The U.S. Department of Education last month imposed stringent oversight for the Vermont Agency of Education — and required it to take immediate corrective action or face a financial penalty — due to data errors the state agency self-reported earlier this year.
Officials are working quickly to come into compliance with the feds, Education Secretary Zoie Saunders told the State Board of Education at a special meeting last week. But the agency is also asking the U.S. education department to reconsider the decision given the circumstances under which the errors were identified and the commitment the state has shown to resolving the problem.
The feds’ action stems from problems the state education agency discovered itself after it released the annual “Vermont State Report Card” in February. After reviewing the data, agency staff realized that methodological errors stemming back to 2018 had led the state to repeatedly misidentify certain schools as having persistent achievement gaps on standardized tests.
At a special State Board of Education meeting on October 8, Saunders walked board members through a timeline of what happened next. After discovering the issue, she said, the education agency invalidated some of the previously reported data, immediately alerted school superintendents and reported the mistakes to the feds within 24 hours.
In April, the agency followed up with a report to the feds, which included a commitment to redesigning its accountability system. The state didn’t hear back from federal officials but decided that it would “move forward proactively with developing a corrective action plan,” Saunders said. That plan asked the federal government for flexibility while the state moved forward with a “full redesign” to create “a more coherent, transparent, technically defensible and sustainable” way of measuring performance data and identifying schools in need of support. The plan was approved by the State Board of Education in July. The education agency subsequently submitted it to the federal government and began moving forward with the work.
The state didn’t hear back from the U.S. Department of Education until September 28, when Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Kirsten Baesler sent Saunders a letter denying Vermont’s request for more time to redesign its accountability system. In the letter, Baesler wrote that the agency’s errors represent a “significant violation” and called for the state to submit a plan with a new methodology to identify schools with achievement gaps by December 15. If it does not, Baesler wrote, her department considers Vermont a “high-risk” grantee and plans to withhold $100,000 in Title 1 funding, along with the potential for further action.
Saunders told the state board last week that her agency will follow the feds’ orders, but she has also written a letter to Baesler asking the department to reconsider the high-risk designation, calling it “premature” given the work the state has already started to address long-standing issues.
“Typically, the U.S. Department of Education will apply a high-risk designation after they have instructed the state to complete a corrective action and once the state has not done that sufficiently,” Saunders told the board. “We believe this is premature because we self-identified the issue and developed a path forward to address it.”
In addition to coming up with a short-term plan to comply with the feds, Saunders said, her agency is committed to redesigning measures of student growth and identifying schools in need of intervention.
The state board last week voted unanimously to support Saunders’ response to the federal government.
“It’s really easy to find that you made a mistake and then try to cover it up,” board member Rich Werner said. “To take responsibility for it, I really want to give a pat on the back to everybody that’s involved.”
This isn’t the first time the Vermont Agency of Education has faced a penalty from the federal government. In January 2024, when Heather Bouchey was serving as interim education secretary, the federal government threatened to withhold money after the state failed to comply with reporting requirements related to the identification of low-performing schools.
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