The map of Vermont’s school districts—more than 270—on Dr. Rebecca Holcombe’s office wall resembles a patchwork quilt. Rebecca is responsible for this mix of colors and overlapping diagonal lines, this complicated school system. A passionate supporter of public schools, Rebecca became Vermont’s Secretary of Education in January 2014.
“Nothing is more important than public education,” says Rebecca. “If we cannot help children develop their voices and participate in civic life, help them make good decisions for our communities and give them the tools they need to be part of our economy, then nothing makes sense. Public education is foundational to that process.”
Vermont’s demographics are in transition. It’s the second “oldest” state in the country, with its rapidly aging population. The number of people living in the state’s rural areas is sharply declining. And as is the case across the U.S., a growing socioeconomic chasm “is threatening the ability of some children to develop the skills they need to thrive,” Rebecca says.
“This state has a strong sense of civic community and high levels of public engagement, but some of our
schools have 50 to 75 percent fewer students than they did in the past. That puts pressure on some of our systems and challenges us to think about how we take care of our children and create opportunities for them in a transitioning world.”
Despite the stark realities, Rebecca is steadfast and focused on reforming the state’s education system, embracing full citizen participation in decision making and keeping the focus on what is best for all students.
“You can’t go into public education without being a hopeless idealist. You really have to believe that it’s possible to make a better world. And I am still a hopeless idealist,” says Rebecca.
One of her department’s tasks is implementing a new state law, Act 46: a multi-year, voluntary process merging small school districts into bigger districts.
“The logic is that bigger districts share resources and provide stability, but this idea also flies in the face of local identity, so it’s challenging. However, 50 school districts have already voted to unify. These districts care about education, but they also want to make sure that they are getting value for the dollars they spend.”
In addition to managing the political and legislative aspects of her department, Rebecca visits schools and attends public meetings to talk with students, parents, teachers and administrators. “A lot of my job is listening closely to what people are saying and trying to play back what I know and see, so when people come to the table, we can figure out solutions. Schools work when people believe in what they’re doing and trust the system. No one wants to change or consolidate or do any of this unless we have to. This isn’t about telling people what they need to do; it’s about helping them understand the shared challenge and finding the tools to create better solutions.”
Rebecca didn’t necessarily intend a career in education, but she says, “In one way, shape or form, even at a young age, I was thinking about learning.” Her parents worked for the United Nations, and Rebecca grew up in Pakistan andAfghanistan, where she attended American international schools. When war broke out in Afghanistan in the early ’80s, Rebecca came to Milton. She majored in history at Brown University, earned a master’s in education and, just recently, a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. She earned an M.B.A. at Simmons College School of Management because she “realized early on that the person who controls the number in the budget is the person who can help push powerful conversations about purpose and means.”
Rebecca was a middle school teacher in New Hampshire and a principal at the Fairlee School in Vermont. She also directed the formation of an interstate school district, which includes three districts in Vermont and one in New Hampshire, a prelude of sorts to today’s consolidation of districts under Act 46. Most recently, she was director of the Teacher Education Program at Dartmouth College.
Rebecca’s department must also oversee federal requirements of public education. When it comes to mandated testing, an area she knows well from her dissertation research, she is not afraid to go against the grain.
“Federal education programming is driven by test-based accountability. The logic is if you identify the lowest performance schools and target them, then everything will get better. However, our perception is that strong schools come from strong communities. You can’t mandate good schools; you need to provide the structure, the support, the transparency, and the data that enable a strong school to become self-regulating and self-improving. I fear that when we ask these tests to do things for which they weren’t originally intended, we lose the value the tests do have. None of us wants a test-driven curriculum, because real learning involves risks, inquiry and exploration. Kids need to be willing to take intellectual risks and not worry about repercussions.”
When No Child Left Behind was the federal mandate, Vermont chose not to evaluate teachers based on test scores, because, Rebecca explains, “that demeans the breadth and richness of what our systems were trying to accomplish. We don’t want to discourage our best and brightest teachers from embracing the most complicated students in our system. Those children need strong teachers the most. We need to make it a privilege to teach those kids and provide those educators with the support they need. Teaching well when all of your students are well fed and have supportive two-parent families is easy. Teaching is much harder when kids are grappling with issues of safety, hunger and family disruptions far beyond their control.”
Taking this approach meant that Vermont had to label every single public school in the state as a “low-performing school” under the federal law. “But that gave us an opportunity. If all of us are low-performing, what does that mean? That was a launching point for a more nuanced conversation about what a good school is, how you know a good school when you see it, and what contexts enable quality education for all children.”
Today’s federal mandate is Every Child Succeeds, and Rebecca is focused on what that might mean. Compared with other states, Vermont’s rate of students moving on to college is low. Increasing that number is important, but Rebecca believes in more than one path to success.
“As a country, we have devalued the crafts and the trades. A skilled craftsperson has high value in the future economy. We want to make sure someone who wants to pursue that can do so, and develop the skill sets and entrepreneurial skills they need. How can we develop an education system that is flexible enough to reward and support many kinds of success, not just the stereotypical paths of success?”
Rebecca commutes an hour from her home in southern Vermont to the office in Barre. The back roads twist and turn through small towns and villages where the schoolhouse was once the focal point of town life. Yielding to the concept of bigger districts changes that way of life. Rebecca is aware of what is lost, but she believes there is much to be gained over time. In the end, what is best for the students is what matters.
“Good work takes time. Our line internally is that this is a marathon, not a sprint. We can’t improve a school in a day or a year. It takes people who roll up their sleeves and work very intentionally and very hard with communities over time. I need to create conditions for stability, knowing that paradoxically, getting to stability requires making changes, which can be hard.”
by Liz Matson