Reporting | Agency of Education

Listen and Learn Reporting

The State Profile Report provides an overview of critical data, ranging from student enrollment and academic performance to staffing levels and expenditures. By grounding our conversations in this broad spectrum of data, we aim to create a shared understanding of the current landscape and establish a solid foundation for future discussions.

A Note on the Upcoming Rerelease of the State Profile Report:

Since the release of the State Profile report, the Agency has been working with stakeholders across Vermont to share the data and gather their feedback about potential data inconsistencies and how to better present the data. As highlighted in the initial State Profile, the Agency acknowledges the need for improvements in data reporting and has made this a priority.

Phase 2 of the Listen and Learn Tour involved regional planning with education leaders, where additional data were shared, to support data validation at the school level. The re-release of the State Profile is intended to demonstrate this commitment by sending data refinements, as well as additional context and analysis to tell a clearer data story.

The Listen and Learn Tour is an explicit and transparent process to improve data consistency, alignment across disparate data sets, and consistency in coding across Supervisory Unions/School Districts and schools moving forward. This work is necessary and important in ensuring that all stakeholders have access to education data to inform decision-making.

Based on stakeholder feedback and additional work by the Agency to date, key additions and refinements in the rereleased report will include:

Additional context:

Vermont’s education ecosystem: The education system and its funding in Vermont is complex. Additional narrative has been added to the State Profile to explain the education landscape in Vermont, including explaining the governance structure and the different ways that students are counted in Vermont, from total enrollment (students served in physical schools) to average daily membership, or ADM (students that an SU/SD is responsible for, including tuitioned students), to equalized pupil counts (how the system counted students for funding purposes at the time). The different student count figures will be presented with fuller explanation for how and why each is used in different sections of the report. Additional context is also provided for how the funding system has changed since 2022-23 in terms of how it weights student counts to reflect differences in need and the expected costs for serving different student groups.

Data refinements:

Enrollment: Total enrollment figures from 2003-04 to 2022-23 were corrected for accuracy. Changes to enrollment led to additional changes in:
- how supervisory unions or supervisory districts (SU/SDs) were grouped by size by shifting the categorization of three SU/SDs for comparisons throughout the report;
- staffing per 100 student figures, and
- special education percentages that were calculated using the enrollment figures.
Expenditures: In the previous release, expenditures were calculated per pupil using total enrollment. In the rerelease, figures have been instead calculated using average daily membership (ADM) to better reflect the students that an SU/SD is responsible for and on which dollars were being spent. Specifically, total expenditures include tuition for students served in other settings who are not counted in total enrollment figures, but are counted in ADM. Additionally, some duplicated expenditures (i.e. expenditures that were double counted based on how data were coded in the field and rolled up) were excluded.

Additional analysis:

Expenditures: In addition to looking at total expenditures, the State Profile includes more nuanced analysis of expenditures in an effort to “peel the onion.” This includes looking at ongoing operating expenditures, or how much is spent on an ongoing basis to educate students, excluding variable expenses like capital (school construction projects, for example) or debt service. While the primary intent of the expenditure analysis in the State Profile is to consider all funding sources that are used to serve students in order to best reflect the educational opportunity and level of equity those funds afford students. The Agency also understands that another important perspective is the experience of the taxpayer, so analysis in the State Profile more concretely highlights the portion of expenditures that are funded by Vermonters through the Education Fund and how this has changed over time.

The anticipated scale of the impact of data refinements is roughly +/- 5% of statewide figures in most instances, and the Agency is engaging in a final round of data validation with SU/SD staff prior to the rerelease of the updated State Profile, which is expected to be released by November 22, 2024.

Given the scale of adjustments, the overall narrative of the State Profile has not changed in most areas with general patterns and trends remaining similar, even if the scale of differences shifts. The biggest anticipated change to overall trends observed is expected to be to the total enrollment decline seen between 2003-04 and 2022-23, with a greater overall decline observed than previously reported. Further, while the total expenditures analysis at the state level is anticipated to change minimally due to using ADM instead of total enrollment, the additional expenditure analysis will provide a more nuanced look at education spending in the state.

While overall statewide trends were fairly consistent after data refinements to date, the story in individual SU/SDs did vary which will have greater impacts on comparisons by SU/SD groups. The Agency will continue to work with SU/SD staff to ensure the accuracy of data for their SU/SD prior to releasing updated SU/SD-level reports and appreciates the cooperation from the field in the data validation process.

Learn More about the Listen and Learn Tour