Interim Education Secretary Zoie Saunders Highlights Agency of Education's Literacy Initiative and 'Listen and Learn' Tour

Montpelier, Vt. - At Governor Phil Scott's weekly press conference, Interim Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders updated Vermonters on the work the Agency of Education has been engaged in to support educators across the state through their "Listen and Learn" tour, literacy successes and the Agency's "Read Vermont" initiative, one-time grants to CTE centers, and their role in supporting schools through the budgeting process.

Interim Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders: The Agency of Education is facilitating a Listen and Learn Tour to ground our work in an understanding of the educational priorities of communities across Vermont. The Listen and Learn Tour is a critical part of developing the Agency of Education's strategic plan to ensure our efforts support Vermont's short-term and long-term educational needs.

Hearing from educators, parents, students, and community members is essential to developing a plan that reflects Vermont's values, promotes measurable academic improvement, and maximizes state resources to achieve our collective hopes and dreams for students. This work is happening at a critical time when state leaders, including the Commission on the Future of Public Education, educators, and community members are contemplating changes to how we deliver a quality education to every Vermont student in a way that is sustainable. The Agency is fully engaged in this work and is committed to supporting our educational partners to create a high-quality public education system at a cost taxpayers can afford.

The Listen and Learn Tour has five main goals:

• First, the Agency of Education aims to align its work to regional and local priorities. By engaging stakeholders with immediate knowledge of the challenges that students and educators face every day, the Agency of Education will be better able to tailor support towards effective solutions.
• Second, the Listen and Learn Tour will help identify a shared understanding of how the Agency can most effectively support high quality teaching and learning.
• Third, this collaborative process will ultimately inform changes that expand students' access to high-quality educational opportunities.
• Fourth, by providing opportunities to review data and share innovative best practices, the Listen and Learn Tour will identify key opportunities for improving student achievement.
• Finally, the Listen and Learn tour will help the Agency of Education develop a strategic plan that meets the state's immediate priorities while supporting the future statewide vision for public education in Vermont. Immediate priorities include supporting landmark legislation, helping struggling school districts, and providing training and support for this budgeting cycle.

Today, I am pleased to share what we have learned so far and how you can get involved in the weeks ahead. The Listen and Learn Tour was designed to be a methodical, data-driven, and participatory process.

Phase 1 of the Listen and Learn Tour involved collecting and analyzing data. The Agency published the State Profile Report in August, the first in a series of reports to support planning. The report presents student performance data, enrollment, staffing, expenditure, and other relevant data to elucidate an understanding of the current state of Vermont's education system. The report reinforced some commonly understood trends about our education system and also illuminated new questions that we are investigating further. I will briefly highlight a few data points:

• Compared to other states, Vermont has very small schools, the highest staffing levels and the highest expenditure per pupil;
• According to the National Assessment for Education Progress, Vermont performs high in reading compared to other states, though that trend has been declining, and performs average in math;
• Overall enrollment in K-12 public education has decreased by over 14% since 2004;
• The biggest changes in enrollment and academic performance occurred before the pandemic; and
• The report also compared trends by size of supervisory union/school district and found that the smaller supervisory unions/districts tended to serve higher need students and, due to budget constraints, tended to pay their teachers less.

The State Profile Report will be re-released soon to reflect additional context gathered through stakeholder feedback. Also, the Agency will release regional reports, SU/SD reports, education finance reports, and other topical reports over the coming year.

Through Phase 2 of the Listen and Learn tour, Agency staff traveled across the state to facilitate regional planning sessions with over 250 education leaders where we reviewed regional data and reflected on the similarities and uniqueness of each region. Discussions focused on important education topics, ranging from academic performance, college and career readiness, student mental health, and data needed to inform budgeting decisions. We captured themes about the challenges and opportunities of our system, including the role of the Agency and how to achieve scale. Several common themes emerged and include:

• Need for reliable, accessible, and easy to use data;
• Focus on expanding access to college and career readiness,
• Need to balance local autonomy with the desire for clearer direction from the Agency of Education to support academic outcomes;
• Recognize that student mental health needs reflect community needs and require integrated solutions;
• Issues related to housing, affordability, loss of industry/jobs also impact schools in terms of teacher recruitment and student enrollment; and
• More guidance is needed on short-term cost-containment strategies and how to design and measure long-term transformation for our education system.

During Phase 3 of the Listen and Learn Tour, we will host seven in-person public engagement sessions and two virtual sessions between October 22nd and November 7th. Each public engagement session will take place from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Every session will begin with introductory information and data to support more in-depth conversations, followed by breakout sessions on topics related to student achievement and support, career and college readiness, and school budgets, among other emerging priorities.

The Vermont Agency of Education invites students, parents, educators and community members to participate. These sessions provide an opportunity for Vermonters to share their ideas for how the Agency of Education can help improve education in Vermont.

For more details on the dates, locations, and accessibility options please visit the Agency of Education website.

While engaged in a longer-term planning process, the Agency recognizes the need to address immediate needs of schools, educators, and students now. To this end, the Agency has rolled out key initiatives to support literacy, college and career readiness, and school budgets.

Read Vermont is the Vermont Agency of Education's comprehensive initiative to improve literacy outcomes by ensuring that every Vermont student has access to high-quality reading and writing instruction grounded in the science of reading. The science of reading is based on a compendium of research across multiple disciplines. 

At the heart of Read Vermont is a shared vision for literacy: delivering high-quality, systematic, and explicit instruction that equips every child with the foundational skills necessary to successfully engage with text and experience the joy and utility of reading. 

Recommendations from the Vermont Advisory Council on Literacy (composed of leaders, community members and educators from across the state) were critical in the design and implementation of Read Vermont. Common themes from Council recommendations and engagement with leaders and educators across the state include:

• The need for resources that support the implementation of evidence-based literacy instruction and assessment in Vermont's Supervisory Unions/ Districts (SU/SD) and classrooms;
• The need for high-quality professional learning and job-embedded coaching that supports classroom educators in putting research into practice;

• The need for AOE resources, guidance, and accountability measures to guide SU/SD shifts in curriculum, instruction, and assessment; and
• Read Vermont priorities include building capacity at the state, local, and family/ caregiver level.

The AOE will provide professional learning opportunities and job-embedded coaching to support the shift to the science of reading that draws upon lessons learned in schools that have effectively made this shift and have strengthened student outcome data.

I would like to highlight two examples of school districts that we have learned from in designing the Agency's support:

In November 2021, 7% of the kindergarteners could read and write constant-vowel-consonant words. Teachers were unsure how they would come close to meeting the goal. But, through professional learning and coaching, students were able to come close to their goal - in May 2022 92% were able to read and write these words.

They experienced teacher and leadership learning that was contagious and built collegiality across the schools. This shift has taken time and is an ongoing process that requires new learning, alignment of resources, and structures to sustain the work. This shift has also resulted in longitudinal growth demonstrated on their local assessments in cohorts of students who are meeting literacy benchmarks.

White River Valley is another success story when it comes to improving literacy. White River Valley is a rural district with high poverty that has worked intentionally over the last four years to shift to the science of reading and putting systems in place to ensure data-driven decision making. They have taken a multi-faceted approach including professional development, including with all reading interventionists, a K-12 Curriculum by identifying Critical Proficiencies and Priority Performance Indicators with support of the AOE, a universal screener K-12 with an additional diagnostic screener and additional reading screener at grades 7-12 that targets foundational skills and a data team structure in all schools beginning in 2022-2023.

As a result, they have established strong systems to support data driven decision making and a continuous improvement culture among educators and leadership.Their comprehensive approach is having an impact on students. In the White River Valley School District, 70% of 4th graders demonstrated proficiency on the VT CAP last year, which is nearly 20% above the state average (which is 54%).

Read Vermont is a new way for the Agency of Education to support major education legislation in response to feedback from the field by providing explicit guidance and support around what works, with the goal of promoting consistent outcomes and improving literacy statewide.

College and career readiness is a key focus of the Agency of Education and has been a longstanding commitment of Governor Scott. The Governor invested over $1 million of remaining Governor's Education Relief Fund in grants to purchase much needed equipment at Career and Technical Centers.

Several grants funded the replacement of aging, outdated, and nonfunctioning equipment. As examples, four tech centers purchased new lifts for their auto technology program, Stafford Technical Center purchased a new alignment system for its automotive program, and North Country Career Center and River Valley Technical Center purchased new commercial grade ovens for their culinary arts programs.

Grants were also used to increase access to work-based learning placements. Windham Regional Career Center, Patricia Hannaford Career Center, and Randolph Technical Career Center purchased used vans to transport students to clinical skills training and paid work-based learning placements. This will significantly increase the opportunities for students in rural communities where public transportation is not readily available.

Additionally, grants funded the expansion of new and high-demand programs, including welding equipment for programs at Central Vermont Career Center, Northwest Career and Technical Center, North Country Career Center, and Lyndon Institute.

Lastly, grants provided industry-standard equipment for students to learn on, including a backhoe with front loader at Cold Hollow Career Center (Enosburg Falls), mini loader at North Country Career Center (Newport), and tractor for use in the Diversified Agriculture program at Hartford Area Career and Technology Center (White River Junction).

The Agency of Education is also ramping up support for school budgeting and training on Vermont's education finance system. We are in the process of developing a training series to educate the public on key components of our funding systems and will also offer targeted support to school districts.

As we progress with the Listen and Learn Tour, we look forward to learning from Vermonters across the state. The input will help the Agency organize its work to align with Vermont's current and future educational needs.

We hope you will join us for the Listen and Learn public engagement sessions, starting on October 22nd and running through November 7th. In-person sessions will be hosted at school locations in different parts of Vermont. We will also host virtual sessions.

Thank you for the opportunity to share an update on the Agency's Listen and Learn Tour and early initiatives that we have rolled out. We look forward to the ongoing collaboration. Together, we will build a brighter future for all Vermont children.

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