Vermont Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca adamantly, and persuasively, argues that’s not the case. “We’re not blocking things,” he says. “We are able to come up with solutions and have high standards. But some of those models were not reflective of our needs and our capacities."

Vermont has a representative at this week’s rural state education officials meeting in South Dakota, and Vilaseca (photo at left) was one of the signatories of the letter rural states sent to federal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, describing their challenges in meeting federal grant guidelines.

We asked Vilaseca to tell us his thoughts on how ARRA has (or hasn’t) worked for rural states, and what he hopes will be done differently.

Essentially, he says he’s not looking for easier standards, but more flexible ones.  Vermont has already dropped out of Round Two for the Race to the Top dollars, but Vilaseca has suggestions for future attempts to use federal dollars to change education.

For one thing, he’d like to see the feds eschew specific models for turning around an educational system (Race to the Top has four models states can opt for) in favor of emphasizing the “loose means and tight ends” approach that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has mentioned in the past. Vilaseca’s preferred approach would allow each state to design its own turnaround in order to meet objective standards of turnaround success.  “How Vermont gets there may be different than Delaware. In a place like Texas you may need multiple models. That is where the flexibility has to come in," he says. And that is why he favors setting benchmarks rather than prescriptive models that may or may not work for every state.

Should states be unable to meet those goals despite that flexibility, Vilaseca would have no objection to even stronger federal intervention in righting failing schools. He may not go as far as suggesting that the feds fully take over a state’s Department of Education. But a “more directive” involvement from federal officials working with the state seems in order.

He adds, “I’m not a big supporter of withholding funds, because ultimately the kids get hurt. I would rather hold the adults responsible than holds the kids hostage for what adults have chosen to do."

More than anything, Vilaseca wants education standards to be aggressive but also practicable. “Hold us accountable to high standards; hold us accountable to realistic standards. I don't want our letter to be used against setting high standards or held against individual states. Let us get there in a way that meets our needs."

Vilaseca remains pragmatically hopeful that the discussions in South Dakota will be able to produce alternatives that rural education officials and their federal counterparts can both find viable. “We're going to have to find some balance for what the federal government needs and how we can get there."

0 comments

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Subject:

Write a comment...

Your comment will appear after administrative review.

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

104 recommendations

Recommend this