I spent the past week or so trying to figure out how my local school district and the rest of Vermont had trended over time on academic achievement.

Vermont has a lot of unique circumstances I won't go into here, but there also have been multiple changes in state-wide proficiency exams, and difficult to pull education data in one place.

The annual state report card talked about how schools aren't performing as well as it should, but I haven't seen or found as clear a look as I was able to build from Vermont Agency of Education exam score results + NAEP data + SEDA data. Vermont was truly exceptional in 2013, and now has become barely better than average, all while spending top #3 money per student annually.

Hoping to be able to re-frame local and state conversations around what student outcomes we owe our kids, and focus on that goal while having the budge cut discussions -- because of shrinking demographics, we have to cut costs -- but the data basically screams there is an education governance, administration & policy problem that needs to be fixed, no matter what we're spending.