The Higgins Principle 
By Martin Harris
In mid-October, the Rutland Herald reported with obvious delight that "Vermont’s students are at the top of the class" in math, according to this year’s federal NAEP tests of 4th and 8th graders, placing behind only New Hampshire and Massachusetts in numerical proficiency. Education Commissioner Vilaseca was equally jubilant, calling his students "well-performing", the same self-congratulatory wording quoted in the Herald as used by Rutland Superintendent Moran and Barstow Principal Prescott. What they curiously didn’t mention was the percentage of their young charges actually scoring "proficient". That number is 51%. The other 49% didn’t achieve the "ability to function at grade level" measure, and are less-than-proficient in math. When you add in the other disciplines –reading, science, history, and so on-- the overall proficiency accomplishment of the public schools is in the 30-to-40% range.

If you, in the private sector, produced a product line at least half of which don’t work as expected, you’d experience customer dissatisfaction and lose market share in a hurry. And, the statistics show, public education is losing market share to non-public alternatives, although surprisingly slowly, given a product-inadequacy rate of half in some disciplines, about 2/3 in others. Just because your competitor across the State line has an even higher unsatisfactory percentage won’t help your sales, particularly when your cost of production is among the highest in the nation. Under those circumstances, maybe your best option is to advertise your output as "excellent", knowing it isn’t, and hope your choice of language is convincing. That, I suppose, explains why so many public schools in Vermont (and other States as well) display the word "excellence" on their front-lawn bulletin board.

I also suppose that Vermont’s edu-crats were deeply influenced by a youthful viewing of "My Fair Lady", a re-run of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, the stage play in which Professor Henry Higgins selects a forlorn specimen of the London under-class off the mean streets and raises her socio-economic status by teaching her to speak English properly. "The French don’t care what you do (in some quotes the verb is ‘say’) as long as you pronounce it correctly" the phonetics professor observes, perhaps furnishing the source for the official evaluation of Vermont public education that, in Prescott’s words,  "it’s great to see Vermont doing so well."  I’d say that the "Higgins Principle" enjoys remarkable currency amongst Vermont’s public educators.

If your notion of "doing well" embraces a 51% proficiency rate in math, you can claim superiority to almost all other States; indeed, the 2007 National Digest of Educational Statistics showed the US average for 4th grade math at 239 (out of a possible 500), compared to a VT average score of 246. That’s 39% proficient, nationally, compared to 49% less than half) proficient in-state. And if you are careful not to mention the actual numerical proficiency rate in your public statements, you’ll be equally carefully to avoid the NAEP stats for proficiency in ethnic grouping, for which the 2007 NDES shows the 4th grade reading results. VT, a statistically all-white State, came in at 229. The US white cohort average  (not an overall total average typically depressed somewhat by lower minority scores) was 230. Adjusted for race, then, Vermont students aren’t "top of the class" (using Herald language) but a point below the national average. Marginally better stats were posted in 8th grade science, wherein statistically-all-white VT came in at 162 and the US white average was 159, the black at 123. Virginia’s white students scored better at 165.

Going similarly unmentionable by the Commissioner and other VT educators are the annual per-pupil cost data, which, taken in conjunction with test scores, furnish an indicator of educational productivity. The 2007 NDES reported that, for 2005, VT spent $12,783, when the US average was $10,071 and Virginia, a State with better scores in some disciplines, spent $10,030. In contrast, the previous VT Commissioner, Richard Cate, took considerable verbal pride in both Vermont low class size and high annual per-pupil spending, explaining that these policy factors were responsible for Vermont’s impressive test scores, and that (like the shampoo-purchasing lady in the advertising) we’re worth it.

The Rutland Herald put the Higgins gloss on it: in a 16 October op-ed, the editors assert that "Vermont’s high test rankings" show that the "low student-teacher ratio is good for students but hard on taxpayers" without ever mentioning Utah, which has the highest p/t ratio in the nation (22, compared to VT’s 11) has roughly half the per-pupil spending cost as a result, and whose students came in at 262 for 8th grade reading, 1 point above the 261  US average, and 11 points below the 273 VT average, but at half the VT cost. All these mid-200’s scores are about half of the possible 500, which explains why all the proficiency percentages cluster in the 30-to-40 range, meaning that a clear majority of students –US, VT, and UT-- can’t read well enough to make "proficient". Sometimes it’s politically expedient to pronounce correctly but not to recite the stats.

As for the once-presumed-obvious educator objective, bringing most of their students to "proficiency", some Vermont educators have been claiming that actually getting students literate and numerate isn’t in their job description. More next week.

Martin Harris is a former Chairman of Citizens for Property Rights