Preface
This document represents the work of a visioning exercise conducted within the Vermont Agency of Education to begin to imagine the design of a modern education system. The document itself functions like a wiki where additions and changes are developed through a collaborative authoring process. This authoring process is managed by the Agency’s administrative team. Because of the iterative nature of the document, it will always be labelled as “DRAFT”.
The central premise of this visioning exercise is that Vermont has an overly complex education system, especially when considered with its scale and relatively small number of students. Another assumption is that the chief function of the state in the education system is to ensure quality and equity of opportunity for all of Vermont’s students, and that perhaps the complexity of the system itself inhibits the ability to achieve these goals.
Contributors to this document are invited to respond to the prompt, “To what extent would a Greatly Simplified School District (GSSD) model create opportunities for . . .” Vermont parties interested in contributing to this document by submitting a response to this prompt should contact Ted Fisher, the Director of Communications and Legislative Affairs (ted.fisher@vermont.gov).
Notes on Version 2.0
Version 2.0 of this document is expanded to include additional proposals developed within the Agency of Education. The document retains its original introduction and the “single school district” model developed by Secretary Daniel French as an example of the most extreme simplification possible to identify examples on how a simplification of the system could potentially realize new opportunities for students.
Read the Full Plan: Designing Our Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Vermont’s Education System