Vermont Karens vs. governor

By Ted Cohen

A majority of students in Winooski, Vermont can't read, write or do math, but the city's top school official wants to make his failures all about the governor.

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Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria last week called on Gov. Phil Scott to apologize for saying during a debate that the city's schools teach 17 languages.

Chavarria did exactly what he intended - create a distraction from the abject failures of his tenure.

Whether Winooski teaches one or 17 foreign languages is of no relevance when one looks at the academic performance in Chavarria's schools.

• Grades 3–9 literacy: The average literacy-proficiency rate is 38 percent, meaning 62 percent of the kids are illiterate.

• 4th-Grade English: 50 percent - half - of the kids are failing.

• High School Reading: 75 percent can't read.

In a true Orwellian contortion of the worst order, Chavarria last spring told the school board the kids in his city were doing just fine, thank you.

"The truest measure of our success is the rate of growth," he said with a straight face, pointing out that the latest failure rates actually represented progress over previously reported statistics on academic performance.

In other words, the earlier achievement analysis showed that the literacy failure rates were even worse than they are currently.

Chavarria defined progress in terms of improved failure.

Can't make it up folks.

Or maybe, according to the pathetic Burlington Free Press, you can.

In an unparalleled exhibition of journalistic malpractice, the brain trust at the Free Press praised the latest academic results as showing great progress.

The bottom line is, rather than whining about how many languages they're teaching or not, Winooski school officials should focus on the incredibly-high academic failure rate that persists in their city.

Think about it: A large majority of kids in the Winooski schools can't write, read or do math.

If that weren't bad enough, the dirty little secret in Winooski, Vermont is that the vulnerable populations, aka immigrants, are getting the brush-off from teachers.

If the teachers union actually wanted to appeal to Vermont logic and academic excellence, it would ensure that the minority students - the ones most at risk - were getting the individualized instruction they obviously need.

But the reason most kids in Winooski, Vermont don't have basic survival skills is because despite Vermont spending more per student ($28,818 yearly) than 47 other states, the city's teachers simply don't care about the attendant results, also known as unadulterated failure.

They'd rather create a tempest over some throw-away comment made by the governor than to deal with the reality in front of them - students who can't survive in today's complicated world due to a school department more interested in drama than in academics.

If Scott offended anyone in Winooski it will not have been at his political peril since the Democrat-socialist stronghold would have been overwhelmingly voting anyway November 3 for his free-programs-for-everybody-no-matter-the-taxpayer-cost opponent Amanda Janoo.

Judging from literacy rate in the Onion City whoever or whatever is on the ballot is arguably irrelevant no matter how many languages they speak by the river.