what it's like for a pig in deep snow, and the future of public education

Here’s a video of one of our pigs in the deep snow yesterday. Here in melt-weather Vermont, I felt bad for Marilyn watching her “post-holing” through the untrod snow, only to end up “high-centered” like a Subaru.

But sometimes Wednesdays are like that.

Meanwhile in D.C., the federal workforce continues to be gutted with the Dept. of Education getting “You’re fired” notes from President Trump.

As jarring as that is, something has to be done about our deficit. Since every federal dollar goes to someone or some organization for whom it’s very important, I expect there to be a lot of howling. Speaking as a former legislator, howling does not make good policy. What else we got?

Meanwhile in Montpelier, Vermont, the signature issue of the current legislative session is public education. The high and rising cost of public education, and its increasing tax burden on a rural, aging population is an issue that elected leaders of all stripes agree must be addressed. I was one of them in 2023 when I called for a “blue ribbon” commission last session to look at the structure and governance of our schools.

Governor Scott in particular has called on the Legislature to design a more affordable system, and put forward his own “transformation” plan. Now as legislators work with the Governor on what to do, exactly, howling has already erupted from every quarter.

One way that Vermont could end up deciding to make public education affordable is by doing statewide what is happening in D.C. with the Department of Education — a massive cut of the workforce.

How would that play out in Vermont? Governor Scott promises savings from cutting “administrative costs” by consolidating school districts. Sounds benign, but education administrators do real work, and having more of them at local levels keeps them in touch with the local school.

It seems like a no-brainer to say that any major cost savings are going to come with howling. But if we really want the cost savings, and we really want great schools, we’re going to need to quiet down the howling at some point and get to real adult conversations.

One idea to put on the table — maybe investing more money in a failed educational model that is failing students isn’t the answer. Another important point to make also in Vermont is that public education is taking the heat for rising costs of healthcare. Double-digit premium increases every year for three years in a row is wreaking havoc on municipal and school budgets to a degree not talked about nearly enough, in my view.

Back to education, one substacker I read for insight here is Freddie deBoer. He has a book called “The Cult of Smart,” and it’s worth taking a look at his main points.

One issue with Freddie is that he has a hard time summarizing his main points himself. Thus it was helpful when Alan Jacobs did it for Freddie, in the post: the facts don’t care about your educational philosophy

Here’s are Freddie’s key “cult of smart” points:

1. In any given population, the ability to excel academically (whether or not you call it “intelligence”) is, like almost all other human abilities, plottable as a normal distribution: that is, a few people will be really bad at it, a few people will be really good, and the majority will be somewhere near the middle.

2. Because some people are simply better at school than other people, any pedagogical strategy, practice, or method that improves the performance of the worst students will also improve the performance of the best students; this means that “closing the performance gap” between the worst and best students will only be possible if you use the best strategies for the worst students and the worst strategies for the best ones — and even then the most talented students will probably adapt pretty well, because that’s what being a talented student means. (N.B. I am assuming that “Harrison Bergeron” strategies will not be employed, though maybe that’s not a safe assumption.) Another way to put it: if every student in America were equally well funded and every student equally well taught, point 1 above would still be true.

3. Resistance to these two points is pervasive because we collectively participate in a “cult of smart” that overvalues academic performance vis-à-vis other human excellences. That is, because we value “intelligence” as a unique excellence, necessary to our approval, we cannot admit that some people simply aren’t smart. (By contrast, we have no trouble admitting that some people can’t run very fast or lift heavy weights, because those traits are not intrinsic to social approval.)

That’s all I wanted to share for today. Faced with a $6 billion school construction shortfall in Vermont, and trillions of dollars in the federal budget we need to make up to remain solvent as a country, what do we do?

Lunch readers, what voices are you reading to give you insights into our future? What do you think about public education, federal layoffs, and pigs in snow?

Till next time, Enjoy every sandwich!