

The 1967 act achieved this by instituting a province-wide education property tax. The proceeds of this tax and the provincial sales tax go into a consolidated fund from which the province pays virtually 100 percent of the costs of the public schools.

The provincial Ministry of Education allocates funds to the various school districts, and controls all uses of the funds. The distribution follows guidelines on teacher and administrative salaries, school operation and maintenance, and transportation. The Ministry funds all capital construction and maintains centralized control of textbooks, workers compensation, and the government's share of the retirement system.

In 1997 the government took stock of the previous 30 years' experience, and announced a "Renewed Education System". Driving the new act were rising costs, declining tax resources, and the discovery that "the current layers of administration and decision-making, together with the competing forces of many interest groups, are formidable barriers to improvement in the system. " In other words, the provincial government had gotten tired of paying for too much of the empty shadow of "local control".

The new system included mandatory state standards and, in the name of efficiency, "new structures to support learning". Here is how it is described in a government fact sheet: "Since the late 1960s, the education system has continued to operate with a school board structure which had already lost the significant roles of local taxation and setting working conditions and salaries. Later, the province assumed all responsibility for collective bargaining... Confusion, relating to unclear lines of authority and roles and responsibilities, is linked to the overlapping authority of the province and the [local] boards."

The "new structure" is simple and predictable. Local school boards were abolished. Eight Superintendents (reduced from 18) have become regional employees of the Ministry of Education. New "school parent committees" will be allowed to offer "input", but all decisions will be made by the Ministry.

What of educational outcomes? Since the province conducts only its own homegrown tests, it is not possible to tell how or whether New Brunswick children are performing better in 1998 than in 1967, under the older system.

Back in Vermont, here's where we are with Act 60: A new "reform" based on "Equal Opportunity". The state property tax replaces the local education property tax. A state fund will pay virtually 100 percent of local education costs. The state establishes standards for all schools. The state requires strategic performance plans of all schools. The state assumes the power to close a school.

In place in New Brunswick, but yet to come in Vermont: The installation of local "Directors of Education" accountable to and removable by the Ministry. The statewide teachers contract. The conversion of superintendents to state employees. Abolition of local school boards as wasteful overlapping bureaucracies. Reduction of "local control" to input sent to the Ministry from PTA meetings.

The only curious part of this story is that it took New Brunswick 30 years to achieve the centralized unitary school system that is the inevitable result of full state funding of local schools. Barring a political revolution, the same results should be attained much more quickly in Vermont. ####

June 1998