U.S. Department of Education; link to State Department of Education by clicking above, right. CHARTER SCHOOLS?

New Superintendent Dr. Colleen Palmer;  Dr. John Reed as interim replacement for both School Superintendents Jerome Belair and Dr. Pierson;  Bus Garage;  new and old bus fleets together.

LOCAL EDUCATION LINK:  BUDGET FY12 HERE;  including notes from meetings sponsored by the Weston Board of Ed that we occasionally attend in person.

W.I.S. opened on time this Fall ('05); W.H.S. "Ribbon Cutting" May 13, 2006!  Video-tour streaming on this website now!
WestonArts at work on supporting Auditorium renovations;
Boston story, 30 years after first desegregation order.
compare to any other district in U.S.A.  (found while researching Whidbey Island, Washington); 
comparison of South Whidbey School District and Weston.  The northern part of Whidbey Island (Coupeville is there--Island County's capital) includes the Naval Air Station--how about their approach to inflation effect on school construction budget?
Everett WA has an interesting view...
Check out C.E.A. "calculator" website.
New Jersey moves on school funding...


Angry Parents, Scared Students Seek Answers About Farm Hill School 'Scream Rooms'
Middletown School Officials Host Meeting, Pledge Change
The Hartford Courant
By SHAWN R. BEALS, sbeals@courant.com
11:01 PM EST, January 12, 2012

MIDDLETOWN —

Frustrated parents of Farm Hill Elementary students told school officials Thursday night they were disappointed by a lack of communication about the use of "scream rooms," while students described the school as "scary."

Some parents said their children do not feel safe at Farm Hill because of what parents described as a distracting and intimidating environment. Their children, they said, can hear screaming from students in the rooms, called time-out rooms by school officials.  Superintendent Michael Frechette and Farm Hill Principal Patricia Girard led the meeting Thursday with the school's parent-teacher association to address concerns over the so-called scream rooms. About 150 people attended the session, which lasted close to three hours in the school's gymnasium.

Elexa Belin, 10, a student at Farm Hill, said the school is "scary" to her.

"I walk down the hall with my head down," she said. "You hear kids screaming outside and you can't concentrate on your work."

"There's a lot of anger and still a lot of concerns," PTA President Apryl Dudley said. "Unfortunately I think there's a lot of faith that's been lost in the administration. We are going to make sure the administrators and the board of education address the concerns. We're going to stay on top of this."

"There have been a lot of rumors and accusations," Girard said. "They are scary and unfounded. They have created a perception that this school is out of control. That is not reality."

The issue was brought to light at a school board meeting Tuesday, when parents complained about the use of the rooms, and when a letter Dudley sent to Mayor Daniel Drew and the board of education was made public. In response to those complaints, two state agencies have begun investigations into Farm Hill School.  In her letter, Dudley said out-of-control students were being put in the rooms and allowed to act out physically while a staff member waited outside until the child calmed down.  School officials this week acknowledged the problems at Farm Hill, and Frechette presented a plan to add staff hours and resources from a variety of state and private agencies to help address behavior and communication issues.

"I want to ensure the Farm Hill community that we're here to support what's going on in Farm Hill," Frechette said Thursday night. "We've narrowed the issues down to communication, climate and student management. We're going to be aggressive and we have the support in place to help the administration here, help the parents here and help the students here."

Girard said the time-out rooms would be moved to out-of-the-way locations so their use in the future is not disruptive to other students. Right now, the time-out rooms border a hallway, she said.  According to the state Department of Education, use of the time-out rooms is allowed under state law for students with disabilities, "as specified in an Individualized Education Program (IEP) … as determined by a team of professionals that includes the parents of the child."

"There are no provisions for the use of seclusion time out for students that do not have an IEP," according to a statement issued Wednesday.

Frechette said Thursday that the time-out rooms are not used for students without an IEP.

"Unless you have an IEP this is not part of your daily [plan]," he said. "The rooms have been used very infrequently for students without an IEP, but generally they try to find another location for the students."

James McGaughey, executive director of the state Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities, said Wednesday that his office is conducting a "preliminary investigation," and state Child Advocate Jeannie Milstein said she, too, would look into the use of the rooms.

Frechette said Thursday that he was planning to meet with state officials on Friday.  School board Chairman Eugene Nocera said the comments parents made Thursday night were important to help the district address problems.

"Mistakes have been made," Nocera said. "We're here to correct those mistakes."

School officials said their plan for improving things at Farm Hill School includes adding hours for the school psychologist, adding a student management coordinator, developing a school climate committee, increasing training, working with a state consultant on school climate and a behavior services consultant from a private education agency, adding teaching training and adding support to the school's Family Resource Center. The district will also work with a behavioral studies graduate student at St. Joseph College, who will "assist in developing and implementing behavior plans," according to the district's plan.

A grim picture of education on display
Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, CT MIRROR
January 5, 2012

More than half the school superintendents in the state say the state is not helping to close the achievement gap between minority and low-income and Caucasian students.

One-quarter of the school leaders say they have no authority to turn around low-achieving schools; 87 percent say they lack the ability to remove ineffective teachers; and two-thirds say bureaucratic obstacles -- "red tape" -- stand in their way to implement change.

"There are a lot of challenges," Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor told a roomful of national and state education advocates and officials Thursday, as he revealed the results of his recent survey of almost every superintendent.

Pryor’s presentation took place Thursday afternoon at Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's long-planned Education Workshop, at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

After laying out the education system’s grim landscape, Pryor offered his audience some hope with the gamut of changes he and Malloy are closing in on. Those changes include expanding early childhood education, intervening in the worst-off schools, replicating successful education models, cutting bureaucratic obstacles and ensuring that schools have the best teachers.

"If superintendents don't feel we are helping, we've got some work to do," Pryor said.

Joseph J. Cirasuolo, the longtime leader of the state's superintendent association, said there should be nothing surprising about the results of the survey, given that the state’s 157 school leaders have begged the state for help for years.

"It's not news to us," he said, of the survey showing the four out of 10 superintendents are doubtful the state's education system will change, even after Malloy’s promise to tackle the problems facing education during this coming legislative session.

Connecticut has long held the title of having the largest achievement gap in the country, a reality numerous task forces and commissioners have failed to change.

"We are the worst, No. 1," Pryor said. He then added his final statistic of the day: only 7 percent of the state’s superintendents believe the state has a "clear plan" to turn education in the right direction.

"What a shame, but we are going to change that," Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman told the room, then called out the legislators attending the event to stand. "Legislators you are going to carry the ball to making sure we get this done."

The state's superintendents have given the commissioner a wish list of changes they would like to see, but Pryor was mum on which of those recommendations he plans to back. Pryor said he intends to conduct similar surveys of other groups, including employees at the State Department of Education and, possibly, teachers.
Education advocates pin high hopes on Malloy for reform
Linda Conner Lambeck and Ken Dixon, Staff Writers. CT POST
Updated 11:20 p.m., Wednesday, January 4, 2012

In Dannel P. Malloy's first year as governor, Connecticut struck out in its third bid at Race to the Top dollars. The state takeover of the failing Bridgeport school board is being legally challenged and is in the hands of the state Supreme Court. Connecticut's standing on national and international benchmarks continues to slip.

About the only top slot the constitution state still clings to is "largest achievement gap in the nation."

So educational reform advocates say much is riding on Malloy's pledge that 2012 will be the year of education reform.

Malloy is hosting an Education Workshop Thursday at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. Many invited are convinced the policies that begin to take shape there may lead to legislation that can transform the state's failing schools and ultimately assist in growing the economy.

"I am cautiously optimistic," said Pat Riccards, director of ConnCAN, a New Haven-based advocacy organization.

Riccards said the governor, thus far, has done everything he said he would do in his first year of office by appointing a like-minded commissioner of education, shaking up the state department of education and setting the stage for movement on teacher performance, early childhood education and school funding.

"I think the governor is sincere in his attempt to address all six of the principles he laid out and that we will likely see a plan ... that offers some real and I would say bold solutions to get us there," said Riccards.

Late last month, Malloy outlined his reform "road map" in a letter to state legislative leaders. Malloy -- like the administration before him -- wants legislation that will give more students access to high-quality preschool. He wants to improve teaching and school leadership, deliver more state resources to needy districts, expand access to high-performing magnet and charter schools, and allow for more state control of low performing school districts while lessening the grip on districts that do well.

Gwen Samuel, president of the Connecticut Parents Union, said all that sounds great, but she isn't getting her hopes up.

"Quite frankly, I don't think the moral courage exists to do what needs to be done," said Samuel, a Meriden parent whose efforts two years ago led to a law requiring schools to set up school governance councils. The councils, which include parents, play a role in reconstituting failing schools.

Samuel said there are important issues not on Malloy's list that she'd like to see addressed, such as changing the residency law. This law got Tanya McDowell, a mother arrested on larceny charges last year for "stealing" education for her son by placing him in a Norwalk school when officials said he belonged in Bridgeport.

"I do believe [the governor] will push the envelope. For that I will get behind him 200 percent, as long as it is not just rhetoric," said Samuel.

Steve Simmons, vice chairman of the Connecticut Council for Education Reform, a group of business and foundation leaders, said he is very optimistic that this year will bring significant change to education in the state. "This time it's for real," said Simmons, who also co-chaired the Connecticut Commission for Education Achievement under the Rell administration.

Simmons said the principles outlined by Malloy would go a long way in lifting educational achievement of all Connecticut students. He is also convinced lawmakers will ultimately go along with the plan.

State Sen. Pro Tem Donald Williams this week said education will play an important role in the short session that starts Feb. 8, but that jobs and the economy are still front and center.

Rep. Auden Grogins, D-Bridgeport, a member of the General Assembly's Education Committee, said she is looking forward to hearing Malloy's educational initiatives and hopes they will help close the achievement gap -- between students based on race, ethnicity and poverty -- which has its epicenter in districts like Bridgeport.

"Suburbs don't have as much of the achievement gap as we do," Grogins said. "They don't face as much as we do, with the large population of English-language learners. It costs us more. I think the governor is committed to progress in those areas."

State Rep. Andres Ayala, D-Bridgeport, leader of the city's legislative delegation, said that the Educational Cost Sharing formula has to be revised in order to pump more money into the school district. "We need to be talking about more funding for Bridgeport, more teachers, more critical services," Ayala said.

The city's delegation recently sent a letter to the task force studying the ECS issue, inviting them to Bridgeport for a hearing.

Rep. Debralee Hovey, R-Monroe, a member of the legislative Education Committee whose district includes part of Newtown, said that the achievement gap looms over all school systems, "but it's an issue you can't paint with a broad brush." Hovey likes Malloy's idea to give districts that meet certain educational goals a pass on expensive state mandates, such as in-school suspensions, where staff must supervise small numbers of students who are being disciplined.

"My districts are worried about providing the best education they can for the dollar," Hovey said. "Taxpayers in this economy are very concerned about spending the money and they want to make sure the money gets to the kids."

Thursday's workshop will feature an address by U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary Martha J. Kanter and a number of panelists, including Sandy Kase, a former superintendent for the New York City Chancellor's District, who is now in Bridgeport to work under interim Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas. The governor's office said 350 people have been invited to the daylong event.

Early Childhood Education: We’re for it – Unless We’re Against it:
What?  Wait!  Blog
Jon Pelto
December 23, 2011

Wait, or is it the other way around?

If there are any legislators out there – now is the time to speak out and make a real difference concerning the future of early childhood education.  Please join Representative Gary Holder-Winfield and Senator Beth Bye who has been very outspoken and Representative State Representative Matthew Ritter, who was the only legislator to sign onto a letter written by the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance.

Last week the federal government, once again, rejected Connecticut’s application for $50 million Race to the Top education funds.  That makes three times that Connecticut has failed to successfully compete with other states for these vital funds.

This time it was Connecticut’s application for the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge Funding that was rejected. The federal government was looking for “High-Quality, Accountable Programs; Promoting Early Learning and Development Outcomes for Children; A Great Early Childhood Education Workforce and Measuring Outcomes and Progress.”

The Department of Education in Washington gave Connecticut a C- for its existing early childhood education programs.  Despite the high hopes, we weren’t even contenders.

This week, Connecticut Voices for Children, the state’s leading policy think tank, released a report about Connecticut’s early childhood education system.  They found that it “is currently a patchwork of multiple funding streams, controlled by multiple agencies, with varied reporting and eligibility requirements and inconsistent and insufficient data collection.”

The report added that federal and state funding for Early Childhood Education in the state has declined by about 10 percent over the past decade.

Connecticut has once more created a system in which there are the “haves” and “have-nots.”  About 67 percent of white children are in early childhood education programs, compared to 59 percent for African-American children and 51 percent for Latino children.

Also earlier this week, Governor Malloy reiterated his commitment to make 2012 the “year of education.”   Malloy’s spokesman said, “The governor has long recognized the importance of Early Childhood Education, going back to his time as mayor of Stamford where he launched a universal pre-k program…He agrees that our education system needs major reform, which is why we released a set of core principles to legislators earlier this week.”

However, there has been no indication that the Governor or Legislature are planning to come up with additional money, although the Governor did write in the federal grant application’s cover letter that “I am committed to fund one thousand new early childhood education slots targeted to high need children.”

The good news is that there is an increasing recognition among Connecticut’s elected officials that Early Childhood Education is important; that Connecticut is already far behind what other states are doing; and that a major initiative is needed if we hope to close the achievement gap and maintain an educated and capable workforce for our economy.

Yet to be seen is whether our officials will put real money into this effort.

And, at the other end of the scale, is that move by Attorney General George Jepsen, with the strong backing of Governor Malloy, to get the courts to carve out Early Childhood Education from the definition of education.

As a result of the lawsuit brought by the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, the Connecticut Supreme Court not only reiterated that children have a constitutional right to an education, but that Connecticut’s education system must actually work and provide children with the knowledge and skills to succeed.

Then, three months ago, the Attorney General, citing the fact that Connecticut’s Constitution only refers to primary and secondary schools, petitioned the courts to make it clear that when the state government addresses the constitutional provisions associated with funding education, Early Education programs are specifically removed from what needs to be done to fulfill the state’s duty to its children.

Jepsen has responded to criticism by saying;

“My office, on behalf of the state has not questioned the potential benefits of press school education of the wisdom of providing such services to Connecticut children as a matter of public policy

Rather, we have filed a motion asking the Court to decide – as a legal, not policy matter – whether the Connecticut constitution’s guarantee of ‘free public elementary and secondary schools” was intended to encompass pre-school services.

Not to raise this important legal issue would be irresponsible and a disservice to the state of Connecticut and its people”

While reasonable people can disagree about exactly what the state Constitution means when it refers to education, there are two critical issues Jepsen overlooks.

First, the one constant that prevails throughout the broader education debate is that without successful Early Childhood Education programs you simply can’t have a successful education system.

Second, there is nothing, absolutely nothing that required Jepsen, with Malloy’s support, to file that motion.  As Dick Blumenthal showed day after day, year after year, the Attorney General’s Office is guided by a combination of both legal and policy issues.  If a future Attorney General wants to strip early childhood education out of the definition of education they can.

But as virtually every politician across the ideological spectrum is calling for a new and profound investment in Early Education, Jepsen has engaged in a separate, unnecessary and harmful effort to exempt state government from having to maintain its early educational programs in the future.

The voters of Connecticut elected George Jepsen over his opponent because they believed he would use his values and beliefs as he worked to uphold the law.  This second and counterproductive effort is not only being spearheaded by a Democratic, but it has the blessing and support of the Democratic Governor.

And perhaps the most amazing piece of all is that only three out of 187 member of the Connecticut General Assembly have stepped forward to officially ask the Attorney General and the Governor to withdraw their motion to carve out Early Childhood Education.

Every Connecticut elected official needs to decide: are you for Early Childhood Education or are you not?

And if they are for Early Childhood Education, they need to have the conviction to ensure that, in Connecticut at least, the notion of “education” includes Early Education programs.

Had we done that over the last couple of decades we might have received that $50 million federal grant.  We didn’t get the grant; but these officials can have an even bigger impact – they can work to make sure Jepsen and Malloy pull back on their anti-early childhood education motion.

Legislators, three of your colleagues have stepped up, now is the time for you to join them and speak out.
Governor Calls For 'Academic Excellence For All'
Saying 'We Have Lost Our Edge,' Malloy Outlines His Principles For Education Reform
The Hartford Courant
1:45 PM EST, December 20, 2011

Saying that "over time, we have lost our edge as a state," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy Tuesday outlined his principles for education reform, saying they will serve as a roadmap for the upcoming session of the General Assembly.

In a letter to state legislative leaders, Malloy called for measures to help restore Connecticut "as a model for creating academic excellence for all."

He cited students' stagnant performance on standardized tests and the fact that the state's position has grown so weak compared with other states "that we are not competitive in national grant competitions like the recent Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge." Connecticut learned last week that it lost its latest bid for federal challenge grant money.

Worse, Malloy said, is that Connecticut has the largest academic achievement gap between poor minority students and more affluent peers in the nation.

In his letter, Malloy said he was asking state Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor to develop a set of "ambitious and carefully tailored" legislative proposals for the upcoming session.

He said the proposals would be rooted in a number of principles, among them enhanced access to high-quality early childhood education; authorizing intensive interventions and supports in the state's lowest-performing schools and districts; expanding the availability of high-quality schools, including magnets and charters; removing red tape for high-performing schools and districts; and valuing teachers and principles more for their skill and effectiveness than seniority.

Malloy said he would convene a set of workshops on Jan. 5, to delve more deeply into the most pressing education reform issues.

Up next -- education unions' plans to reform schools
Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, CT MIRROR
December 19, 2011

The education commissioner has been to nearly a dozen school districts during his inaugural tour, hearing what does and doesn't work to improve education -- and last week was the teachers unions' turn to pitch their strategy.  Instead of inviting the new commissioner to one of their highest-performing districts, union leaders took Stefan Pryor to the epitome of the crisis facing education.

"Welcome to Bridgeport," said Mary Loftus Levine, leader of the largest teachers' union, as the commissioner entered Bassick High School's library.

The figures were alarming. One of every three students drops out before graduation. Fifteen percent don't even show up for school on any given day. And of the students that do make it to 10th grade, fewer than one in three are proficient in reading, math or science.

"I was petrified to come here," Luise Lenis, a senior, told Pryor.

JoAnn Kennedy, a parent of two freshmen, shared that fear.

"We were terrified because of all the stories I'd heard," she said.

Metal detectors adorn the entrance at Bassick. Nine full-time security guards stroll the halls and parking lot, and stories of fights and gangs at the school are frequently in the local newspapers.  What students and parents didn't know was that things were about to change. The teachers' union had a plan, and the University of Connecticut's highly regarded education college was there to help.

That plan called for the school's teachers and parents to vote to make the management decisions themselves so initiatives would no longer be stalled at the central office.  Those changes, to name a few, include requiring students to wear school uniforms; staff sweeping the halls and rounding up students not in class; dividing the building by grade instead of subject area; and making sure that teachers have common planning periods.

"This is a living example of what school reform is all about," Levine told a roomful of teachers and state officials Thursday.

"I'm hearing you've achieved incredible progress," Pryor said.

Indeed, test scores and other outcome measures are already beginning showing dramatic upticks, just a few months into the changed model. Last year, 32 percent of students were proficient in writing compared with 52 percent this year. Similar spikes are found in reading, science and math test scores and daily attendance rates.

"This school is clearly uptrending ... It's so impressive to see," Pryor said.

"Teachers were used to being told what to do," said Kathy Young, a longtime Bassick teacher.

Principal Alejandro Ortiz explained that his staff "was hungry for change." Parents and teachers overwhelmingly voted to approve the changes they concocted.

"We gave them a simple voice," he said. "They own these changes."

UConn's Neag School of Education's Center for Education Policy Analysis believes that giving autonomy to individual schools is critical in making reforms.

"Local principals and teachers are best positioned to make decisions on how to help their students reach high levels of academic achievement because they are most familiar with their talents and their challenges," reads a policy brief on this initiative, known as CommPACT.

Over the past decade, teachers at Bassick have seen multiple reform attempts fail, they said. But now many are convinced they have finally found the right strategy.

An investment

Michele Femc-Bagwell got a little teary as she started to talk about how far these low-income students have come.

"This is just so great. We're really making a difference," she said to a group in the library, as emotion started to build. "I have to pull myself together."

Nearly every child at Bassick comes from a low-income family, 95 percent receiving free- or reduced-price lunches and breakfasts.  So five years ago, the Connecticut Education Association and the state's other teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers, gathered a coallition of parents, superintendents and UConn officials to brainstorm.  They were sick of children not getting a quality education.

"We were given a blank slate in how we wanted the school to change," said Walter Brackett, a Bassick teacher for nearly two decades.

The change wasn't cheap. Launching this model at seven schools across the state in Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven and Waterbury took $3 million from federal, state and local donations.

"That's about $120 per student," Levine said. "That was a great investment, just look around."

But the start-up money that spurred these reforms and hired the experts from UConn is set to begin running out at some of the schools at the end of next school year.  And despite Levine and AFT's president, Sharon Palmer, insisting that there is a long line of schools their unions want to expand this model to, there is no funding to do it.

"These schools are really shining stars. Now we just need to validate what we think is working," Palmer said.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed cutting funding for the initiative as he worked to close a massive state budget deficit last year, but in the end the unions succeeded in getting the money back.  Pryor said he is looking into expanding this model.

"It's very important that reform models be able to thrive in our state," he said.

Switching things up

The norm last year was to find dozens of students, who should have been in class, roaming the halls.  Teachers worked on that by having all the ninth-graders go to class on one floor, so it would be difficult for them to get lost as they switched from one class to the next.

"There was just a lot of room for them not to make it there," the principal said. Attendance data being tracked by UConn shows the effort is paying off.  Another initiative was to have common time off for teachers to work on lesson plans with each other, discuss issues facing the same students and be there for other areas of support

"The research shows this works," Bagwell said.

What also appears to be working is requiring students to wear uniforms.

"It makes you look like you're going to school and not a fashion show," said student Brandon Williams, who wore the mandated black polo shirt and khaki pants during a tour of the school.

"This [uniform] is not a joke, because Mr. Ortiz will send you home if you aren't wearing it," Sasha Rosario, a senior, told Pryor.  Later, Sasha conceded that the uniforms have shifted the focus to what school is for.

"We can get to learning now," she said. "What a difference it has made."

Education commissioner proposes easing bureaucratic barriers
CT MIRROR
By Robert A. Frahm
November 25, 2011

FAIRFIELD - In affluent, high-achieving school districts like this one, the state's top education official thinks the best strategy might be for the state education department to step aside and do less, not more.  State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor asked Fairfield officials how the state could ease the burden of regulations, annual reports and other bureaucratic mandates that often lead to a mountain of paperwork.

"We're interested in hearing about regulatory barriers, anything that might be a hindrance ... We want to know how to get out of your way," Pryor told the Fairfield Board of Education this week.

Fairfield was the latest stop on what Pryor calls a "listening tour" to visit schools, meet educators and assess the needs of the state's public education system as he completes his second month on the job.  Pryor, whose most recent job was deputy mayor of Newark, N.J., was an unconventional choice for the education post, taking over a system that boasts some of America's best schools but also struggles with low-achieving schools in the state's poorest towns and cities. On national tests, Connecticut has the nation's largest academic achievement gap separating the poor from the well-to-do.

Fairfield is among the state's top-performing districts. More than 90 percent of the town's eighth-graders, for example, met the reading goal on the state's annual Mastery Test last spring, well above the state average of 75 percent. Similarly, 87 percent met the mathematics goal, compared with a statewide average of 67 percent.   Pryor praised Fairfield's record, including its recent expansion of pre-kindergarten classes to include children as young as age 3.

Nevertheless, despite the success of school systems such as Fairfield's, the state can do better, Pryor said.

"We are not as high-flying as we may think we are," he said, citing recent 8th-grade mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card.

Connecticut's scores fell behind those of states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas. "I'm tired of hearing how Massachusetts is beating Connecticut," Pryor said. "There is no good reason for it. They are doing some things right that we are not...We ought to aspire to be number one."

He added, "Many states do a far better job of supporting and intervening with lower-performing schools than we do." In Massachusetts, for example, the state has a "tight alignment of curriculum, instruction, professional development and assessment," he said.

While the education department intends to focus much of its attention on improving low-performing schools, it also will try to help high-achieving schools by relaxing some of the state's bureaucratic requirements, Pryor told the Fairfield school board.

"It's all in pursuit of higher performance in all our districts for all our children," Pryor said.

Phil Dwyer, a member of the Fairfield board, asked Pryor about the time-consuming regulations and record-keeping requirements imposed on schools by the state. "Does it really help us move the needle when it comes to school climate?" he asked.

Pryor said, "Where there are outdated or irrelevant or barrier-creating regulations, we want to know about it."

The State Department of Education lists more than 60 reports that are issued on a regular basis, many of them required annually under state or federal laws. The reports cover matters such as busing, school construction, school lunch, discipline, graduation surveys, technical education, bilingual education, immigrant students, dropouts, teacher shortages, racial balance and teacher certification.

Across the state, school officials have often complained that state and federal regulations are burdensome, but reducing paperwork or easing regulations could be difficult, possibly requiring new legislation.

Fairfield Superintendent of Schools David Title cited the example of certification regulations for teachers and administrators, saying the rules are so cumbersome that they sometimes prevent school districts from hiring talented educators from other states.

Title also said later that the state's annual Strategic School Profiles - which require schools to report a range of data on demographics, test results and other matters - are outdated and include information that also is contained in other reports published by the state.

"It's arcane," he said. "We never get rid of anything. Any data collection they do really needs to be examined."
New commissioner looks for schools that are succeeding
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
November 14, 2011

MERIDEN - When unionized teachers in Meriden's public schools needed more time to examine student test data, they voluntarily added extra classroom time to their schedules to make room for regular weekly data review meetings.

That simple solution, the result of informal talks between the union president and school superintendent, was cited Monday by the state's top education official as one of the reasons for the success of Thomas Hooker School.

"It's a perfect example of how a district solves a problem - union and management together," said state Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor. "You are creating a model for the rest of the state."

That spirit of teamwork, along with strong leadership and an intense focus on monitoring student progress, have made Hooker stand out, Pryor said.

Pryor, who took over as commissioner last month, stopped at Hooker as one of the first stops on what he calls a "listening tour" to visit schools and meet educators across Connecticut and to look for education strategies that work.

In Connecticut, Pryor oversees a public education system that boasts some of America's best schools but also has the nation's largest academic achievement gap separating the poor from the well-to-do. At Hooker, that gap has virtually disappeared over the past six years as test scores among low-income children gradually improved.

Although about half of Hooker's students come from low-income families and one-third of the student body is not fluent in English, the school regularly posts impressive results on the statewide Connecticut Mastery Test. More than 90 percent of Hooker's third-graders scored at the proficient level in reading and math last spring, for example, compared with statewide averages of 74 percent in reading and 84 percent in math.

Hooker, along with a school in Old Lyme, tied for the Connecticut Association of Schools' award as the state's top elementary school this year. Two years ago, it was named a national Blue Ribbon school by the U.S. Department of Education.

"There are numerous exemplary schools in our state even though there are certainly challenges statewide," Pryor said after touring Hooker. "There are bright spots, and we want to highlight those and learn from them."

Monday's meeting with teachers and administrators provided an early glimpse of some of the themes likely to mark Pryor's approach as commissioner.

Although he was an unconventional choice for the education post -- his most recent job was as deputy mayor in Newark, N.J. -- Pryor's grasp of key education issues was evident as he took notes and asked the Meriden educators about curriculum, teacher training and other matters.

In particular, Pryor asked pointed questions dealing with monitoring student progress: How often do teachers gather data? Does the district work with the state in designing test questions? Do schools use data to diagnose problems for individual students?

Meriden Superintendent of Schools Mark Benigni said teachers regularly review how their students' growth compares to that of students in other schools, throughout the district and across the state. "We know that these results matter," he said. "We want to push all our students to their optimum performance."

Later, Pryor said that Hooker's focus on data was a key element in its success.

"There is very thoughtful attention being paid to the use of data. ... There is concern for reaching further into the data to examine students' needs beyond the surface level analysis of right and wrong answers on the standardized tests. There's an interest in deeper diagnosis, which is so important," he said.

"It's rare that you find a school these days that's succeeding at this level that isn't aiming for such deeper diagnosis. It's great to see it happening, and it's the kind of thing that the state can enable."

Pryor, who arrived in Connecticut with a reputation as a skilled leader able to bring together groups with differing points of view, also praised the union-management relationship in Meriden, citing the example of altering the schedule to create time for the data review meetings.

"It was great to see it in action," he said. "There is problem-solving on a routine basis and also on a structural long-term basis between the superintendent's office and the union president's office. That is terrific to see. It's essential."

Hooker's success has not come without obstacles. The school district's budget has had no increase for the past two years. The building is aging, and class sizes are edging upward.

"With 29 students, it's a challenge to get to every single one of them," said fifth-grade teacher Jacqueline Sapinski. Nevertheless, part of the school's success is the result of the close bond among staff members, she said.

"It's definitely a school that is a team," she said. "I can depend on anyone -- the cafeteria worker, the speech therapist -- to help me when I need it."
A 'change agent' seeks consensus on school reform
CT MIRROR
By Robert A. Frahm and Caitlin Emma
October 5, 2011

When Gov. Dannel P. Malloy tabbed Stefan Pryor, a charter school founder, as the state's next education commissioner, the appointment raised eyebrows among some in public education circles.

Would Pryor, whose career has been shaped both inside and outside the education arena, be able to win over a public school establishment that viewed some charter advocates with suspicion?

Those who know him best are betting the answer is yes.

Pryor officially begins his new job Friday, taking over a public education system that boasts some of America's best schools but also has the nation's largest academic achievement gap separating the poor from the well-to-do.

Colleagues describe the 39-year-old Yale graduate as a tireless reformer unafraid to try new ideas - not limited to those tested in charter schools - and as a skilled leader able to bring together groups with differing points of view.

"I think he's practical. He's not really an ideologue," said Paul Vallas, a former school superintendent in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans. Pryor worked alongside Vallas as a volunteer in Haiti and Chile as those nations rebuilt school systems after suffering devastating earthquakes last year.

"I don't think he comes in as a person who sees one model or one solution to addressing the deficiencies that exist in the educational system," said Vallas, one of the nation's leading voices in school reform. "I think that he's a supporter or charter schools without being a critic of traditional schools... In all the projects he's worked on with me, people liked him. He's not divisive...He works with diverse groups."

That was a mark of Pryor's style in Newark, N.J., too, where he worked as deputy mayor for the past five years to revitalize the struggling city.

"One of his great secrets is he just never looks at sides - this side versus that side," said Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who has known Pryor since the two were classmates at Yale Law School. "He's somebody that really [says] let's all come together, find out where we can agree... and make something happen that can benefit us all."

Pryor, whose background includes a major role in rebuilding Lower Manhattan, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was an unconventional choice for the education post. Nevertheless, he had been on Malloy's radar for months, said Timothy Bannon, the governor's chief of staff.

Soon after Malloy's election last year, the governor met Pryor and began thinking about finding a spot for him in the new administration, Bannon said. The governor "was quite taken with his intellect and his grasp of public issues," said Bannon, who described Pryor as a flexible leader not bound to any single strategy of school reform.

"He is very outcome oriented...The other thing that stands out when you look at his record is he really is able to form a consensus," he said. "That's going to be a key to any success in terms of education reform."

In Connecticut, Pryor will confront thorny, divisive issues such as teacher tenure, pay and evaluation. He must do so in the midst of a slumping economy that has led to teacher layoffs,  school budget cutbacks, and a shrinking staff at the State Department of Education. He takes over an agency that has intervened in two struggling school districts, Windham and Bridgeport, and that has begun reviewing the state's complicated and often-criticized school aid formula.

Although Pryor's predecessor, former Commissioner Mark McQuillan, helped win reforms such as more rigorous high school requirements, he never was able to build a strong alliance with former Gov. M. Jodi Rell - a factor, some observers say, in Connecticut's failure to win a grant last year in the Obama administration's $4.3 billion Race to the Top school reform competition.

Pryor, by contrast, appears to have the strong backing of Malloy, who has pledged to make education reform a central element of his agenda.

Pryor "has the wind at his back," said state Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislature's Education Committee. "He is a change agent who arrives with a lot of support for change."

His biggest test will be to shore up lagging academic performance, particularly in schools with large populations of low-income and minority students - a key to restoring Connecticut's status as a leader in education circles.

Pryor is no stranger to big challenges. After heading the agency charged with rebuilding Lower Manhattan following the attacks on New York's World Trade Center, he left for Newark, where he worked alongside Booker and played a central role in promoting business development, expanding affordable housing and developing innovative projects such as a mentoring and job training program for former prisoners.

Newark has more than $700 million in construction projects under way or in the pipeline, Booker said. Pryor has been influential in attracting dozens of new businesses, including the first new downtown hotel in nearly 40 years and the headquarters for Panasonic Corporation of North America.

"He presided over probably one of the greatest development periods in our city in the last 60 years, and he did it during the worst economy when people weren't building, weren't investing," Booker said. "He's a guy who has achieved great success in everything he's done and really has become one of the more sought-after leaders in America... He was always being wooed by other cities, states, communities."

Kathryn S. Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit organization of business leaders where Pryor once worked on school reform, described him as pragmatic. "I would say progressive, but not at all confrontational." she said.

"If you were comparing him and Michelle Rhee, they're sort of opposite ends of the spectrum," Wylde said, referring to the former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor, whose aggressive, often blunt style rankled teachers' unions and made her a controversial figure in school reform.

At the partnership, Pryor worked with two troubled school districts in Brooklyn, focusing heavily on the use of data to monitor student progress and trying strategies such as performance incentives for principals and financial incentives for recruiting teachers, Wylde said.

Pryor is known for devoting long hours to his work, rarely taking time off. "He has total immersion in the work he's doing," Wylde said. "He's a 24/7 guy."

Booker, who called Pryor one of his closest friends, said, "He's a guy who has gone at full speed, around-the-clock with the intensity I've rarely seen matched by others...Stefan is his work. It's what he does. It's who he is...His hobbies were things like leading missions down to Haiti to serve after that disaster."

Pryor, who is single, is the son of two public school teachers. He grew up and attended public schools in New City, N.Y., a suburb of New York City.

On the day his appointment was announced in Connecticut, Pryor said he will focus on strategies that work, wherever they exist.

"I think it's important we look at schools not in terms of their governance model but in terms of their results - whether we're talking about conventional public schools or magnet schools or charter schools or vo-ag or tech schools," he said. "The question is not how is a school structured. The question is: How is a school providing for outstanding student outcomes?"

The search for effective strategies is something Pryor did along with other Yale law students and community leaders in founding Amistad Academy, a successful, high-profile charter school that opened in New Haven in 1999 and became a national model.

"He's very results focused and people focused," said Dacia Toll, former Amistad director and now president and CEO of Achievement First, a network of charter schools that includes Amistad and other schools in Connecticut and New York.

"In coming up with a model for Amistad," Toll said, "we traveled around the country, going as far as Calgary, Canada, to look at schools that were serving kids from low-income backgrounds who have historically been underachieving - yet in these schools, they were achieving breakthrough results."

Charter schools are publicly supported schools that are free of the usual central office restrictions and union rules. In theory, they are designed to foster experimental approaches that can be expanded to other schools, but critics, including teachers' union officials in Connecticut, have been at odds with some charter advocates, accusing them of bashing public schools and acting as competitors.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, knows Pryor and believes he has the skill to mend that relationship.

"Part of what he will need to do is reduce that toxicity. That will be both a challenge and opportunity for him, particularly since he comes from the charter school side," said Weingarten, who remembers Pryor from his school reform work in Brooklyn when she was head of United Federation of Teachers in New York City.

"I think he has seen both the potential of charter schools and the limits of charter schools," Weingarten said.

She said that Pryor is likely to draw not only on the lessons of charter schools but on other experimental approaches such as a reform-minded teachers' contract in New Haven. That contract includes a rigorous new evaluation process for teachers, linking their performance to student progress.

The contract has drawn praise from the Obama administration and others, including Pryor.

"The fact that the collective bargaining unit and municipal administration and school district administration came together and grappled with issues and resulted in a contract that everyone felt good about...that's impressive, and that's a good model," Pryor said.

Weingarten said a key element of the New Haven reform is that it reaches an entire district, not just a single school.

"The fact that [Pryor] has looked at the New Haven model...and sees that collaboration as a key lever to school district reform to try to help all kids - not just some kids - I think is very positive," Weingarten said.

When the Partnership for New York City tested various reforms in Brooklyn schools, Pryor "was pretty honest about what did and didn't work," she said. Even when some of the reforms did not work as planned, "the partnership didn't blame the schools for failure to try," she said.

"I found him at the time...to be open-minded and flexible, you know, pragmatic," she added. "It's about how you help all kids, and the one thing we've learned is it's not so easy."



From the official  CT website



Changes To Education Funding On The Horizon This Year
CTNEWSJUNKIE
by Christine Stuart | Jan 12, 2012 2:20pm

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s Budget Director Ben Barnes, who co-chairs the task force in charge of looking at the state’s Education Cost Sharing formula, tried his best to dodge reporters’ questions about whether there would be changes to the education funding formula this year.

As the awkward pauses and vague answers continued one reporter jokingly volunteered to hold him while the rest tickled the information out of him.

But Barnes defended his cagey behavior explaining that he’s in the middle of making some of those big policy decisions and wouldn’t want to say the administration will do something that it ends up scrapping. But when he was asked if Malloy will be able to accomplish everything he wants to accomplish this fiscal year without changes to the education funding formula, Barnes replied “ultimately no.”

The statement was an indication changes to the formula will be forthcoming.

But Barnes refused to offer any more details or confirm anything Thursday.

“If I were to say something and then we change our mind,” Barnes said as his voice trailed off. “There are a lot of trade offs and clearly we don’t have as much money as we’d like to, to do all the things we‘d like to get done,” he added.

He admitted there was a certain awkwardness to attending the CT Voices for Children budget forum at the state Capitol Thursday because of the proximity of the budget adjustments.

“I don’t bring any paper because I don’t want to say anything,” Barnes joked.

Sen. Andrea Stillman, D-Waterford, co-chairwoman of the legislature’s Education Committee and co-chairwoman of the ECS Task Force, said there may be some small policy changes to the “framework” of the ECS formula this year. But like Malloy, she doesn’t want to impact funding to municipalities.

“To pull the rug out from under our residents and taxpayers would not be well received,“ Stillman said Thursday in a phone interview.

However, she believes there are some small changes the state can make to the formula in anticipation that bigger changes are on the horizon.

She said there are parts of the formula that can be looked at and changed, but was reluctant to say exactly which parts of the formula will be undergoing those small changes, since the task force has yet to finalize its draft report.

Stillman said everyone is hoping fiscal conditions improve this year, so they have an opportunity to make more significant changes to the formula in fiscal year 2013.

Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislature’s Education Committee, said given all of the variables involved and the complexity of the formula he didn’t expect to see changes until 2013. However, he said he has nothing but respect for the wide range of aims the governor has enunciated on education reform.

It’s possible to set up a system where you can hold all municipalities harmless, while increasing funding to several school systems, Fleischmann said. It’s been done in the past, but how exactly how Malloy plans on funding it was still a mystery to Fleischmann.

During an interview on WNPR Wednesday Malloy told John Dankosky that his education proposal will be “the most far-reaching in our state’s history, and probably one of the most far-reaching in the nation.”

He said there are about 29 school districts mostly in urban communities that need more help than they’re currently getting from the state. His comments were similar to those made in December at the Council of Small Towns meeting.

“I’ve already said that I’m going to hold municipalities harmless of losses that we’re going to stand by our funding commitments. I made that very publicly about four or five months ago. Believe me if I say it, you can believe it,” Malloy told Dankosky.

Administration sources said changes to the formula are inevitable and will be done this year, but how they will be funded is still unclear.

Since the state won’t be increasing taxes this year many school and town officials are wondering if the state should be taking money from high performing districts to give to low performing districts. This would create winners and losers amongst municipalities.

Bart Russell, executive director of the Council of Small Towns, said Thursday that it would be quite a challenge to imagine significant changes to the ECS formula during the short session of the legislature. And “I don’t know if you can automatically assume these changes to the formula will be robbing Peter to pay Paul either,” Russell added.

He said it would be difficult and challenging to cut municipalities in the second year of the two-year budget, but the ECS formula is the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

“We’re all waiting with baited breath and hoping we’re going to be held harmless in the second year of the biennium,” Russell said.

Just 2 in 5 Connecticut high school grads finish college
Westport News
Linda Conner Lambeck, Staff Writer
Updated 12:21 a.m., Friday, December 30, 2011

HARTFORD -- As the state strives to improve student performance, high school graduation rates and eventual success in college, a new report suggests just how far public schools have to go.

For the 35,671 high school students who graduated from Connecticut public high schools in 2004, just two in five had earned a degree or certificate from college six years out. Another one-third started college during this time, but did not finish. One-quarter skipped post-secondary education altogether.

Locally, the percentage of students successfully completing a college program six years out of high school ranged from 6 percent at Henry Abbott Technical High School in Danbury to 73 percent at Ridgefield High School.

Suburban high school graduates find more success at college than urban students, the report shows.

The data comes from the National Student Clearinghouse, a central repository of enrollment and graduation data, and was requested by the state's Board of Regents for Higher Education, the state Department of Education and P-20 Council, a collaboration between the state's early childhood, K-12, higher education and workforce training sectors.

The council, which held a series of college readiness workshops across the state this fall, is releasing the data to give policymakers and educators a better idea of what high school graduates in the state do with their diplomas. The report provides degree completion rates by high schools in the state, information which has previously not been available in Connecticut.

Michael Meotti, vice president of the state's Board of Regents, said the report signals a need to identify ways to help students prepare to enter the workforce.

"We need to ensure that we're preparing our students for success from the very moment they set foot in our schools," Meotti said in a prepared statement. "That means identifying ways in which we can help them learn and be better able to adapt to the 21st century workforce."

The report calls for a focus on students who enter college but fail to graduate within six years.

Of the 41 percent of the class of 2004 who completed at least one degree or certificate program, half -- representing 20 percent of the class -- went to Connecticut colleges and universities and half attended colleges or universities out of state.

In Connecticut, according to the U.S. Census, 46 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds have an associate degree or higher. That puts the state seventh in the nation. The state's level of education attainment is slipping.

Braden Hosch, director of policy and research for the Board of Regents, said the results are about what was expected.

The data also shows the college-going rate between 2004 and 2009 has increased. According to the state Department of Education, 77.8 percent of the class of 2004 indicated they planned to attend college. In actuality, 57.4 attended college, according to clearinghouse statistics that officials say are accurate within 5 percent.

In 2009, 80.5 percent said they were college-bound. The clearinghouse reports 66.9 percent enrolled the following fall.

"What we are trying to focus attention on is: What matters for Connecticut's economic competitiveness is not simply that students go to college, but when they go, they finish," Hosch said. "We know that in the economy we have today, having some sort of credential after high school makes you much more competitive in the job market."

The report doesn't get into the reasons why students don't finish. While some point to the cost of college as for why some students start but don't finish college, many say not enough students enter college prepared to do the work or have the motivation to stick with it.

State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor said there is a need for better preparation. The higher education report comes out the same day the Department of Education released a report that shows graduation rates from public high schools in 2010 showed only a slight improvement. Nearly one in five students still fail to graduate within four years. For minority students, one in three fail to graduate with the class they entered with as freshmen.

Ten districts in the state, including Monroe, had greater than a 95 percent graduation rate in 2010. Six districts, including Bridgeport, had rates lower than 65 percent.

Former SWRPA member Dudley Williams on this panel.as is Ted Sergi, former CT Education Commissioner (coined the phrase "The Two Connecticuts")...
ECS PANEL HOPES TO MEET IN LOWER FAIRFIELD COUNTY (UNDER "TASK FORCE ACTIVITIES" NOT TO BE RANKED)

Go directly to the first cut of 49 alternative changes here. 

Please note that CT MIRROR forced the hand of Education Committee Co-Chair. to release this draft.  How many people on the task force and who do they represent?  Inquiring minds would like to know!
Is there a link here?
First challenge of ECS panel: Untangling old compromises
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
September 15, 2011

The new state panel charged with ensuring fairness in Connecticut's education financing system hit its first quandary Thursday: How do you fix the program when decades of political compromises and nearly $3.8 billion in under-funding have left virtually all communities--rich and poor alike--feeling short-changed?

In its first detailed briefing on state education financing, the Education Cost Sharing task force learned that:

    Connecticut's share of local education funding reached its lowest point in two decades over the last two years.
    While poor cities argue they don't receive sufficient funds through ECS, nearly 50 of the wealthiest communities effectively receive less per student now than they did just before the first education equalization formula was drafted, after adjustments for inflation.
    And an artificial capping system has deprived the ECS program of an average of $760.4 million annually since 2006-07.

The ECS system "has been a series of political compromises over the years," Brian Mahoney, the state Department of Education's chief financial officer, told the panel that must recommend options to reform education financing next February. "The state has never really, actually funded the pure formula."

With nearly $1.9 billion in grants this fiscal year to Connecticut school districts, the ECS system is largest component in a $4.2 billion state funding plan for municipal education that also includes school construction grants; teachers' pension account contributions; a vocational-technical high school system; specialized state school districts serving abused and disabled children; and racial diversity programs.

While a major state tax hike enabled Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the legislature to maintain ECS funding despite the loss of federal aid, the state budget includes significant cuts to spending on construction, diversity and technical high schools.

And though the ECS spending level was maintained, Mahoney and Office of Legislative Research analyst John Moran also told the panel that the grant formula, which takes into account a community's wealth, student population, numbers of families from households on federal assistance, and past education spending, still will distribute $724.8 million less than the formula calls for.

Artificial caps on the ECS program are nothing new. In each of the prior four fiscal years, under-funding levels have ranged from $731.1 million to $865.9 million.

Part of the controversy over ECS stems from what analysts called "the myth of the 50-50 funding promise."

The state Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1977 case of Horton v. Meskill that Connecticut's flat, $250 per pupil grant to municipal school districts was unconstitutional because it didn't recognize disparities in local wealth.

Though a state Board of Education advisory panel recommended a long-term goal of state assistance covering, on average, half of each community's local education costs, "no one who controlled the purse strings, neither legislatures nor governors, came forward and said 50-50 is our goal," Moran said.

Nonetheless, that perception creates a problem: The state's share of local education spending generally has been in the high-30 percent to low-40 percent range for much of the past two decades. And the deviation among communities has been even greater.

Almost immediately after the first equalization formula was enacted, legislators added "stop-loss" provisions to ensure wealthier communities didn't experience reductions in state aid--a move that has long drawn criticism from poorer communities, both urban and rural.

But while more affluent towns may have been protected in the short term that didn't last. Accordingto Thursday's briefing, the 24 wealthiest towns receive about $378 per student, and and the 24 in the next wealth ranking receive about $735. The $250 per student grant issued in 1977, when adjusted for inflation, would be worth $934 now.

"Which virtually means for the last 35 years they have gotten nothing," said former state Education Commissioner Theodore Sergi, a member of the task force.

ECS funding per student then climbs in the next five wealth tiers to $1,720, $2,744, $3,125, $4,586, and $6,860 per student for the poorest communities in Connecticut.

Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said it's crucial that this task force not only analyze funding issues, but also assess the educational results school districts are achieving.

But Sergi cautioned after the meeting that no school funding equalization program can--on its own--also equalize education results.

"You can't look at ECS to solve everything," he said, adding that the effects of poverty and other social problems can't be overcome by school spending alone.

Meriden School Superintendent Mark Benigni, who also serves on the task force, said that rather than look for ways to fully fund the current ECS formula, the panel might be better off trying to determine the fairest way to distribute the $1.9 billion the program has been allocated in each of the past three budgets. "I think for this committee to do its job, that's what has to be shared," he said.

The alternative, he added, is to develop a formula that calls for more--and then faces the risk of being subverted by state policy makers unwilling to fund it.

"I don't know who in the legislature is happy with the ECS formula," Sen. Andrea L. Stillman, D-Waterford, co-chairwoman of the task force, said. "I think everything needs to be on the table, ... but I think there's a good foundation with what we have now and I'm not sure I want to throw it out."

Charter school founder to be named education commissioner
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
September 6, 2011

One of the founders of an acclaimed Connecticut charter school who later led the redevelopment effort in Lower Manhattan after the attacks of 9/11 will be named Connecticut's next commissioner of education.

Gov. Dannel Malloy is expected to appoint Stefan Pryor, now the deputy mayor of Newark, N.J., to succeed Mark McQuillan, who resigned abruptly in December, citing the stress of the job. Acting Commissioner George Coleman has held the interim post since then.

State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor confirmed the selection of Pryor but would not comment further. Pryor's selection was first reported in a story by Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green.

The board, which led a six-month search for the new commissioner, will issue its recommendation of Pryor at its meeting Wednesday, where the new commissioner will be introduced. Pryor is one of five finalists interviewed for the job.

Pryor, 39, a graduate of Yale Law School, was among the founders of the Amistad Academy in New Haven, a high profile public charter school that has had a successful track record with children from low-income families.

The selection of Pryor signals Malloy's intent to focus on reforming the public education system and is certain to raise eyebrows among the education establishment, including teacher union officials who have sometimes clashed with charter school supporters over funding and other issues.

Pryor's background indicates he is no stranger to big challenges.

In Newark, Pryor oversees economic development, city planning and housing as part of the administration of Mayor Cory Booker. Before taking that job, he was president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in charge of rebuilding the area after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Before 2001, he worked as vice president of the Partnership for New York City, a leading business organization, where he was involved in school reform efforts.

In the mid-1990s, Pryor worked as a policy advisor to New Haven Mayor John DeStefano.

"I'm hearing from folks in New Haven. They think it's a good choice," said Sharon Palmer, president of the American Federation of Teachers-Connecticut. "If he is bringing a vision of what charter schools are supposed to be--schools of innovation and creativity--then that's a good thing."

"I'm hoping he doesn't have the ConnCAN vision of charters being competitors with K-12 [schools]," she said, a reference to the New Haven-based organization that has pushed aggressively for school reforms, including more support for charters.

Alex Johnston, ConnCAN's executive director, knew Pryor when the two men worked for the City of New Haven, Johnston as an official with the New Haven Housing Authority and Pryor as an advisor to DeStefano.

"I think it's an exciting appointment," Johnston said. "He's really an experienced public administrator who has taken on turnaround challenges in New York City and Newark...Think about trying to rebuild Lower Manhattan after 9/11...

"I think we have a rebuilding challenge of our own with a public school system that historically has led the nation but in recent years has fallen behind."

In Connecticut, Pryor will take on a public school system that has struggled to close one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation, with low-income and minority students trailing far behind more affluent and white students in reading and mathematics. Some critics also have expressed concern that the state failed to win a grant last year in Race to the Top, the Obama administration's $4.3 billion school reform competition. The surrounding states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York all won grants.

"If you can work in Newark and New York City," you should be able to handle Connecticut," said Mary Loftus Levine, the recently appointed executive director of the Connecticut Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union.

"I never met him...He has a very interesting background," she said. "I think having an urban background will be a big plus. My hope is he'll want to work collaboratively with us and listen to the voices of teachers."

Attempts to reach Pryor Wednesday were unsuccessful.

Pryor, who has been described as a tireless worker, also has done volunteer work in earthquake-damaged Haiti and Chile alongside one of the nation's most noted school reformers.

Paul Vallas - former school superintendent in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans - said Pryor was a valuable voice in building school systems and other services as those countries recovered from devastating earthquakes.

"He's a great guy. The governor has made a real smart choice," Vallas said Wednesday by phone from Haiti, where he has been working for the past 20 months helping to design a publicly funded school system.

Vallas, a proponent of school choice and charter schools, said Pryor is highly respected and has a solid grasp of education issues. "He knows what constitutes good schools - what works and what doesn't work. He's not a novice when it comes to education."

 The report of Pryor's selection also won an enthusiastic response from Frank Carrano, longtime president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers before leaving that post in 1999.

"I'm very excited about the appointment. I knew Stefan from his days as an undergraduate at Yale through his involvement with public schools," said Carrano, now chairman of the Board of Education in Branford. "I found him to be, as a young man, genuinely interested in making positive changes happen. As a college undergraduate, it's rare to find those qualities...

"We've kept in touch over the years. I know his involvement in the Lower Manhattan project is another example of his willingness to step into a difficult situation. His greatest strengths lie in his ability to bring people together, to collaborate."

Robert Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said of Pryor, "I don't know him personally, but he has some accomplishments. He has more background in education that we first thought. My understanding is he was the governor's first choice, and we'll do what we can to make him successful."
Stefan Pryor named state's next Commissioner of Education
Linda Conner Lambeck, Staff Writer
Updated 11:33 p.m., Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Before 9/11, education was Stefan Pryor's focus.

The Yale graduate helped found the state's most successful charter school and led education programs for a business leadership partnership in New York City. After the terrorist attacks of 10 years ago, he shifted his energy to rebuilding lower Manhattan, then went to work for Cory Booker when his college buddy became mayor of Newark, N.J.  Now, Pryor, 39, is poised to return to education as Connecticut's top school chief, taking on one of the nation's largest achievement gaps between poor students of color and more affluent white students.

Officials have confirmed that Pryor will be introduced Wednesday by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy as the state's next commissioner of education.  The announcement will be made at 2 p.m. in the Legislative Office Building during the monthly state Board of Education meeting. Pryor did not respond to calls for comment.  Board Chairman Allan Taylor said he was pleased with the selection. Others, like New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, called it a good day for the young people of Connecticut.

"I don't think Gov. Malloy would have picked Stefan or Stefan would have accepted the position if both weren't about the mission of creating aggressive change in the state Department of Education," said DeStefano, who pulled Pryor from the city council in 1994 to work with him on youth and education issues early in his administration.  DeStefano called Pryor a change agent who has the ability to set clear goals and to be persistent and collaborative.

"I think the state Department of Education is in desperate need of leadership and change," DeStefano added.

Pryor becomes the state's fourth commissioner of education since 2007, counting acting Commissioner of Education George Coleman, whose nine-month stint in the job this year included naming a new Bridgeport Board of Education after a majority of the existing one asked to be replaced. Commissioner Mark McQuillan was commissioner prior to Malloy taking office. Before him, Betty Sternberg spent three years in the job.

This will be the first commissioner appointed under a relatively new statute that puts the final decision in the hands of the governor and the Legislature, not the state Board of Education.

Dacia Toll, who co-founded Amistad Academy Charter School in New Haven with Pryor in 1997, called Pryor's appointment great news for Connecticut. She thinks Pryor can do for Connecticut what he did for students at Amistad, who in very short order were scoring at or above the state average on the Connecticut Mastery Test. The school has since expanded to include schools in New York, Hartford and Bridgeport under the Achievement First brand name. Pryor was the first chairman of the board of Amistad Academy.

Alex Johnston, executive director of Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCan, which advocates for education reform and charter schools, said picking someone like Pryor suggests Malloy is serious about turning around the state's achievement gap.

"I'm encouraged," Johnston said. "He is someone who helped rebuild ground zero despite complex political challenges, worked on redevelopment in Newark and before that education," said Johnston.

Pryor graduated from Yale University and then Yale Law School. After he helped found Amistad Academy, one of the state's first charter schools, he went to work for Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of The Partnership for NYC, where his job was to support public education, reform and improvement.

"He was responsible for a major initiative called Breakthrough that was all about bringing data-driven management and accountability to schools," said Wylde.

She was not surprised when Pryor recently confided in her that he was considering becoming Connecticut's education chief.

"Education has always been his first passion," said Wylde, who lent him to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. after 9/11 to help with the rebuilding effort. "All of our staff went from what we were doing on 9/10 to focusing on emergency response and rebuilding effort. Stefan lived and worked 10 blocks from the site."

Pryor helped found ReStart Central, which provided donated and discounted goods and services to 9/11-affected businesses.  For the past five years, he has been deputy mayor for economic development in the city of Newark.

State tells 11 towns they must increase education spending
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
August 31, 2011

Officials at the State Department of Education are notifying officials in 11 cities and towns that they are in violation of state law setting minimum spending requirements for education and that they must increase their school appropriations for the current fiscal year."If they don't comply soon then we will have to figure out what the next step is," said Brian Mahoney, the longtime chief financial officer for the SDE.

In order to receive state education funding grants, the law requires school districts to spend at least as much each year than they did the previous year. For the first time a significant number of districts have submitted budget figures to the state that do not comply with the minimum spending requirement.

"This is unprecedented. This has never happened before," said Mahoney. He said in the nearly 30 years of the state imposing minimum spending or appropriations requirements for districts, fewer then 10 incidents have occurred of districts failing to meet the requirement.

"It must be the recession that's catching up with their budgets," said Allan B. Taylor, chairman of the State Board of Education.

Taylor and Mahoney said the state will be forced to take action against the non-complying districts if they don't increase their school budgets. Possible options include legal action or withholding state funding.

Mahoney has told districts that they have until Thursday to let the department know what their plans are. He said he expects there will be some districts that respond that they cannot resolve the issue locally and need the state to step in.

One of those districts is likely to be Winchester, where town and school officials are in a dispute over a $1.4 million gap in the education budget.

"I must report that I do not expect that the Town will provide funding at this required level," Superintendent Thomas M. Danehy wrote Mahoney last week. Danehy accused the board of selectmen are offering "fictitious savings" to justify not allocating more money for the schools.

Selectwoman Lisa Smith said the board if not going to budge on the issue.

"I just don't understand how giving them millions and millions of more dollars is going to solve the problems facing education," she said. "I am not willing to go back to the taxpayers and ask for more money...  It's a very frustrating position we are in."

Mayor Candy Perez, a local principal who supports giving the schools more money, said the dispute is not going to be resolved without some action by the state.

"When two sides are in a stalemate the state agency needs to intervene," she said.

This tug-of-war for funding between town councils and school boards has existed for years, but Bristol Superintendent Philip Streifer says the recession is the "straw that finally broke the camel's back."

Bristol's school budget is $2.6 million short of the minimum requirement. Streifer, who is also the head of the Connecticut Association of Urban School Superintendents, says said he is hopeful his town council will decided to fill the gap.

"They respect the law. They may not be happy with it, though," he said. "School districts and towns are at loggerheads everywhere and we are going to keep having these issues unless something changes."

David Medina, a spokesman for Hartford Public Schools, said the mayor's office has informed the district that they intend to appropriate more money for the schools so they are in compliance with the law.

The legislature did attempt to give towns and school districts some relief this year by passing a law that allows them to cut spending if enrollment declines under certain conditions. But the change only applies to districts that have have met federal benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind Law. Districts with high levels of poverty were also restricted from cutting spending.

Without this change in law, seven of the 11 districts that are set to spend less than the required amount would have been much further in the hole. For example, Columbia's school budget is $159,000 short of the minimum; without the new law, if would have been $275,000 below the required appropriations.

About one-fifth of the state's school districts are spending the same as last year. Sixteen of those 30 school districts were able to cut their budgets below what they spent last year, but elected not to, according to the SDE figures.

Wetlands remediation work at Weston schools postponed until next summer
Weston FORUM
Written by Kimberly Donnelly
Wednesday, 24 August 2011 11:20

The town has been given permission to delay wetlands remediation at the school campus until next summer when school is not in session.  Full story here.


The next debt bubble: college loans
NYPOST
By NATHAN HARDEN
Last Updated: 12:11 AM, August 23, 2011
Posted: 10:58 PM, August 22, 2011

In the last few years, excessive borrowing has led to a housing-market collapse -- and now, to Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the US credit rating.

But America’s debt-fueled woes haven’t ended: The higher-education industry may be the next bubble to burst.

Moody’s rating agency recently issued a report that should be a wake-up call to every student now considering taking out large loans to pay for college.

Total student debt is at an all-time high -- and may top $1 trillion this year. Meanwhile, default rates are rising alarmingly. Skyrocketing tuition, lax lending standards and high rates of unemployment have created the perfect financial storm.

Some advice to college students: Learn from our government’s mistakes and avoid borrowing your way into a hole.

Tuition costs have more than doubled since 2000, far outpacing the inflation rate -- even surpassing the bubble-fueled growth in real-estate prices.

Tighter lending standards for auto loans and mortgages have vastly improved loan performance. Yet student-loan-default rates are getting worse, not better.

For 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, the default rate was 7 percent, up from 4.6 percent in 2005. Among students who attend for-profit institutions, the default rate is nearly 12 percent.

Despite high default rates, lenders have had little incentive to curtail the amount of money they loan to students because the federal government guarantees most student loans. Yet, for borrowers, the consequences of default are severe.

Unlike most debt, student loans are almost impossible to dispose of through bankruptcy. If students fail to repay, their tax refunds can be withheld and wages and Social Security payments can be garnished.

President Obama’s takeover of the student-loan industry last year means the government no longer backs private loans, and most students now borrow directly from the government. But unless the government improves underwriting standards, we’ll have an ever-growing portfolio of bad loans on the federal books, and all taxpayers will pay for it.

Financial advisers often refer to educational debt as “good debt” because college graduates make far more on average than nongraduates.

But not all degrees provide an equal return on investment. A degree in chemical engineering, for example, produces an average starting salary of $64,500. Someone with a degree in culinary arts, however, can expect to start out making less than $30,000 -- a salary they might get without a degree. Yet despite such differences, the government subsidizes loans as if all majors were equally valuable.

Another problem is that many students borrow money for college but never finish, and so don’t reap the financial rewards of a degree. Of those who enroll in college, more than 40 percent fail to complete their degree within six years. Among minorities and the poor, graduation rates are even lower.

Moody’s report expressed concern that many borrowers and lenders have unrealistic expectations of borrowers’ future earnings. “Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand and successfully complete their degrees on time, they will find themselves in worse financial positions and unable to earn the projected income that justified taking out their loans in the first place,” the agency wrote.

Education has an intrinsic value beyond finding a good job and making more money. But most students enter college expecting it to pay off economically. Looking at the rising student-loan-default rate, it’s hard not to conclude that, for many students, college is failing to produce the returns they expected.

The job market, while tough for all, is even tougher for recent college grads. A study showed that among 2010 graduates, only 56 percent had managed to hold at least one job by this past spring. No wonder defaults are on the rise.

In this troubled economy, students should look for ways to reduce their borrowing, such as working a part-time job. Some may wish to lower their costs by attending community colleges for the first two years. Most should avoid for-profit colleges, where costs and default rates tend to be higher. Finally, students should carefully assess the marketability of their chosen course of study and the likelihood that they’ll be able to finish their degree.

With no lift to the job market in sight, the financial consequences of mishandling such decisions could be dire.

Malloy tells school superintendents 'We've got to do a better job'
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
August 17, 2011

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy told school superintendents from across the state Wednesday that he will tackle a host of education issues in 2012, including a flawed school finance system, a seniority system that protects bad teachers and the failure of many students to learn.  He also said the state Department of Education has to play a larger role in improving education in the state.

"Education has such an important position on my list of priorities," he told a roomful of superintendents and other education leaders in East Hartford. "We got to check our presumptions [and] our assumptions at the door."

The governor offered few specifics, but school leaders welcomed his commitment.

"We have long waited for this. It's been a long time coming," said Manchester Superintendent Kathleen Ouellette, who was recently selected to become the superintendent of Waterbury Public Schools.

Several measures show the state is failing when it comes to education, Malloy told the audience. They include the failure of one out of every four students in several urban districts not graduating from high school, minority students testing far behind their white classmates and 70 percent of students showing up to community colleges needing to take remedial courses for things they should have learned in high school.

"I am not convinced we are properly preparing students," Malloy said.

While he spent just over 20 minutes telling the group what is wrong with the system, what he didn't do was offer specifics on how exactly he intends to change the status quo or who would be leading the State Department of Education, which has not had a permanent commissioner since December.

"I'm not here to be critical. I am here to focus," he said. "We've got to do a better job."

Malloy said he is still shaping what specific initiatives he intends to ask the legislature to approve. He also said he expects the next education commissioner to be named in "a matter of weeks."

The changes he intends to make to how the state finances districts are sure to be controversial however it plays out. With the likelihood that the state will not be able to spend more on education anytime soon, his budget director said Tuesday the state has to more fairly distribute the $2.7 billion pot of money it does have for education.

"I apologize to you that I can't send a lot more money to your districts," Malloy told the education leaders at Rentschler Field.

It's the specifics of that new financing formula that leaders are waiting to see.

"The fact that he's promising to tread in new water and figure this out once and for all is really refreshing," said Hartford's Superintendent Christina Kishimoto.

How he intends to identify the bad teachers will also likely be controversial. Education advocates for years have been calling on state leaders to develop a teacher evaluation system to begin the process of helping teachers improve and dismiss those that do not.  Mary Loftus-Levine, the head of the Connecticut Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, said she agrees with the governor that something needs to be done.

"We are also looking for a new system to evaluate teachers," she said, adding she believes it's a small minority of teachers that are so bad they should be shown the door. "The [districts] needs a rubric to follow."

"Every teacher in every school in Connecticut can be proud of their colleagues sitting next to them, or in the hallway next to them or in the hallway down -- that should be our goal," Malloy said, reiterating his previous statements that seniority should not be the only thing looked at when districts lay off teachers.

Kishimoto, whose district has been unsuccessful in getting the State Board of Education to allow it to circumvent seniority rules in teacher layoffs, said she's eager for change.

"The current approach is not grounded around quality assessment," she said. "I hope [Malloy] follows through."

Maryland teachers union balks at pension cost change
By David Hill, The Washington Times
Thursday, August 11, 2011

Maryland's teachers union is resisting state lawmakers' efforts to trim an anticipated $1.1 billion budget gap by sharing teacher pension costs with counties.   A state-appointed commission has recommended Maryland begin splitting the cost of nearly $1 billion in annual teacher pension benefits with its 23 counties and Baltimore, to help close the state's structural deficit during next year's legislative session  Yearly pension payouts to Maryland teachers have essentially tripled in the past 10 years as salaries have increased and more teachers have retired, and represent nearly two-thirds of the state's annual $1.5 billion in total pension costs.

Maryland is one of just three states that pay teacher benefits without help from counties, though hiring and salaries are determined on the county level.  While the commission and many legislators say a 50-50 sharing of costs is long overdue, unions and local governments argue it could yield disastrous results for many already cash-strapped school systems.

"Shifting costs to local boards of education is really tantamount to a huge cut in education funding," said Adam Mendelson, spokesman for the Maryland State Education Association, which represents more than 71,000 school employees and is the state's largest union. "There would be a tremendous impact on the quality of education."

Cost sharing has become a hot topic in Annapolis in recent years, as legislators look to fix an underfunded state pension system that has been wracked by underperforming investments and salary and benefits increases.  Legislators during this year's General Assembly considered shifting as much as half the costs of teacher pensions to counties, but met stiff opposition from state and local teachers unions that staged several protest rallies and predicted the plan would force jurisdictions to increase class sizes, cut programs and lay off as many as 2,800 employees, Mr. Mendelson said.

Counties currently pay retired teachers' Social Security benefits, which Mr. Mendelson said makes up about one-third of their total benefits.  The unions eventually won out, with the Assembly taking the less drastic steps of shifting $17 million in administrative costs to counties, raising the early-retirement age from 55 to 60 and requiring many employees to pay higher contribution rates.  Cost sharing is sure to come up again in next year's session, and could even be considered as early this fall, in a special redistricting session, some legislators say.

The state-appointed Public Employees' and Retirees' Benefit Sustainability Commission recommended in a July report that legislators work as soon as possible toward evenly splitting costs with counties — a move that committee Chairman Casper R. Taylor Jr. characterized as necessary and inevitable.

"Before the budget deficits became a huge, major issue, it was still always a concern simply because the body that sets the salary level hasn't been required to pay the bill," said Mr. Taylor, who was House speaker from 1994 to 2003 and served in the chamber as an Allegany Democrat from 1975 to 2003.

"That, on itself, is a mistake," he said, adding that he'd like to see legislators phase in an even split over two or three years.  The MSEA criticized several of the commission's recommendations, including that the state look into a hybrid pension plan in which employees would be partially on the hook if investments underperform.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas V. Mike Miller, a Prince George's Democrat and vocal cost-sharing supporter, has said he believes cost sharing has majority support in the Senate but could be in for a tough battle in the House.  He said during last session that less-tenured legislators could be reluctant to go against the will of education proponents and a union, ardently supporters of Democrats in a majority Democratic state.

Delegate Melony G. Griffith, a Prince George's Democrat who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, downplayed any potential loss of union support in the next election cycle, saying this year's changes to the pension system have helped cut costs in the short term and that discussions about cost sharing are "a little premature."

"What the educators want to ensure is that the commitments that are made to teachers are lived up to," said Miss Griffith, House chairman of the Assembly's Special Joint Committee on Pensions. "Clearly, the conversation will continue, but it is a different conversation than it was a year ago."

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC.

Arne Duncan’s NCLB Overreach
National Review editorial
August 11, 2011 4:00 A.M.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently announced that he will offer a waiver to the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to any state that wants one — so long as the state agrees to enact the Obama administration’s preferred education reforms.

This is an overreach. No Child Left Behind gives the secretary a broad authority to grant waivers, but Duncan is essentially using that authority to create a whole new policy. If the administration wants to encourage states to adopt specific reforms that are not prescribed in existing law, it should encourage Congress to pass legislation to that effect, not just make the decision itself. This move is of a piece with the administration’s other attempts to legislate by fiat, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

But the deeper problem here is NCLB itself — the ridiculous assumptions of which nearly justify Duncan’s actions. The 2001 law mandates that all American schoolchildren be “proficient” in reading and math by 2014; whenever a school fails to make adequate progress toward that goal, it runs a risk of losing federal funding. Needless to say, thanks to a wide variety of factors, not all children are capable of becoming academically proficient — so the law punishes schools for failing to do the impossible.

The drafters of the legislation, and President Bush, who signed it, were perfectly aware that they were making unreasonable demands. We know this because they built escape routes into the law. In addition to giving the secretary of education the right to waive the requirements, NCLB allowed each state to define “proficient” however it wanted. Not surprisingly, massive fraud resulted: To simulate improvement, states made their “proficiency” tests progressively easier. In many states, student scores improved on NCLB tests, but not on other standardized measures of achievement.

However, there are limits to states’ ability and willingness to fudge the data, and the 2014 deadline — at which point tests will have to be so easy that all students pass them — is approaching. It’s clear that a change is needed, and Congress has thus far failed to pass new legislation.

If the federal government got out of education entirely, we wouldn’t face problems such as this one. But at the very least, legislators should take the reins back from the administration — and base their funding requirements on plausible assumptions this time.
Duncan scolds Congress, announces bypass plan
By Ben Wolfgang, The Washington Times
3:01 p.m., Monday, August 8, 2011

Education Secretary Arne Duncan had harsh words for Congress on Monday, calling it "dysfunctional" and announcing plans to bypass lawmakers and institute sweeping education reform through a waiver system for states.

Despite repeated calls from President Obama to pass a comprehensive overhaul to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act before the next school year, Congress has been unable to do.

The inaction is especially apparent in the Senate, where Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat and chairman of the committee which oversees education policy, continues to push back his own timetable for introducing a reform bill.

"We can't sit here in Washington and turn a deaf ear to what's going on around the country," Mr. Duncan said during a press conference at the White House. "Right now Congress is pretty dysfunctional. They're not getting stuff done."

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has made some progress, passing the first three bills in a five-step process out of committee. They await votes on the House floor.

Earlier this year, Mr. Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he'd introduce a bill by the spring. Two weeks ago during an Appropriations subcommittee hearing, he said he hopes to introduce the bill "this year."

The lack of progress has clearly frustrated the administration and education specialists, who criticize NCLB for its high-stakes testing and what they call its unrealistic expectations.

The Education Department's waiver system — the details of which will be announced sometime next month — will free states from many NCLB mandates, including the "failing" school designation, if those states demonstrate real reform and a high bar for student achievement.

Mr. Duncan said he hopes all 50 states will apply.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. 


Acting Commissioner of Education George Coleman (l);  Mayor Bill Finch (r. second from right)

Bridgeport schools case heads to Conn. high court
Greenwich TIME
Published 11:20 a.m., Sunday, October 16, 2011

HARTFORD (AP) -- The dispute over whether Connecticut education officials acted properly when they swept out Bridgeport's elected school board is heading to the state Supreme Court.

Justices are scheduled to hear arguments Oct. 27 in the case, in which some parents and former board members challenge the validity of a 2007 state law allowing the takeover.

Connecticut's state Department of Education removed the elected board members this summer amid budget stalemates and other problems. They were replaced with appointees under terms of a law that lets state officials intervene when students' academic performance is in dire need of improvement.

The takeover provision hadn't been used before.

The parents and other Bridgeport residents argue the sate's actions deprived them of their right to be represented by people who were legally elected.
Board of Education case is continued
CT POST
Daniel Tepfer, Staff writer
Published 03:25 p.m., Tuesday, August 16, 2011

BRIDGEPORT -- There were 19 lawyers and one judge but after two and a half hours of discussion Tuesday the only thing that apparently was clear is that the board of education takeover case is a complicated situation.

Waterbury Superior Court Judge Salvatore Agati continued the hearing to Friday morning hoping the lawyers would work out a number of "procedural" matters by then.

There are four separate lawsuits seeking to block the state from taking over the city's school system; a lawsuit from parents of school children, a suit from members of the city's board of education who had opposed the takeover, and lawsuits from Democratic mayoral candidate Mary-Jane Foster and several people who had intended to run for positions on the city's board of education.

The Foster slate lawsuit claimed the takeover is a violation of the U.S. Constitution and that resulted in their suit going to federal court, a move they are now trying to retract so that their case can be heard by Agati.

In addition, Norm Pattis, the lawyer for the opposition board members, wants members of the new state-appointed board of education for the city added to the case as defendants.

Then there is the Democratic and Republican town committees' applications to join the case.

There are also claims that at least one of the lawsuits wasn't served properly.

And Josephine Smalls Miller is waiting to find out whether her lawsuit on behalf of the parents of Dunbar School children will even make it to the next stage or be thrown out by the judge for lack of standing.
Outside interests were working behind the scenes to reconstitute school board
CT POST
Linda Conner Lambeck, Staff Writer
Updated 08:28 a.m., Thursday, August 4, 2011

HARTFORD -- A consultant for a Greenwich billionaire interested in education reform was advocating behind the scenes for charter changes that would give the mayor control of the Bridgeport school board at the same time that local and city officials were also looking to reconstitute the board, email correspondence released to Hearst Connecticut Newspapers revealed.

Meghan Lowney, of Fairfield, who works for hedge fund philanthropist Steve Mandel, tried first to find a way to create a mayor-controlled school board through a charter change and then to get the board reconstituted.

Numerous email exchanges between Lowney and State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor detail an ongoing lobbying effort that she repeatedly asked be kept confidential. Lowney and Taylor were introduced, via email, by Alex Johnston, director Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCan, of New Haven on Jan. 11.

In the emails, Lowney tells Taylor she is part of a small group strategizing a Bridgeport charter revision campaign that would result in mayoral control of the schools. They were hoping to turn it around in time for the November 2011 election. She called the Bridgeport Partnership for Student Success a new community-based education reform coalition gaining momentum.

On Wednesday, Lowney said her efforts were not on behalf of the partnership, or any other group.

"In the last few months I've talked with Mayor (Bill) Finch and others about the possibilities for private support for the Bridgeport public schools," she said. "Just as in other challenged urban districts ... private-public partnerships can fuel innovations and system transformations."

In emails to Taylor, Lowney tells him that Mandel, founder of Lone Pine Capital in Greenwich, along with his wife, was interested in making meaningful school change in Bridgeport. They did not think accelerated change could take place under the current school board, which by most counts was deemed dysfunctional.

The emails were released to Hearst Connecticut Newspapers by the state Department of Education after a Freedom of Information request was filed. The emails between Taylor, Acting Commissioner of Education George Coleman, members of the department's legal staff and local officials chronicle efforts to get a resolution to reconstitute the school board on a state board agenda for months -- first in February, then March, before the effort to reconstitute the school board became public on July 6, when the state board voted 5-4 to allow Coleman to replace the board following a vote by the school board, 6-3, to dissolve itself.

Some of Lowney's emails to Taylor list examples of the board dysfunction. She tells him in April she is working behind the scenes to support a request for state intervention. When the Bridgeport school board, faced with a $17-million shortfall, failed to pass a budget on June 16, Lowney writes Taylor the next day to tell him time is running out. She asks him how far in advance of a state board meeting must an item be placed on an agenda. She also tells him she'd like to talk to him and Coleman about support she's organized in the private sector. "Should the state (Department of Education) act to intervene, there is excellent private partnership to be activated," she wrote.

Taylor said Wednesday he had no idea what Lowney's role was in the Bridgeport situation, but that she contacted him, and he counseled her. "When people want to know how to do something, if I can tell them, I do. It doesn't mean I am going to agree with them," said Taylor. He doesn't think his exchanges in any way compromised his ability to vote on the matter.

Lowney said Wednesday her efforts to reach out to Taylor were to become informed about and to support opportunities for meaningful system change. Lowney, of Fairfield, said for too long Bridgeport children have been denied the opportunity for an education that prepares them for success -- despite the efforts of many talented teachers and leaders, and the advocacy of caring parents.

The emails suggest that as early as January, the Bridgeport situation was being discussed with local city officials -- both Schools Superintendent John Ramos and Finch's office.

"My conversations with John Ramos indicate ... the mayor regards the situation as being near crisis," Coleman writes to Taylor in a Jan. 28 email.

There were discussions between Coleman and his staff about whether the board had sufficient training as is required by the reconstituted law. The lack of training is an argument raised in one of the lawsuits filed against board reconstitution.

Coleman's staff also discussed if there was evidence school board rancor was hurting student achievement. His staff couldn't establish a link. Taylor suggests the question perhaps should be if the board is doing anything to improve student achievement.

On Feb. 22, Coleman emails Taylor to tell him he spoke with Ramos, who wants to get a reconstitution resolution on the March agenda of the state board. Coleman tells Ramos it would be beneficial if in the resolution most board members declare they have availed themselves of training as required under the law. Until the weekend of July 4, three members of the school board -- along with the public -- were unaware of any discussions taking place.

Who will be on the new state appointed board is still under review.

Coleman told the state education board Wednesday he is pleased with having more than 50 applicants and is encouraged by the talent pool. He said prospective board members come from as far away as Hartford and New Haven. He won't say when the selections will be made and indicated he might be open to picking more than five members. "The quality of talent leads me to consider more than five if we can get more than that to commit to doing this difficult work that has to be accomplished. My mind is open until I have to make the decision," he said.

He said he is looking for the best individuals to do the job and is not concentrating on groups they are affiliated with. Despite a recent lawsuit, Coleman said he is continuing to move forward.
City will argue injunction preventing school board takeover should be thrown out
CT POST
Published 11:08 a.m., Thursday, July 21, 2011

BRIDGEPORT -- A group of city parents rallied outside of Superior Court Thursday morning in an effort to prevent a restructuring of the city's Board of Education by the state.  The parents, joined at a press conference by Connecticut Parents Union president Gwen Samuel, pleaded their case prior to a hearing in front of a judge who the parents hope will impose an injunction stopping the proposed takeover.  The injunction request was tacked on as an amendment to a previous request filed by parents in order to prevent the Dunbar School from closing.

But city officials have since said the Dunbar School will not close -- bringing the fate of the injunction into question.

At the hearing, Superior Court judge Barbara Bellis continued the case until Aug. 15, at which point Associate City Attorney Russell Liskov will argue the case should be dismissed because the Dunbar School -- at the center of the initial injunction -- is no longer a target for closure.  Karen Johnson, a parent at Cesar Batella School, criticized both city parents for their lack of involvement and Mayor Bill Finch for comments Finch made earlier this month to the state Board of Education.

"There's no support," Johnson said. "It's very difficult when the mayor goes to state Board of Education and tells them that the majority of parents in Bridgeport can't vote because they have criminal records."

Finch's comments, made at a hearing in Hartford, have generated criticism from parents and political rivals.

Speaking in support of a schools takeover by the state earlier this month, Finch told state Board of Education officials concerned about the disenfranchisement of voters that doing away with the BOE election wasn't a "great loss" because few people vote in Bridgeport.

He added that many parents can't vote because of their citizenship status or due to "having done things in a previous life."

"I just do want to remind you that ... many of my parents who either because of them not being citizens or having done things in their previous life cannot participate in the Democratic process," the mayor said at the hearing. "Democracy doesn't work. It doesn't work in all cases."

Johnson, who is not named in the lawsuit but said she came to the hearing to support it, also criticized parents for being willfully ignorant about issues in the city's school system. "The main problem is, enough parents aren't involved," she said.

Johnson said she hopes the judge will rule that the state and city have to listen to parents and consider other options of how to deal with the school system.  The parents said they realize there are major issues that need to be dealt with, but they said the restructuring of the school board by the state, and thereby taking away the parent's voice, is the wrong move.  The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Shavonne Davis, a mother of five children who attend Dunbar School, said she wanted the parent's to be heard.

"We have a voice and it will be heard," said Davis in front of cameras from multiple telvision stations. "It's sad that it had to reach this point for us to be heard."

Davis said many people in the past died so that there could be the right to vote in this country and said they would not be happy if they saw what was happening in Bridgeport.

"We have the right to vote and our votes are being taken away from us," Davis said.
Fifty people interesting in serving on revamped Bridgeport school board
CT POST
Linda Conner Lambeck, Staff Writer
Updated 07:10 a.m., Thursday, July 21, 2011

BRIDGEPORT -- More than 50 people have indicated a desire to sit on the reconstituted Bridgeport Board of Education, state officials said Wednesday.

The applicants represent a wide range of ethnic and racial backgrounds and live both within and outside the city school district, said Mark Linabury, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

Linabury said he could not be any more specific about the number of applicants and who applied. He did say some of the applicants are individuals whom acting Commissioner of Education George Coleman asked to apply.

In a cursory initial review, Linabury said, Coleman is impressed by the range of talents the applicants bring to the table both from within the city and the surrounding towns. Some of the applications came by email, others through the U.S. Postal Service.

The list is expected to be paired to about eight to 10 candidates in the short term. Those individuals will be brought in for interviews.

Coleman was away at a educators conference until Wednesday. Last week, he indicated that the decision as to who would be on the new five-member panel would be his and no one else's.

The new panel will replace a nine-member board that voted 6-3 on July 5 to ask the state to replace it. The very next day, the state Board of Education voted 5-4 to grant the request. The unprecedented step was made possible by a year-old law that allows for state intervention into school districts with chronically failing schools.

The state's action is being challenged in court.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, the Bridgeport Superior Court will hear oral arguments regarding an amended injunction filed against the City of Bridgeport and the state Department of Education that challenges the state's authority to replace the elected board with one appointed by the commissioner. The law requires the board to receive training before being reconstituted. The injunction, filed on behalf of Shavonne Davis, a parent, and Laurayne Farrar-James, a community activist, argues that the required training did not occur.

The injunction asks for a temporary restraining order. It also argues that the state Department of Education acted beyond its statutory authority and is depriving city residents of the right to vote for school board members of their choosing.
Takeover Is About More Than Bridgeport
Malloy Must Address Real Problem: Suburban Kids Learn, Poor Kids Fail
The Hartford Courant5
Rick Green
July 7, 2011

Bridgeport's forlorn plea for a state takeover of its schools isn't about another dysfunctional school board. It's about our abject failure to deal with the problem that, year in, year out, never fails to go away.

Suburban kids learn. Poor kids fail. It's a problem we won't, or can't, fix. Is it any surprise that an inept school board devolves into a squabbling mess?

One fourth-grader in four in Bridgeport reaches state goals for reading. The number is about the same — or worse — in Hartford, New Britain and New London. It's only slightly better in New Haven. All this has barely changed in decades of hand-wringing, commissions and studies.

No company or college wants graduates like this. We are talking tens of thousands of young people.

This is about Gov. Dannel P. Malloy deciding to make our greatest shame, the failure of city schools, his priority. Whether Malloy takes the lead here will tell us much about the success of his administration and the growth of Connecticut's economy. His office, not surprisingly, has been discussing the proposed takeover with Bridgeport officials for months.

The future of our state very much depends on whether cities like Bridgeport and its 20,000 students figure out a way to succeed. Because if it's not Bridgeport, it's New Britain or East Hartford, New Haven and Hartford. This is where our future workforce is coming from.

Cynics tell me the real problem is the raw material — poor children from dysfunctional families arrive in kindergarten years behind their counterparts. It certainly is. But I'd rather look to the striking success of the Achievement First schools in Hartford and New Haven and other public school programs for a glimpse of what can happen.

At least Hartford and New Haven have a clear schools strategy and strong leadership. Malloy, who showed no reluctance to jump in and pick a favorite in the Hartford mayoral primary last week, must provide the muscle to make sure Bridgeport also gets on track.

"He is not afraid to tackle big problems,'' Malloy's adviser, Roy Occhiogrosso, assured me. "Bridgeport has thrown up its hands and said, 'We can't do this.' "

Unfortunately for Malloy, this sticky mess comes at the wrong time and long before his promised legislative session devoted to education reform next year. He doesn't even have a permanent commissioner for the agency that will assist the Bridgeport schools, the state Department of Education. That department is facing a 20 percent cut in staff.

At the meeting Tuesday night where the Bridgeport board voted to ask for state intervention, a lot of folks in the audience of a couple hundred were slamming Mayor Bill Finch, who has little control over city schools and nothing to gain through his support of a takeover just 90 days before a tough primary.

"This is a state of the suburbs, by the suburbs and for the suburbs,'' Finch told me Wednesday before heading into a State Board of Education meeting where a takeover was approved by a 5-4 vote. "That leaves mayors to run quarantine zones for poverty."

Finch wisely thinks Bridgeport ought to be open to a range of solutions: more public school choice for parents, more charter schools, hiring better-trained teachers, and even private school vouchers for children trapped in persistently failing schools.

To make change, Bridgeport will need a strong new leader to replace its underwhelming superintendent of schools, John Ramos, who didn't even attend the board meeting this week where members voted 6-3 to ask for state control. Eventually, the city will probably need an appointed board of education that gives the mayor real authority.

And Bridgeport, which receives thousands of dollars less per pupil than Hartford, will also need more money.

At the top of the list to temporarily take charge in Bridgeport is Steve Adamowski, the highly regarded former superintendent in Hartford. Adamowski isn't perfect (teacher unions loathe him) but he would bring strong leadership, direction and immediately restore confidence of parents and taxpayers.

Just remember, this isn't merely about Bridgeport. It's about whether there is someone in all of Connecticut's government who can step up and finally make sure we address the problems of urban education. We're waiting, governor.

Copyright © 2011, The Hartford Courant
After slow start, applications for top education post begin flowing in
CT MIRROR
Jacqueline Rabe
1 July 2011

After a slow start, State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor said the extended deadline to apply for the state's top education job has paid off and a wave of people have since applied.

"I kinda lost track of how many people applied," he said Friday. "All I know is I am very happy with the pool of candidates."

The deadline to apply was Thursday and the State Board of Education committee responsible for recommending a name to the governor to fill the vacant job will meet next Wednesday. Taylor said there will not be another extension and interviews of the finalists will begin shortly after Wednesday's meeting.

Taylor had originally said the finalists would be revealed to the media, but has since decided against that after candidates signaled they did not want their names released if they did win the nomination.

Taylor said he is hopeful a new education commissioner will be in office before the start of the upcoming school year.


FLOOD PLUS LEAN TIMES = DO IT YOURSELF READING?
Mary had a little lamb, his fleece was white as snow.  Everywhere that Mary went to escape the flood, he went, too.

Tied to enrollment
In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians
NYTIMES
By FERNANDA SANTOS
June 24, 2011

Budget belt-tightening threatens to send school librarians the way of the card catalog.

The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district’s 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes.

In the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon, all 48 elementary and middle school librarians would lose their jobs under a budget proposal that faces a vote next week.

In Illinois’s School District 90, which spans several rural and suburban communities in the southern part of the state, parent volunteers have been running the libraries in the district’s seven schools since September, in what the schools superintendent, Todd Koehl, described as “a last-ditch effort” to avoid closing their doors.

And in New York City, half of the secondary schools appear to be in violation of a state regulation requiring them to have a librarian on staff, with the city currently employing 365 licensed librarians.

“The dilemma that schools will face is whether to cut a teacher who has been working with kids all day long in a classroom or cut teachers who are working in a support capacity, like librarians,” the city’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said in an interview.

In New York, as in districts across the country, many school officials said they had little choice but to eliminate librarians, having already reduced administrative staff, frozen wages, shed extracurricular activities and trimmed spending on supplies. Technological advances are also changing some officials’ view of librarians: as more classrooms are equipped with laptops, tablets or e-readers, Mr. Polakow-Suransky noted, students can often do research from their desks that previously might have required a library visit.

“It’s the way of the future,” he said.

Nancy Everhart, president of the American Association of School Librarians, whose membership has fallen to 8,000 from 10,000 in 2006, said that, on the contrary, the Internet age made trained librarians more important, to guide students through the basics of searching and analyzing information they find online.

Libraries, Ms. Everhart said, are “the one place that every kid in the school can go to to learn the types of skills that will be expected of them when it’s time to work with an iPad in class.”

Some states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Kentucky, require every public school to employ a certified librarian; others, like Maine, leave staffing decisions to districts. New York requires certified librarians in middle and high schools but not elementary schools, and also requires a certified library assistant for any school that has more than 1,000 students.

But an analysis of state and city data shows there is one librarian for every 2,146 students this year, compared with 1 per 1,447 in 2005. At least 386 schools serving students from grades 6 through 12 do not have a librarian on staff, the records show. A spokesman for the Education Department said some of those schools shared librarians, though he could not say how many.

Separately, Mr. Polakow-Suransky said that once principals received their individual school budgets for the coming year, “we will work with them to ensure compliance with the state’s regulations.” He noted that schools “need great flexibility to staff them in these tough times.”

Schools around the city have already been flexible: in addition to sharing librarians, some classroom teachers, particularly in elementary schools, have been trained to stand in for librarians. But there are also libraries sitting unused for lack of someone to staff them.

At a squat brick building on Underhill Avenue in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, parents at the elementary and middle schools that share the space banded together a few years ago to improve the library, whose books were so outdated that some still referred to the Soviet Union without reporting its demise. They convinced the Brooklyn borough president and the local councilwoman to provide $450,000 for the project. One parent, an interior designer, helped sketch the plans and supervised the renovation.

The new library opened on Nov. 17, with nine new computers and 4,200 titles, but has been used only as a reading space, mostly by kindergarten teachers who bring in their pupils once a week.

“We just put all this money into a project that may never be fully utilized,” said Kiki Dennis, 43, the designer.

The problem is that shortly after the library’s completion, the city announced plans to close the building’s Middle School 571 by 2013, prompting a drop in enrollment that officials expect to worsen in the fall

Because school budgets are largely tied to enrollment, the principal decided she could no longer afford to pay half the salary of a librarian, who earns about $70,000. The principal of the elementary school, Public School 9, decided she could not pay the salary alone, and so no librarian was hired.

At the Morris High School campus in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, where five schools — with a total of 1,900 students — share space, the central library has been closed all year because it has no librarian. At the John F. Kennedy High School campus, in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, the lack of a certified librarian was only part of the problem: the principal of one of the six high schools that share the building said the books there were too outdated to be usable.

The principals, with the help of New Visions for Public Schools, which will run two charter schools scheduled to open on the Kennedy campus this fall, submitted a request to Councilman G. Oliver Koppell for $1.8 million to create a media center equipped with e-readers, iPads and a language lab for students not proficient in English. Mr. Koppell sought $600,000 for the project in the budget, which must be approved by Thursday. Whether the request will be granted is uncertain.

But Mr. Polakow-Suransky said he understood that in tight times, principals had to make stark choices — as do their counterparts elsewhere.

Pedro Rivera, the Lancaster superintendent, said that when he realized a few months ago that his largely poor and immigrant district faced a $10 million deficit, he gathered his senior staff members and asked, “If this budget is an expression of our values, what is it that we value the most?”

The team decided to limit class sizes. They made sure there would be no cuts to physical education — “to prevent obesity and promote a healthy lifestyle,” Mr. Rivera said — or arts or music. And they protected prekindergarten classes.

Given what was left, he said, “it was either library or kindergarten.”

Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting.


Latest in the continuing story about the budget...

Ramos urges new path in difficult budget process
CT POST
Linda Conner Lambeck, Staff Writer
Updated 08:29 a.m., Friday, June 17, 2011

BRIDGEPORT -- Dunbar School will not close. More than 400 school employees will not lose their jobs. Students in city schools won't lose their guidance counselors, gifted program or social workers. For now.

In a move that even brought his sharpest critics to their feet, Schools Superintendent John Ramos Thursday convinced the Board of Education to not pass a $215.8 million budget that he called shameful and simply not enough to educate children in the state's largest city.

"This whole process has caused me to look at my roots," Ramos said.

He acknowledged the tipping point was a unilateral move by Mayor Bill Finch on Thursday to announce an agreement with AFSCME Local 1522, a union made up largely of school aides, clerical staff and special education bus drivers, to pay more for health insurance in exchange for job security. The agreement was reached without school board knowledge. Finch hailed the action as a plus to the city, since he plans to transfer the benefit cost savings to the school district.

Ramos said the district would force the district $4 million further into a budget hole, which is already $19 million deep. School and city officials agree the benefits would save about $600,000, but school officials say keeping employees they planned to cut as a budget-cutting move would have meant restoring more than $4.8 million between the general and grants account.

The board for the past three weeks has been wrestling with fitting $233 million worth of needs into the $215.8 million it has received for the fourth straight year. After a week of painful public hearings on the damage the cuts would cause, the board's Finance Committee was prepared to recommend a reconciliation plan that would have increased class sizes to 29 students, and cut nearly every area of the school system. Even with all that, the district was still $1.5 million short -- before the city created an inability for the district to lay off 110 AFSCME workers.

Ramos said the deal forced him to reconsider his position on the budget.

"This budget reconciliation plan is simply not good for children," Ramos said. "The largest city in Connecticut, the state with the largest achievement gap in the nation, cannot provide an equitable education for its children based on this budget. We cannot do it."

He recommended the board authorize him to file a complaint with the state specifying the district's inability to educate children equitably, given the reconciliation budget. He proposed to continue working with the city and union officials to secure more money, and with parents and the community to have their collective voices heard. All three proposals passed unanimously.

A fourth proposal, to run the system as is, until at least Oct. 15, passed on an 8-to-1 vote with board member Thomas Mulligan voting no, to a large cheer from a packed audience. Ramos said he wasn't grandstanding but doing what he thinks it's right.

"If we do anything but what I am proposing, we are setting ourselves up for everyone else to just go away," he said.

Ramos acknowledged that at a certain point, cuts must be made if additional funds aren't found. Otherwise, he and the board will be personally liable.

Finch, in a statement released by his office, offered his continued assistance, including the support of his top labor advisers and budget experts to help the district address its very serious budget issues. Ramos welcomed the help.

Board member Sauda Baraka said regardless, the city needs to cough up the cash for the AFSCME workers that it is dictating remain on staff. She also wants the board to continue working on the budget.

Ramos agreed and said his thoughts about closing Dunbar changed when he learned the state authorized $8.8 million be spent to renovate the school.
Compromise will allow some towns to cut spending on education
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
May 19, 2011

Legislation that would allow communities in which student populations have declined markedly to cut school funding appears likely to pass this year--but some hard-pressed cities and towns won't be eligible.

Rep. Andy Fleischmann, the co-chairman of the Education Committee, said legislative leaders and the Malloy Administration have agreed on a measure that would allow municipalities to cut education spending--but only if they have had "sizable" reductions in the student population, and only if their schools reach federal education benchmarks.

"We don't want to make massive reductions possible," Fleischmann said.

Towns are currently required to spend at least as much on education as they spent the previous year in order to qualify for state education aid. Local officials have complained for years that the requirement is an unfair burden.

"Town government has no say how much they spend. This disenfranchises town's democracy," said James Finley, executive director of Connecticut Council of Municipalities.

The original proposal, backed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, would have allowed all municipalities to cut education spending when school enrollment drops. The compromise, Fleischmann said, will only allow districts that make Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law to cut their spending.

Last school year 33 school districts did not make AYP, including the state's largest cities and many inner-ring suburbs.

"If there's a district that has been performing well, I would like to allow them to reduce their budget. That's rational," said Fleischmann.

Municipal and school officials alike were dissatisfied with the compromise.

"We are somewhat disappointed by this. We were hoping there would be more significant relief in the end," Finley said. "It remains to be seen how effective this will be."

Joseph Cirasuolo, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, said it doesn't make sense to allow districts that meet AYP requirements to cut spending.

"How much longer do you think they will reach those goals if their budgets are cut? That's a very questionable public policy," he said.

Abbey Dolliver, the superintendent of Norwich Public Schools, stood to lose more than $400,000 the upcoming school year under the original proposal. But her district has did not make AYP last year, so town officials will not be able to cut her budget.

"I will take it, but what happens when we make that [goal]? It's like you are being punished for being good," she said. "As soon as you make progress and get to where you need to be resources can be taken from us. Any resources being taken away is going to be very detrimental.
Falling enrollment could cost schools $18M under Malloy plan
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
April 15, 2011 (we just noticed this today - and did the research to find the number of the bill, etc.)

Proposed legislation allowing cities and towns to cut their school spending when enrollment drops--part of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's education funding package--could reduce the collective local school budgets by more than $18 million, the head of a superintendents' group says.

"We're talking major teacher layoffs if this is approved," said Joseph Cirasuolo, head of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. "Those dollar amounts are tough to accommodate."

A district-by-district list of potential cuts, circulated by Cirasuolo to local superintendents, has 20 districts losing more than $300,000 a year if members of the General Assembly approve Malloy's plan. Those districts are responsible for teaching almost one-quarter of the state's public school students.

The bill -- approved unanimously by members of the Education Committee last month -- would allow municipal leaders to cut the amount they spend on education when their student enrollment declines.

"We just think this makes sense," said Jim Finley, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. "We just think in these tough times, if there are ways to decrease spending then towns should be able to see some of those savings."

This proposal could certainly intensify the tug-of-war towns and local school boards face when determining how much of the budget will go to pay for education. Almost 70 percent of municipal spending currently goes to pay for education, according to CCM. And because tows are forbidden by current state law to cut school allocations, even if fewer students attend, that percentage is unlikely to dwindle.

"State leaders, in an effort to make themselves feel good for not fully funding their share of education, have this requirement that towns spend a certain amount," Finley said.

Malloy, a former mayor of Stamford, wants to change that and give town the opportunity to cut the amount they spend on education. Stamford Public Schools would not lose money under his proposal because enrollment actually has increased, making it one of 42 districts immune from cuts under his proposal.

But school officials in districts that could lose money are concerned.

Abby Dolliver, the superintendent of Norwich Public Schools, is one of them.

"We are the poster child," she said. Year after year, her district has barely met the minimum state budget requirements. "This could be devastating... I think the city [leaders] would like the ability to lower funding because in years that they didn't have the money then they could just cut."

She said the $403,000 her schools would be at risk of losing would mean she may have to fire eight more teachers. Her district has had laid off almost 70 teachers and staff over the last two years.

"Right now we have pretty much just what's mandated... We don't have books to cut anymore. We don't have any more programs to cut. And we don't have any more federal [stimulus] dollars," she said.

Hartford Public Schools would be vulnerable to losing the most, the according to the CAPPS report. City schools have lost 589 students, which means the city council and mayor could cut their budget by $1.8 million.

Ben Barnes, Malloy's budget director, said he expects this change to have a "minimal impact" on school budgets.

"I don't expect they'll see enormous declines," he said, noting that only a handful of cities only spend the minimum amount required. Leaders of those cities -- which include New Britain and Bridgeport -- should be able to reduce funding if enrollment declines, he said.

"We look at it as being reasonable," he said.

Finley also said he doesn't believe many towns will take advantage of the full amount they are allowed to cut if the bill becomes law, but Cirasuolo said the proposal leaves too much authority in the hands of town leaders to do just that.

"They will have the final say in how much is cut," he said.

------------------------------

Substitute Bill No. 6385
January Session, 2011   

AN ACT IMPLEMENTING THE BUDGET RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE GOVERNOR CONCERNING EDUCATION.

July 1, 2011 this would go into effect:

(e) For the fiscal years ending June 30, 2010, and June 30, 2011, the budgeted appropriation for education shall be no less than the budgeted appropriation for education for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, minus any reductions made pursuant to section 19 of public act 09-1 of the June 19 special session, except that for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, those districts with a number of resident students for the school year commencing July 1, 2009, that is lower than such district's number of resident students for the school year commencing July 1, 2008, may reduce such district's budgeted appropriation for education by the difference in number of resident students for such school years multiplied by three thousand.

(f) For the fiscal years ending June 30, 2012, and June 30, 2013, the budgeted appropriation for education shall be no less than the budgeted appropriation for education for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, plus any reductions made pursuant to section 19 of public act 09-1 of the June 19 special session, except that (1) for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, those districts with a number of resident students for the school year commencing July 1, 2011, that is lower than such district's number of resident students for the school year commencing July 1, 2010, may reduce such district's budgeted appropriation for education by the difference in number of resident students for such school years multiplied by three thousand, and (2) for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013, those districts with a number of resident students for the school year commencing July 1, 2012, that is lower than such district's number of resident students for the school year commencing July 1, 2011, may reduce such district's budgeted appropriation for education by the difference in number of resident students for such school years multiplied by three thousand.
As teacher layoff notices go out, no change in seniority rules
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
March 29, 2011

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's announced plans to give school districts the "flexibility they need to retain new, talented teachers" will not come soon enough for this year's round of layoffs -- as hundreds of teachers this week are expected to receive pink slips based on their tenure, not on the quality of their teaching.

The Education Committee last week rejected a proposal that would restrict districts from only considering years of service when making layoff decisions, instead opting to wait for a model teacher evaluation to first be created.

"Given the fact that we know there are districts that lack a robust evaluation system... it's hard for me to see how this is the time," Rep. Andy M. Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, and co-chairman of the Education Committee, said before voting against the proposal.

In a review of more than half the school districts in the state, 77 percent used seniority as the sole or primary factor when making layoff decisions, the state's largest teachers union told lawmakers last month.

"We should not be allowing seniority to be the only factor," said Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton and ranking Republican on the Education Committee. "We have hundreds of teachers being laid off and we should require a more equitable measure."

A recent survey conducted by the education reform group ConnCAN shows 89 percent of the participants felt layoff decisions should not be only decided by the how many years a teacher has been in the classroom.

Last year, 1,500 teachers were laid off and education officials are expecting a similar number to be let go this year.

And while the American Federation of Teachers, Malloy and the co-chairs of the education committee acknowledge something needs to change so districts can retain great new teachers, all say it is too soon to make that shift this year.

As part of its Race to the Top bid last year, the state committed to creating a model evaluation system that will include student outcomes, but it will not be complete and ready for districts to consider using until July 2013.

Lawmakers are considering pushing up that deadline by a year -- to July 2012 -- and also requiring it include a 100-day dismissal process for teachers who fail the evaluation.

"The process can go on for a very long time and it's very expensive for the boards of education to dismiss a teacher," said Sharon Palmer, president of American Federation of Teachers-Connecticut. "If the teacher does not improve in one school year, then that's it, they will have 100 days' notice."

Malloy is in favor of the 100-day deadline and bumping up the deadline.

"I support tenure but I think the AFT recommendations are a good way to go at reforming it. It is taking into consideration not just how long someone has been teaching but what they've been teaching with excellence as well," he said. "I think it's a start. I think it's a very bold and brave move on their part."

But the proposal has its critics, including the state's other major teachers' union, the Connecticut Education Assoiation.

John Yrchik, CEA's executive director, said the proposal "would impose a one-size-fits-all approach to teacher evaluation. This is not necessary and not productive."

But Patrice McCarthy, general counsel of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said it would just be an option for districts to use and not a requirement.

"We need a good evaluation system out there," she said. "Last in, first out is a major issue as teachers face layoffs."

Alex Johnston, leader of the New Haven school-reform group ConnCAN, said even absent a model evaluation being ready, he is disappointed districts won't have the ability to retain new teachers.

"Everyday we are seeing more and more news of more layoffs. The sooner we fix this the better," he said.

Bill to allow towns to cut school spending advances
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
March 25, 2011

A bill to allow cities and towns to cut school budgets when enrollment declines--opposed by educators but backed by municipal leaders and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy--won key approval from the legislature's Education Committee Friday.  Local governments are currently barred by state law from cutting the amount they spend on education, even in towns were enrollment has dropped, such as Meriden, New Britain and Bridgeport, where numbers have fallen between 6 and 9 percent.

"We'll certainly address this," Sen. Andrea L. Stillman, co-chairwoman of the Education Committee, said before committee members unanimously voted in favor of a bill that would allow towns to cut $3,000 for every one-student drop in enrollment.  But education officials say allowing towns to cut based on enrollment declines would be disastrous, since many of the costs are fixed for schools.

"If you lose only one student you will have no savings. We have to hit that critical mass before savings are achieved," said Patrice McCarthy, general counsel for the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. "You still have to pay for teachers... for just about everything."

She said a formula must first be developed to accurately  determine what a district saves as enrollment declines, and then school boards may be able to back a reduction in spending.  State funding does take student enrollment figures into account when allocating education aid to cities and towns, but towns are held to a different standard.

"That doesn't work," said Rep. Timothy J. Ackert, R-Coventry, of the prohibition towns' cutting spending. He also urged the committee to go one step further and allow towns to cut the "actual amount" towns realize in reduced costs, which he expects is more than $3,000 per student.

Current spending for public education statewide is about $10.4 billion this year and almost 70 percent of all municipal spending goes to pay for education, according to the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

"We are requiring towns to pay for students that aren't in their schools. That is taxpayers paying for that," said Stillman during an interview. She said last year a handful of towns brought up this problem, and lawmakers responded by carving out a one-time exception that allowed towns to reduce the amount they spend on education.  But lawmakers are considering making it the rule and not the exception, so towns don't have to plead their case in Hartford when they want to make cuts.

Malloy -- who proposed the change the committee unanimously approved - said last month he supports allowing towns to reduce their spending, but only when towns experience "a sizable reduction" in enrollment.  This proposal has no qualifying threshold in the amount of students that a district must shed before cutting $3,000 per student.  And even then, McCarthy said $3,000 is way too much to allow towns to cut.

Jim Finley, executive director of CCM, acknowledges if state lawmakers untie town officials hands and allow them to reduce education spending, tensions between school and town officials will undoubtedly arise.

But he says it's a battle that worth having.

"It's not cutting their budget. It's allowing towns to pay what it is realistically costing to educate a child," he said. "Why should the education side of their budget be immune from cuts?"

Bart Russell, executive director Connecticut Council of Small Towns, said he thinks towns will get through the tension.

"It will create some tensions... But there is an understanding that we are in it together. I think that conflict is going to be minimal," he said.

Finley and Russell also said only allowing towns to cut when enrollment declines doesn't go far enough -- they want towns to be able to cut whenever they find savings.

"We are blind to the opportunity to get some savings," Finley said.

But McCarthy said the impact of that would be harsh on schools.

"What you'll have is a smaller pool of resources for students," she said.

Windham Schools: Moving In The Wrong Direction
Ideas Abound For Turnaround, But Poverty, Language Barriers And Politics Stand In The Way
The Hartford Courant
By GRACE E. MERRITT, gmerritt@courant.coms
March 20, 2011

WINDHAM —Five years ago Windham had a blue-ribbon school.

The small, blue-collar community in eastern Connecticut, which includes the city of Willimantic, had a nationally recognized urban elementary school and Windham schools were considered to be among the best of the state's urban districts.

But since then poverty has soared there. The number of students who don't speak English fluently has nearly doubled. Town residents have balked at education budgets and whittled them down. And alienation has worsened between town officials and the school district and between the community's urban and rural taxpayers.

Now, by many measures, Windham schools are headed in the wrong direction.

Connecticut Mastery Test scores have declined in many areas. The dropout rate is twice the state average. Only half the students are proficient in reading. And the school district has the largest academic achievement gap — the persistent disparity in academic performance between poor students and their more affluent classmates — in the state.Teachers grumble that many students are disrespectful and roam the hallways during class. Not that many parents are involved with their children's schools. The number of special education students is unusually high.

The school system's problems became so severe last summer that then-state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan stepped in and threatened to replace the school board, a move that has sparked resentment in this hilly town of 23,000.

Windham's problems came to a head in August when McQuillan saw the latest Connecticut Mastery Test scores, which showed that the town's 3,361 students lag far behind statewide averages. Among the trouble spots: Fifth-graders' scores had dropped, and eighth-graders' reading and writing scores had plunged. From fourth to fifth grade, academic growth in reading and math was slowing considerably and, in some cases, regressing.

McQuillan visited the Windham school board to discuss the "dire condition of education in Windham" and the need for strong, proven leadership. The superintendent position was vacant and McQuillan wanted the board to hire one of his associate commissioners, Marion Martinez.

But the board said the community felt more comfortable with Windham's assistant superintendent, Ana V. Ortiz, an experienced administrator who was serving as interim superintendent.

In September, McQuillan ordered a comprehensive audit of the school system and told the school board to take the Lighthouse Training Program, a leadership program for school boards that focuses in depth on student achievement.  He also threatened to replace the school board if the situation didn't improve by April. A school reform law enacted last May allows the state education commissioner to replace school board members.  This did not sit well in Windham.

"Who the hell is he to tell us what to do?" said Kenneth Folan, chairman of Windham's school board, recalling the standoff.

"Why us?" Ortiz recalled thinking. "Why is he picking on little Windham all of a sudden?"

The school board ignored McQuillan's recommended choice for superintendent and voted in December to make Ortiz the permanent superintendent. McQuillan, meanwhile, resigned for unrelated reasons, and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has not yet named a permanent replacement.

In the meantime, the state Department of Education recently conducted seven audits of the Windham district — which has four elementary schools, including blue-ribbon winner Windham Center School; a middle school and a high school — covering everything from student achievement and governance to finances. State education consultants have begun to share the findings with school administrators, the school board and teachers. Next, the state consultants plan to work closely with the board and administrators to develop a comprehensive set of recommendations that they hope the community will embrace.

This is not the first time the state has intervened in Windham. In 2008, the state forged a partnership with the school district to raise student achievement. The state also sent coaches to work with principals in each of Windham's schools.

McQuillan said in a phone interview after the standoff that he felt an increasing urgency to pull Windham out of its tailspin after seeing the test results and the widening academic gaps. Despite working on a district improvement plan, Windham was still going in the wrong direction, he said, and demoralized staff and disenfranchised families seemed to be giving up hope.

Hispanic Population Spikes

A demographic shift in Windham in the past decade has deeply affected the town's schools. More than 60 percent of the student body now is Hispanic — up from 50 percent 10 years ago, and from the mid-20 percent range about 15 years ago.The urban core of Puerto Rican residents has seen a major influx of Mexican immigrants in recent years. A third of Windham students now come from homes where English is not the primary language.

The state audits reveal that Windham's schools have been slow to adapt to the population change.

"What seems to come out of reports is that the instructional practices and strategies in schools haven't responded quickly enough to needs of those kids," said Lol Fearon, a state Department of Education bureau chief who has been working on the audits and assisting Windham.

"Teachers try to meet the needs, but they just don't have the resources and the background training," he said. "Also, it's almost impossible to find teachers for English language learners in the state."

The audits also found a serious paucity of language-based services for English language learners, particularly as they transitioned into mainstream classrooms or moved into middle school or high school.  In addition, only about 13 percent of the teachers and administrators are Latino. "With that kind of shift in population, you would want to reflect that in the adults available to the kids," Fearon said.

Despite the population shift, most decision-making power in town remains in the hands of white residents. The state's audits found the Hispanic population has little or no involvement in local politics and government.

"There is definitely a feeling of disenfranchisement," Fearon said.

Poverty And Budget Cuts

Poverty, not surprisingly, contributes to Windham's woes. In one barometer of poverty, 74 percent of students qualified for a free or reduced-price school lunch last year, a rate that shot up from 57 percent five years earlier.

"Everything that happens here is a struggle because there's never any money," said Daniel Chace, a member of the high school's Parent Advisory Committee. "It's always been a struggle here. We're not Fairfield County."

"There's no doubt that economic background is a factor in academic achievement," Fearon said. "But it's not something the school district can control.

Town council President N. Joseph Underwood said the school system has already made many budget cuts, including middle school sports, and he is frustrated that the state doesn't send more education funds to Windham.

"Give us more money so we can put it into education," Underwood said. "Maybe we can buy more books, buy more computers, put more bilingual individuals in our school system."

Besides struggling with poverty, the district has an unusually high percentage of special education students, with 18.6 percent of students classified as having special needs, compared to the state average of 11.6 percent. State education officials believe that figure may be inflated because some students who don't speak English as a first language may have been misdiagnosed.

Caring Teachers

Despite the school district's challenges, observers say Windham schools have many strong teachers, and most are dedicated and genuinely care about their students.

"Windham does have caring teachers," Fearon said. "That's a great start. But do they feel competent that they can reach these kids and meet the needs they have in front of them? That's where we hope to make a difference."

The school system also has made some headway in narrowing the achievement gap, according to recent Connecticut Mastery Test results, though the gains were smaller than those of similar school systems and the statewide average, the audits found.

Unruly Students, Uninvolved Parents

Teachers complain that some students at the middle school and high school are disrespectful and unruly. During a recent visit to both schools, some students were wandering in the hallways during class and had be told by their principal to return to class. A couple of students yelled and cursed loudly as they passed in the hallway.

Teachers also say students stroll into class late or simply disappear from school for weeks at a time. During class, students often text or talk on their phones and sometimes swear at teachers.

"They are disrespectful beyond belief," said one teacher, who asked not to be identified. "It's not the way I was brought up. They'll just turn away and say 'F-U.' "

Sometimes it gets physical. Two weeks ago a high school student whom Principal Steve Merlino was escorting to an in-school suspension knocked him to the ground.

"He was agitated," Merlino said. "I was pushed to the ground, but I consider that really more a part of my balance."

Four years ago, the town's alternative school closed, which meant those students entered the high school. Also, the high school lost an assistant principal position.  The state's audits also found limited parental involvement in the schools.  Many Hispanic parents interviewed by the state for its audit said they are restricted by job demands and can't leave small children at home to attend school events. Some also cited the language barrier and said they feel disconnected to the school system. Fearon said part of the reason could also be that some of the Mexican immigrants may be undocumented and trying to keep a low profile.

Chace, of the parents' committee, said he is frustrated that so few parents attend school plays and other events.

"You'll see kids who are not in school for weeks," Chace said. "That's a problem. I think the problem is parents have to be involved."

Another parent, Vicente Sanchez, said usually only a handful of people show up for PTO meetings.

Urban-Rural Frictions

The problems are further compounded by a deep divide between the city of Willimantic, where most of the Latino population lives, and the more rural town of Windham, where residents are more predominately white.

"It's the story of the two Connecticuts," Ortiz said. "Willimantic tends to fall into the same situation: the Hispanic vs. white population."

Until 1983 Windham and Willimantic were separate communities, and each still retains its own mill rate. Layered on top of this is friction and a lack of communication between town officials and the school board, the audits found.

"Without significant reform on [the communication] issue, the combination of insufficient public support, declining resources, and lack of cohesive leadership will inevitably result in the continuing decline of the school district," one of the audits concluded.

Last year, it took Windham five referendums to pass the school budget. Taxpayers kept rejecting the budget until the school board finally cut $1.1 million from it, coming in with a 1.87 percent increase over the previous year. Part of the resistance came from Windham voters who opposed plans for a new magnet school, Folan said.

"The community needs to be energized and engaged to support the schools," an audit concluded. "The overarching problems of school performance, community capacity and the will to create the conditions for improvement are of extreme urgency."

This year, Ortiz is trying more of a community-based approach to the education budget, by sharing and discussing it at a series of meetings.  The audits also concluded that the school board has had a history of micro-managing the superintendent and other administrators, which has undermined efforts to move forward with big-picture goals.

"They have not given responsibility to the superintendent to develop plans to meet the needs of the kids," Fearon said. At the same time, he added, school board members feel that the community doesn't support their needs, a problem compounded by the city's poverty.

Looking Forward

The state Department of Education is now boiling down the findings of the seven audits into a more managable overview. From there, state officials plan to share the findings with the school board and teachers and trim down the 60 recommendations in the audits to a focused action plan.  In the meantime, there is a renewed energy and will to improve Windham's schools, they said.

"The school board is really attentive. They really want to change the schools," said Robert Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, which is running the school board training program. "It's sort of a paradigm shift, you might call it."

As for the former education commissioner's threat to replace the school board in April, it is still on the table, but the state seems unlikely to follow through because the school board training is helping.

"The threat is always present, but it's less likely now," said state Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy. "Things have improved."

Ortiz said she understands the sense of urgency to improve the school system but wants to make sure the change is driven by Windham itself.

"We have got to move forward and we've got to do that collaboratively because no one is going to take us over," she said.

State Board of Ed concerned about plan to shift control of vo-tech schools
Jacqueline Rabe, CTMIRROR
March 2, 2011

The Malloy Administration wants to turn the first four of 17 state-run vocational-technical schools over to local control in the next school year--a move that has members of the State Board of Education concerned.

"That's insane," board Chairman Allan B. Taylor said Wednesday, reacting to the timeline.

Benjamin Barnes, budget chief for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, announced last month that the administration wants to shift responsibility for the 10,600-student system from the state to municipal or regional control, but didn't disclose a timetable. News that the shift would begin in the 2011-2012 school year surprised many.

"You have a debacle on your hands," said interim Education Commissioner George A. Coleman, questioning whether the impacted districts could handle the added responsibility so soon. "We don't know what the local response will be... what they need to accept this."

The four vocational schools to be turned over during the 2011-12 school year are A.I. Prince in Hartford, E.C. Goodwin in New Britain, Howell Cheney in Manchester and Vinal in Middletown. The next school year four more schools will be turned over: Bullard Havens in Bridgeport, Windham in Willimantic, Eli Whitney in Hamden and Kaynor in Waterbury. By July 2015 the state will shed all management responsibility for the schools.

The state currently pays $134 million a year to run the schools, including about $5 million for the 66 full-time state employees in the central office in Hartford.

Malloy's budget director has said the administration does not intend to cut financial support from the state in the next two years, but State Board of Education members and vo-tech system Superintendent Patricia Ciccone worry that this new restructure will make the schools vulnerable to cuts down the road.

"Local boards of education are obviously limited just as the state is limited" Ciccone said. "There is a great potential for underfunding these schools."

During a town meeting on his proposed budget in Torrington, Malloy said his proposal is aimed at protecting the vo-tech schools. As mayor of Stamford, he said, he saw how J.M. Wright Technical High School declined under state oversight.

"I watched the state literally destroy one of those vocational schools," Malloy told the audience. "They literally ran it into the ground. And when they succeeded in running it into the ground they closed it,"

He said he was frustrated that even as mayor he was unable to do anything about the decision to close the school.

"I tried to help it," he said. "What I am trying to do is get more local input in the proper running of a school."

But State Board of Education members, many who were just nominated by Malloy for their positions last week, questioned the wisdom of such a change.

Patricia Keavney-Maruca, a newly nominated member who worked at Kaynor Tech for 33 years, said Malloy's proposal "just defies logic," because the system "was designed to be a regional school system for a reason.

Joseph J. Vrabely, Jr., who was reappointed by Malloy and is chair of the state board's Vocational-Technical School Committee, said he worries the plan sends the wrong message to businesses in the state reliant on graduates from vo-tech schools, including his small manufacturing company.

"I know we have to make cuts, I know we have to integrate things but you're taking away that feeder system from manufacturers," he said.

It's not clear how much of the system's operating costs the state would continue to pay down the road under Malloy's plan.

"Will the state's share be 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent? That has not been determined," Brian Mahoney, chief financial officer for the State Department of Education, told the board.

Taylor said Malloy's proposal deserves consideration, but his gut reaction is, "It's a mistake."

If the goal is to reduce state spending, he added, there are other ways to accomplish that without destroying the statewide infrastructure.

"It's hard to believe it's anything but the economic implications... on the face of it, none of us understand this," he said.

Malloy's budget would cut scholarships for private colleges
By Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor
moleary@nhregister.com
Published: Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Cutting state scholarships to Connecticut students at private colleges will mean thousands will not get the aid they need, forcing them to either leave school, take on more debt or shift a greater share of the burden to their families.

That’s the analysis of the 19 members of the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges that are facing 25 percent cuts next year and 50 percent in fiscal 2013 under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed biennial budget — cuts they say contradict promises Malloy made on the campaign trail.

Last year, 6,121 Connecticut students at private colleges received state-funded scholarships, with the highest amount, $2.85 million, distributed by the University of Hartford to 549 students; $2.84 million went to 424 students at the University of New Haven; and $2.57 million went to 548 students at Quinnipiac University.

The $23.4 million in scholarships in this year’s budget will be cut by $5.8 million next year and $11.7 million in fiscal 2013, if lawmakers agree with Malloy as he tries to close a $3.5 billion deficit.

Ben Barnes, the state’s new budget chief, said enough money was left to fund students who are already participating in the program, but beyond that, he questioned some aspects of the program.

“There is little ability for the state to determine how the schools make those awards, how effective they are with respect to student success and graduation, or whether they are having the effect of increasing funds available to Connecticut students overall,” Barnes said in an e-mail.

Barnes also questioned awarding state-funded scholarships to three for-profit schools — Briarwood College, Paier College and Post University — and those with high endowments — Yale University. “We need to be especially careful in how we ensure public accountability with these funds,” Barnes said.

Judith Greiman, president of the conference, said all students have to file a financial statement, and those whose families have a low ability to contribute get the aid. She said the income data and audits are sent to the state Department of Higher Education to ensure that only Connecticut residents benefit.  Nick Yoia, financial aid officer at Quinnipiac, said there are attempts every year to cancel the funds, and every year the school has to explain to critics that their questions can be answered with data already filed with the state.

“Why are the private college students selected as the sacrificial lambs and no one else?” Yoia asked of the lack of cuts to the public programs in Malloy’s budget. The combination of state cuts and the proposed elimination of federal scholarships will severely impact students, he added.  As a gubernatorial candidate, Malloy, in a position paper, spoke of the importance of supporting scholarships.

“Our state budget includes a major commitment to scholarships for students in public and private Connecticut colleges who cannot afford full tuition. ... If higher education success is a fundamental plank in our state’s economic development strategy, we must maintain this commitment even in difficult budget times or we run the risk of eating away at our long-term economic and fiscal strength,” Malloy had said.

Greiman said the private colleges enroll and graduate more minority students than the public colleges, and the investment by the state in the scholarships “is the best bang for the buck that Connecticut has.”

Yale University, which gave out 16 awards for a total of $128,973 in state money this year, should not be used as a reason to drastically cut the scholarship program, Greiman said.

“Most of my schools get their financial aid funds from their operating budgets and have had to increase this significantly in the past three academic years as the economy tanked and students came with increased need,” Greiman said. In 2009-2010, the endowments dropped 28 percent and financial aid at private colleges jumped 15 percent, with the institutions awarding more than $558 million annually in private and institutional aid to undergraduates.

“Providing access is the passion of the people I represent,” Greiman said.

State panel rejects Hartford's attempt to skirt teacher seniority
Robert A. Frahm and Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
February 22, 2011

Days after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said he wants to provide school districts with the opportunity to retain new and talented teachers over more senior staff, an arbitration panel rejected Hartford Public School officials request to do just that.

Hartford Public Schools, like many districts across the state, is facing potential layoffs under a deepening budget crisis, but the district will not be allowed to loosen seniority rules in laying off teachers, a state arbitration panel has decided.

The panel's ruling touches on an issue that is part of a volatile debate over school quality across the nation.

In Connecticut, schools have shed 2,700 teaching positions in the last two years, said Joe Cirasuolo, head of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. Most of those who lost their jobs were teachers who had worked in the system the shortest amount of time, he said.

Malloy raised the issue in his budget address last week, proposing a reform of teacher tenure rules "to give local school districts the flexibility they need to retain new, talented teachers."

However, Malloy's proposal will not come in time to affect potential layoffs this year. A spokeswoman for Malloy said Tuesday the governor is not proposing an immediate change in the law but rather hopes his comments launch the conversation.

"The Governor has a very large, visible role in the dialogue of our state and he plans to use that role to get people to the table to talk about ways to close [the] achievement gap. One of the things to discuss is tenure," said Colleen Flanagan. "Gov. Malloy believes in the concept of tenure but in tough economic times, he believes schools should have the ability to retain new, talented teachers who otherwise might lose their job."

Cirasuolo said he welcomes the governors' comment but is disappointed to hear it will not be coupled with a legislative proposal to change the law.

"It's not enough for him to just appeal to their altruism. We need legislative action to release us from the current reality," he said.

"Something has to change," he said, warning that districts will begin making their layoff decisions in April, so that a change of heart by the teachers' unions, or a law requiring it, needs to take place soon.

In Hartford, which has laid off 350 employees in the last two years, school officials contended that strict system-wide seniority provisions inhibit the district's ability to staff specialized schools that are at the heart of the city's school reform efforts. However, a State Department of Education arbitration panel rejected that argument.

Under existing seniority rules, the least experienced teachers are the first to be laid off and can be replaced by more experienced teachers from any school in the district, resulting in a shuffling of teachers among different schools. School officials, including Superintendent Steven Adamowski, contend that policy undermines stability at magnet schools, where special themes such as science, technology or the arts require teachers to have special qualifications or training.

Many of those schools are part of a school reform program that has been credited with improving performance across the district.

The district had proposed a system that would allow a principal to override system-wide seniority rules by rejecting prospective transfers from other schools if the principal decided the candidates were not a good fit.

However, the arbitrators ruled in favor of the teachers' union, saying the district's proposal "is overly broad and may be inconsistently applied across the district in such a manner as to deprive teachers of their right to a vacant position or a position held by an untenured teacher without due process."

Allowing school principals to make decisions on which teachers will be hired does not comply with state law granting that authority only to school boards, the panel said.

"Obviously we're thrilled," said Andrea Johnson, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers. "Seniority within the district is a very good thing and has worked very well."

Johnson disputed the district's argument that the specialty schools required an unusual level of training. "You still have to teach history...no matter what kind of school you're in," she said. "They'd like the public to believe somehow you have to have very specialized training. It doesn't mean you as a teacher, especially an experienced teacher, can't go in and learn that process."

The three-member panel's ruling was a split decision, with panelist John M. Romanow dissenting. The last-hired, first-fired approach fails to take into account teacher quality and "will result in many teachers being forced into position that are not suitable for them," Romanow wrote.

The result, he said, "will do irreparable harm to the school system and clearly make it less likely that the Hartford Board of Education will be able to continue to make great strides in closing the achievement gap."

The district last year had sought to change seniority rules by asking the State Board of Education to override the provisions in the teachers' union contract, but the board took no action.

After losing the arbitration ruling, Hartford officials said they will ask the State Board again to rule on the matter.

"A portfolio district such as ours, with a wide variety of schools that require specialized training, cannot function properly under a one-size-fits-all, quality-blind approach to seniority," the district said in a prepared statement.

Connecticut one of many states debating seniority-based layoffs and tenure, says Kathy Christie, the chief of staff for the Education Commission of the States.

"The conversation is changing all over the country on whether to look at the quality of the teacher versus the amount of time spent in the classroom. That push lately has been much stronger to go back and revise those laws," she said.

The reaction is different state-by-state. In Oregon, voters rejected in 2008 an initiative that would allow districts to "retain teachers who are most qualified" regardless of their seniority.  In Arizona, the governor signed in 2009 a law that forbids districts from adopting policies that provide employment retention priority for teachers based on tenure or seniority. In California, lawmakers are also considering a proposal to overhaul these laws.


Ads urging parents to keep children in Hartford schools anger Sheff lawyer
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
April 29, 2011

Hartford educators say an ad campaign discouraging parents from sending their children to suburban schools reflects success of the city's education reforms, but a lawyer for plaintiffs in the Sheff vs. O'Neill desegregation case says it threatens to undermine a court-ordered plan to reduce the racial isolation of city students.  Hartford Public School officials launched the campaign with television, radio and print advertisements urging parents not to gamble on a lottery for seats in suburban or regional magnet schools that are key elements of the desegregation effort.

Instead, the ads advise families to choose among several career-oriented high schools and various restructured elementary and middle schools that are part of the city school system's school reform program.

The ads drew the ire of Martha Stone, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the long-running Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation case.

"It's really, from our perspective, just outrageous," she said.

The ads are airing as parents receive letters this month announcing results of the annual lottery for seats in suburban or magnet schools. Although many children were placed on waiting lists for those schools, Hartford can guarantee parents a spot at one of their top four choices of city schools, the ad campaign said.

"Why risk [your children's] future on a lottery and then a waiting list?...They don't need to go anywhere else," the ads say.

Regional magnet schools and suburban schools are the central elements of the state's effort to comply with a 1996 state Supreme Court order in the Sheff case seeking to reduce racial segregation among Hartford's mostly black and Hispanic student population. Since then, the state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building and operating racially integrated magnet schools in the greater Hartford region. In addition, state officials are encouraging predominantly white suburban schools to accept more Hartford minority students under a transfer program known as Open Choice.

In a press release this week, Hartford school officials cited the city's own school reform efforts, including the redesign of previously struggling schools to emphasize specialized themes and college-bound curriculum.

"All of these schools are staffed with dedicated teachers who will prepare their children for college studies," said Christina M. Kishimoto, who was recently named to succeed Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski, when he retires in July. "There is no need to travel outside of Hartford to get a superior education."

The Sheff plaintiffs take a different view, Stone said.

"It's really disturbing to see the Hartford school system try to discourage parents and kids from exercising their constitutional right to an equal educational opportunity," said Stone. "This is about having parents be able to choose the best possible schools for their children."

Under Adamowski's reform program, Hartford schools have shown improvement, but the school system still ranks among the state's lowest-performing districts on statewide achievement tests.  Last year, for example, just 43 percent of the city's elementary and middle school students reached the proficiency level in reading on the Connecticut Mastery Test, and 57 percent met the proficiency standard in mathematics.

Nevertheless, Adamowski said Thursday that parents can find high quality choices within the system.

"Five years ago, we had 28 schools that were low-performing. Today we're down to five," he said. "Our Hartford parents will choose for quality. What they really want is what every parent in America wants, which is a good school in their own neighborhood."

Adamowski also said that the district's effort to keep families in city schools is not in conflict with the Sheff goals.

"We support Sheff, but we see a different path to meeting the goals than the plaintiffs do," he said.

About 28 percent of Hartford's minority schoolchildren now attend integrated magnet schools, charter schools, regional technical and agricultural high schools or suburban schools. However, under terms of a court-approved agreement with the Sheff plaintiffs, the state must increase that number to 41 percent by the 2012-2013 school year or meet at least 80 percent of the demand for seats.  As more parents choose city schools, the level of demand for seats in magnet and suburban schools will decline, making it easier to meet the state's 80 percent threshold, Adamowski said. He predicted that the goal could be met as early as next year.

George Coleman, acting state commissioner of education, said he does not view Hartford's ad campaign as a competition with other districts. "It's ultimately controlled by the families. The evidence of performance is available to parents to assess and make decisions for themselves," he said.

Meanwhile, the level of demand for magnet schools remains high. "We had over 8,000 applications for seats," said Bruce Douglas, executive director of the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC), which runs 15 magnet schools in the Greater Hartford region.

Douglas said he is not surprised by Hartford's advertising campaign. "It's a sign of the times because of the proliferation of school choice," he said.

He said CREC doesn't market its schools against other schools but added that the agency has not felt the impact of Hartford's pitch to attract more students.

"My attitude is education is so important, I don't care what school they go to," he said. "If it's a good school, go there."
Malloy taking another route to reach desegregation goal
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
February 17, 2011

Up against a looming court-ordered deadline to reduce the racial isolation of Hartford's largely black and Hispanic school population, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has opted to take a less expensive--and arguably more effective--approach to integration.

Since the 1996 state Supreme Court's Scheff v. O'Neill desegregation order in 1996, the state's emphasis has been on creation of magnet schools with specialty themes in hopes of attracting a racially-diverse student population. Nearly $1 billion has been spent to build the schools in and around Hartford and billions more reimbursing the schools $13,000 per student a year.

But Malloy seems to be taking the advice of education officials and is changing course: He's proposing significantly reducing the state's reimbursement for construction of new magnet schools, and expanding funding for school choice programs that encourage suburban districts to accept Hartford students.

Although many suburban districts around Hartford have empty desks, they have been slow to accept city students in what's called Open Choice, often blaming the level of state reimbursement--$2,500.

Malloy is proposing that the state's next education commissioner--who Malloy will select--be allowed to significantly increase reimbursements to suburban public schools that take Hartford students, and he wants to allocate another $7.2 million to do it.

"We expect by increasing the reimbursement the commissioner will be able to find a sweet spot that will be able to get significant participation in the program and get to the [court-ordered] goal," Malloy budget director Ben Barnes said.

To comply with the court order, the state must find an additional 3,500 seats in an integrated magnet, charter, technical, agricultural or suburban school by October 2012. There are currently 1,300 Hartford students attending districts other than their own, so reaching the goal through the choice program is a tall order.

Education leaders and advocates both agree the state will not meet that deadline if the state's approach remains the same and welcome the increase reimbursements for the Open Choice program.

"The Open Choice program is by far the most cost-effective option for us," said Brian Mahoney, the State Department of Education's chief financial officer.

"This is surely more of an incentive to suburban districts to participate," said Alex Johnston, leader of the New Haven school-reform group ConnCAN. "It's certainly a positive step but we are going to need a system where schools are funded fully and not partially for the students they have."

Martha Stone, a lawyer for the Sheff plaintiffs, said Wednesday she is "heartened" by the increase and believes it will help get the state closer to reaching the required 41 percent of Hartford's 21,713 minority students attending integrated schools by November 2012. They're at 25 percent now.

Malloy's proposal coincides with a State Board of Education recommendation made in November that would put more focus and money on sending students to suburban schools than on magnet schools.

"I imagine a court mandate will look very similar to what I am proposing," former education commissioner Mark McQuillan said at the time.

But the SBOE's proposal went one step further than Malloy's in suggesting the education commissioner have the authority to require suburban districts enroll a certain number of Hartford students.

There are currently 27,000 students attending magnet schools across the state and 5,700 attending charter schools. Malloy's budget proposal does increase state spending for magnet and charter schools for seats that were already approved long before he became governor.

The legislature's Education Committee will hear public testimony Wednesday on the governor's proposed changes to education and also on a separate proposed change in the kindergarten entrance age.

Can a private firm and federal funds fix this public school?
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
February 12, 2011

BRIDGEPORT--Long before lunch hour begins, the cafeteria at Harding High School fills with students sitting idly around tables. Some chat on cell phones. Others slump in chairs. Not a book in sight.

Most are chronic class-skippers, rounded up by hallway monitors working for a private New York City-based consulting firm charged with trying to turn around one of Connecticut's worst high schools.

Whether a private company can do what local officials have failed to do is uncertain, but the experiment to rescue Harding - backed by $2.2 million in federal stimulus money - will be watched closely by officials from Hartford to Washington, D.C.

Harding--plagued by high dropout rates, disciplinary problems and academic failure--is one of 14 struggling Connecticut schools to receive U.S. Department of Education School Improvement Grants.

It is the only one of the 14 to choose the "restart" method, one of four models prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education to turn around failing schools. "Restart" requires the hiring of an outside contractor to restructure the school. At Harding, officials turned to Global Partnership Schools, a company run by former New York City schools Chancellor Rudy Crew and former Rochester, N.Y., school Superintendent Manny Rivera.

The scene in the lunchroom is a stark reminder of the daunting task facing Global. Officials estimate about 180 students are rounded up each morning--more than 10 percent of the student body. If Global is to succeed, it will have to reach students like 16-year-old Jeffrey Roscoe, who was ushered to the cafeteria one recent morning while skipping Spanish class.

"I didn't feel like going," Roscoe said. "It doesn't interest me." He said he is failing all his classes.

Officials say their first task is to change a culture in which too many students skip classes, ignore homework, and feel disconnected from Harding.

"It's had such a long history of failure that it doesn't believe in itself," said Crew, Global's president. "It believes itself to be what the papers have said about it, what the culture around it says... People who don't think of themselves as graduating don't act like graduates."

Until now, not much has worked at Harding, where principals have come and gone with alarming frequency, trying various strategies to rescue the troubled school. Harding has had nine different principals in the past decade.

"Too many to count," says veteran history teacher Leslie Waller. "We've seen so many initiatives start and then just stop."

Waller and her colleagues are looking for better results from the latest initiative, including a shakeup of leadership and a fundamental restructuring of the school under the federal stimulus project.

The decision to turn to a private firm "was based primarily on the lack of success over time we've had in trying to turn the school around... Traditional methods did not work," said Robert Henry, associate superintendent for the Bridgeport public school system and the former superintendent of Hartford's schools.

A hulking brick fortress, Warren Harding High School once was the pride of Bridgeport. Named after the nation's 29th President, the school opened in 1925 and produced graduates who became mayors, judges and prominent business and civic leaders. Today, however, it is a victim of urban decay, part of an impoverished East Side neighborhood of aging houses and an abandoned industrial complex that once housed bustling Remington Arms and General Electric plants.

It is exactly the kind of school the Obama administration targeted with the School Improvement Grants. According to a 2009 study by New York University, more than half of Harding's students miss 19 days of school or more each year, and one out of five is absent on an average day,

The five-month study reported more than 2,000 disciplinary offenses committed by about 40 percent of the school's 1,500 students. Nearly one-third of the grades in core subjects were Fs, and about two out of five students were lacking enough credits for their grade level.

Less than 5 percent of students met the goal on reading and math on the statewide 10th-grade performance test last year.

The $2.2 million that Harding will receive in stimulus funds "is enough money to really change the school," said Joseph Garcia, a senior vice president at Global who remains upbeat about the prospects for change.

"There's a lot of talent among the leadership team and in the faculty," he said. "There's a real chance here for this to succeed."

The restart is under a tight timeline. Global signed a contract with Bridgeport in September, and the formal kickoff for the restructuring took place Jan. 31. Nevertheless, the company has already made some basic changes, starting with efforts to improve attendance, reduce tardiness and improve the school climate.

"A lot of this really is just blocking and tackling," said Garcia, who early in the school year walked the hallways himself with a walkie-talkie, ushering students to classes. Since then, the company has hired "climate specialists" to clear the halls of loitering students. The school, under a new state law, also set up an in-school suspension program and began seeking alternative placements for overage students who roamed the hallways, skipped classes and had too few credits to graduate on time.

Working alongside the school's regular security guards, the school's new "climate specialists" patrol all corners of the aging building.

"Ladies, do you have gym?" Aaron Stroud said as he found three girls huddled in a stairwell and ushered them to gym class one recent morning. The hiring of specialists such as Stroud, who previously worked with troubled young people at a child care agency in New York City, is the most visible sign of change so far.

In addition, the company plans to require school uniforms as early as this semester and is considering acquiring technology to block the use of cell phones, a frequent distraction among students.

The first major step in Global's effort was the hiring of an "educational change agent" to oversee the three-year process of change at Harding. The company picked Eleanor Osborne, a respected former reading supervisor and associate superintendent for New Haven's public schools and a professor at Sacred Heart University.

Officials also decided to replace Harding's principal, Carol Birks, saying in the district's grant application that there was "not enough cohesiveness in her action plans to improve student achievement." To replace her, Global recruited Kevin Walston, a promising public school administrator in nearby Norwalk who had also worked as an assistant high school principal in the Bronx in New York City.

"In Norwalk, there was that sense of community, sense of belonging. With the kids, the staff, you felt that connectedness to the school," Walston said. "Here, in the majority of the school, you don't get that sense."

"Our job," he said, "is to create a sense of urgency among the staff."

A key part of Global's strategy is the refinement of a longstanding plan to break up the school into smaller units or academies, known as small learning communities. Harding has tried the idea for nearly a decade, but some of the smaller academies were only loosely defined and poorly understood by students.

"Some students we asked what small learning community they belonged to, and they didn't know," said Osborne.

Under the old arrangement, the school had seven academies enrolling students throughout the building, but the new plan calls for four academies located in separate parts of the school, each with its own group of students and teachers. One of the academies, known as "New Scholars," is reserved exclusively for freshmen while others will focus on health and environmental science, communications and technology, and law and international studies. In theory, the small academies will allow students to form stronger bonds with the same classmates and teachers.

"Research says the more engaged students are with their school and school community, the more successful they'll be," said Walston.

Global also altered the school schedule, shortening 100-minute teaching periods and providing additional advisory time for teachers and students to meet. The company created a regular testing schedule to monitor student progress. It hired a reading specialist and began a significant expansion of professional coaching in reading and mathematics teaching methods. It also upgraded the school's computers and acquired other new technology.

"I think it's exciting. We're going to get a new math lab, and we're getting some new online programs," said Mary Liggins, coordinator of Harding's math department. Liggins said she is encouraged so far by the changes, including the hiring of Osborne.

"She advocates for teachers," Liggins said. "She looks through teachers' eyes."

Much remains to be done, but Osborne is encouraged by the changes she has seen so far. "It's like a night and day experience," she said. "There's a whole different feel to the building."

Not everyone is convinced that the latest effort will work. Global has run into some resistance, including objections from some teachers who did not want to switch classrooms under the reorganization.

Gary Peluchette, president of the Bridgeport Education Association teachers' union, said he would prefer a turnaround approach that gives teachers more of a voice.

"Quite frankly, the suggestions [that GPS officials] are coming up with are nothing different than what teachers have been suggesting for years," he said. "You have to empower teachers. It can't be this top-down approach."

Garcia, the Global senior vice president, said, "The union has been a good partner" in the effort so far. "The faculty's professionalism has been high."

Some had hoped for a more aggressive start.

"It's premature for me to say it's not going to work, but the company that got the contract to take over the school should have hit the ground running. We should not have had to wait so long to see what's going to happen," said Linette Jones, president of the school's Parent Teacher Student Organization.

Jones' oldest daughter graduated from Harding last year. Another daughter is a sophomore in Harding's International Baccalaureate program, but Jones remains skeptical about the school. "If I were independently wealthy, I would take my daughter out," Jones said.

Although much of the reorganization has barely gotten under way, the most obvious change so far has been the crackdown on hallway loiterers.

Corey Baldwin, a lanky senior, said the problem has eased but was a serious distraction a year ago.

"Chaos," he said. "During class, everybody was making noise in the hallway."

Now, a few stragglers still try to evade security workers during classes, but most are caught and sent to the cafeteria.

Walston, the new principal, said the school is designing alternatives, including a staggered schedule and online study programs, for those who skip classes. Still, dozens are rounded up daily. "I was hoping the numbers would decrease by now," he said. "They have not."

Nevertheless, he remains optimistic that Harding is making progress.

"I certainly understand that change takes time," he said. "When you're living through it, you'd like it to go faster."

Private companies have had mixed results intervening in public schools. In Connecticut, the most prominent experiment in privatization was the hiring of a Minnesota firm, Education Alternatives Inc., to run Hartford's public schools in the mid-1990s. That experiment collapsed, leading to a state takeover of schools in the state capital.

In addition to Bridgeport, Global is working under federal School Improvement Grants with schools in Pueblo, Colorado and Baltimore, Maryland.

According to Crew, Global's president, one advantage of the private management model is that "outside organizations sometimes can be more nimble." An outside firm, he said, can operate "at a faster pace than going through school board meetings and all the other apparatus common to big city schools."

Crew, who also works as a professor at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, gained a reputation as a reformer running giant public school systems in New York and Miami. Rivera, the company's CEO, is a former national superintendent of the year credited with making significant improvements in Rochester's schools.

"One advantage," said Crew, "is, frankly, that we are all public school educators who have done this work in successful organizations."

Most experiments with privatization have involved public charter schools rather than traditional public schools such as Harding.  There is relatively little good research on the track record of private companies in public schools, says Henry M. Levin, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College at Columbia University.

"The one thing we've learned over the years is there are no miracles," Levin said. "Often these companies come in and promise something that's never been demonstrated before."

At Harding, computer graphics teacher Irwin "Doc" Coombs, a former union president, said he is hopeful the latest effort will work, "but I'm very wary of it right now... I have been forever opposed to public money going to private organizations."

Educators and others will be watching closely to see the impact of the federal grants on Harding and the state's other 13 turnaround schools. The School Improvement Grants, totaling about $23 million in Connecticut, are only a fraction of the $889 million in stimulus money received by the state for elementary and secondary education. The bulk of stimulus funding has been used to fill gaps in the state's education budget and save jobs, but the improvement grants go to the heart of the Obama administration's agenda to turn around struggling schools.

Many are taking a wait-and-see approach on the proposed shakeup.

"I haven't seen evidence of it yet," said Michael Brosnan, a history teacher at Harding. He said the restart plan "is extremely vague" and hasn't been explained clearly to students or teachers. He also said teachers were not involved in making the original application for the federal grant.

But, he added, "If the end result is a more successful school, that's hard to argue with."

Consultants: Washington's billions spawn an industry
CT MIRROR
Andrew Brownstein (Hechinger Report/EWA)
February 12, 2011

The flood of federal stimulus money into the nation's public schools has dramatically increased the demand for education consultants, leaving some stimulus recipients struggling to find seasoned advisors and others uneasy about the pitches they are getting.

The frenzy was caused by the unprecedented size and scope of the nearly $100 billion federal effort, which began two years ago. That has stirred up great expectations among policymakers and the public. Faced with nerve-wracking timelines, their own bold promises and a dearth of in-house expertise, states and school districts have anxiously sought advice on how to demonstrate progress and avoid missteps. "Some are calling it 'No Consultant Left Behind,' " says Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

There are consultants who know data, consultants who say they can revitalize struggling schools and consultants who write grants that lead winning states and school districts to hire other consultants. They work at nonprofits, universities and textbook giants like the British-based Pearson PLC, a huge educational publishing concern. A good many are former state commissioners or district superintendents who have parlayed their expertise into lucrative jobs as education experts.

Many of them were present at a downtown Washington, D.C., hotel conference room in December to assist state education officials who won grants in the $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition, or RttT, the best-known element of the stimulus effort. The officials had come to learn about state-of-the-art reform strategies for using sophisticated data-tracking to link teacher evaluations to student achievement. Most of the recognized experts in the field were there--all half-dozen of them.

"There's a sense of confusion and anxiety," says Scott Joftus, director of the Race to the Top Technical Assistance Network, a stimulus-funded contractor tasked with aiding states and districts in implementing their bold plans. "There's a general acknowledgement that there are a handful of people with the expertise to implement assessments related to teacher evaluation-maybe seven or eight people in the country."

The scramble reflects the scope of the states' ambitions. "There's a lot of money being thrown into the system at the same time to create changes that have never been done before," Mr. Joftus says. "States have promised a ridiculous amount of change."

Many states are just beginning to sign contracts for outside help. Those that have made consulting deals seldom have guarantees. It is the rare contract that comes with a promise of increased student achievement in exchange for services.

And lately some state education officials have grown skeptical of some of the proposals they are fielding.

Leslie Wilson, assistant state superintendent for assessment in Maryland, estimates about 38 percent of the $125 million in RttT funds that her state received will flow through her office, with much of it going to build a new system for collecting student data. She says representatives of nonprofits, for-profit companies, colleges and universities have gone to great lengths to try to talk to her about related contracts. They have called her, emailed her and approached her at conferences. Some have enlisted mutual friends to intervene. One vendor asked the state superintendent of education to persuade Ms. Wilson to schedule a meeting.

She says she has warned them all to stay away because she believes such conversations will disqualify consultants from bidding on stimulus-funded technology contracts. "They understand, but they don't want to abide by it," adds Ms. Wilson, who describes the parties involved as "people who you have never heard of and people who should know better."

The phenomenon may be even more pervasive in the market for turning around failing schools, which received a $3.5 billion jolt from the stimulus program known as the School Improvement Grant fund. Just a few years ago, there were few consultants even marketing themselves as turnaround experts.

With the stimulus, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he wants to transform thousands of schools in the bottom five percent in performance over the next few years. That's a tall order. Schools in the bottom five percent are places where fewer than one in three students read at grade level, the dropout rate is over 50 percent and there are enough disciplinary issues to make them feel like armed fortresses. In the landscape of school reform, they are like the Middle East: constantly fought-over, subject to countless "solutions" that come and go and, in the end, stubbornly resistant to change.

That metaphor is an apt one for the market as well. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Joftus was contacted by a former contractor who was working for Global Partnership Schools, a new school turnaround venture funded by GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company founded by entrepreneur Sunny Varkey. The caller was hoping to obtain copies of Mr. Joftus' contract for school improvement services in Kansas.

"You know we're in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East," Joftus said. "To me, that says there's money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education."

Mr. Joftus is not questioning the organization's credentials or quality. By all accounts, Global Partnership has experience on its side. It is run by Rudy Crew, a former chancellor of the New York City schools, and Manny Rivera, a former superintendent in Rochester, NY. Also, it backs its promises with a rare performance guarantee: Its contract with Pueblo, Colo., states that the partnership will only be fully paid if it succeeds in significantly boosting student achievement. Up to 20 percent of its $1.5 million fee is linked to a series of benchmarks geared at overhauling Pueblo's schools.

"Within 12 to 18 months, there'd better be gains, or if I were a district I'd raise some serious questions," Mr. Rivera said. "There traditionally hasn't been that kind of accountability in the field."

The aggressive competition and hoopla behind the big grant competitions make some in the field uncomfortable. School turnarounds are notoriously hard to accomplish and harder still to maintain. Revitalizing schools that have become dropout factories typically means replacing the principal and a large number of staff, as well as installing tough discipline and a new curriculum. Such efforts also require creating a new culture where high expectations are the norm.

"Very few people understand what a turnaround takes," said Josh Edelman, deputy chief of innovation for the Washington, D.C. schools. "What people expect is that you're going to see magic. Most of these schools have been failing for years. They're not going to turn around on a dime."

Sandra Abrevaya, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education, said the department is hopeful that its investment will help build expertise in turnarounds and other tricky areas, adding she is "encouraged" that states and districts are beginning to share their knowledge. "While there is a need for more experts in the field, we're very optimistic that states will build this capacity and that more high-quality organizations will emerge to assist them," she said.

The difficultly of the tasks at hand and the relative lack of supply make education-consulting a lucrative enterprise. Those in the field say it is typical for an individual expert to make between $1,500 and $5,000 a day, depending on one's level of expertise. In Ohio, more than half of the state department of education's $194 million share of RttT funds will be awarded to "external providers," according to state documents.

The money has attracted big names and powerful organizations that typically haven't played in the education sphere. Sir Michael Barber, education advisor to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, heads the global education practice of McKinsey & Company, a consulting giant that helped several states write RttT applications.

In November, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation paid $360 million for a 90 percent share in another company that helped consult for the RttT competition, Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn-based education technology firm. Wireless Generation's involvement in the competition was not without controversy. Despite being paid more than $500,000 by New Jersey, the company failed to catch an erroneous last-minute change to the application. That cost New Jersey crucial points in the competition, leading to an 11th-place finish-just out of the money. Bret Schundler, New Jersey's state education commissioner at the time, took responsibility for the error and was fired. Wireless Generation officials have not commented publicly on the error, which is the subject of several state investigations. Some legislators have blamed Wireless Generation for not noticing the error, and have asked the company to return its fee.

Just how important is a good consultant? Ask Jennifer Vranek, founding partner of Education First, a Seattle-based consulting firm. Her company was behind the successful RttT applications for Hawaii, Maryland, Ohio and Tennessee-one-third of the winners.

"If nothing else, a consultant has the ability to focus exclusively on the application, unlike the typical state education official, who has 75 other things to focus on," she says. "A good consultant makes a difference."

She insists the job involves more than spin. In RttT, states were pushed to make bold promises in their grant applications. Part of the job of the consultant, she says, is to ensure they deliver. Education First cajoled the state leadership in Maryland to commit to overhaul its longitudinal data system, which cannot currently link student test data to individual teachers or track the learning growth of an individual student over time.

The federal government's stimulus effort was designed to persuade states to take on such complex improvements. Convinced they have an important role to play, many consultants fear that in a time of severe economic distress, there will be less patience than usual for the missteps that inevitably accompany innovation.

"If we get 50 percent of this right, I think that's a success," says Mr. Joftus, the RttT technical assistance director. "My concern is that the public will see this as a 50 percent failure rate. If that happens, there's going to be a huge backlash."


LINK TO FULL ARTICLE. (BELOW IS A SMALL SECTION)

...Funding Search

Connecticut, which has one of the largest achievement gaps in the country, is on the hook for a $300 million reform agenda, which was created when state lawmakers passed a sweeping new law.

Now, with the state facing a $3.5 billion budget deficit, school districts still reeling from painful budget cuts last summer will have to figure out how to pay for the online and Advanced Placement courses the law mandates. They will also have to track student data, create new tests and provide remedial help to struggling students. In addition, they must hire additional math, science and language teachers-and possibly build science labs-to implement a more rigorous high school curriculum set to launch in 2014.

"Talk about unfunded mandates," said Elin Katz, a school board member in suburban West Hartford. "I don't know how we're going to do this..."  Full article here.


On their way out the door, state ed board members pass on school financing decision
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
February 9, 2011

At the State Board of Education's last meeting before Gov. Dannel Malloy makes his appointments, members decided not to vote on a proposal to overhaul how magnet, charter and public schools in the state are financed.

"So, we will leave that to the next board," said chairman Allan Taylor, who was visibly irritated that the proposal was tabled.

The recommendation would have state funding reallocated on the basis of how much a local school district's costs are actually reduced when a student leaves the system for an alternative program--a partial "money follows the child" approach.  It was a compromise reached after months of work by a broad coalition, including the Connecticut Association of School Superintendents, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and the New Haven-based reform group ConnCAN.

But that coalition began to fracture Wednesday at the state education board meeting.

"I am not sure these recommendations will do anything to improve education," said Joshua Starr, the superintendent of Stamford Public Schools and the head of the Connecticut Association of Urban Superintendents representing 19 school districts.

"Our urban students need more, not less," said Sharon Beloin-Saavedra, president of the New Britain Board of Education.

The leader of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, Joe Cirasuolo, a member of the special committee that drafter the plan, continued to maintain his support. But James Finley, head of CCM who also helped draft the recommendations, stepped back Wednesday.

"CCM does not support money follows the child," he told the board. Last month when approving the recommendations he voiced support because it would only have the money that is actually saved by the district follow the child to their new school.

Speakers also said it would be near impossible to come up with a formula to identify the actual savings for a district when a student leaves, if they save at all.  But Brian Mahoney, the chief financial officer for the SDOE, said during an interview he is confident such a formula could be accurately made.  After 90 minutes of testimony from public education leaders from across the state -- mostly critical of the proposal -- state board members decided to pass on taking a stand in what will be their last meeting together. The terms of eight of the 11 board members expire before the next meeting, and Malloy will get to choose their replacements.

During a 10-minute discussion, board members said they need more information and more in-depth recommendations on other issues facing education financing.

"It's very disappointing what's been produced by this committee," said Janet Finneran of Bethany, the board's vice-chair.

"There needs to be a lot more work," said Beverly Bobrosk, a member from Bristol. "Let's stop being afraid to talk about it."

But Taylor said after the meeting that by deciding to table proposal, board members showed they were afraid of it.

"I am sorry to have the discussion dominated by fear. Which is what just happened," he said.

Alex Johnston of ConnCAN said he doesn't buy the argument board members didn't have enough information to make an informed decision.

"We went through very vigorous debate and it was a lot of work," said Johnston, referring to the special committee's weekly meetings. Board members were invited to attend the meetings, many of which also were broadcast on the state's public affairs television network, CT-N. "They found themselves unable to take a position. This underscores why we need strong leadership to move forward on school finance reform."

Taylor said for 25 years education advocates and leaders have been calling on reforming how schools are financed, and the state board opting to pass on taking a stand is detrimental.

"We have to figure out recommendations and move this debate forward," he said.

Malloy, who has been highly critical of the way the state finances schools, said at a press conference Wednesday that the funding formula does need an overhaul, but said it is not likely that will happen this year.

Detroit plan would slash schools, cram classrooms
The Washington Times Online Edition
By Andrea Billups
7:56 p.m., Wednesday, January 26, 2011

DETROIT | Think wrangling one or two teenagers at home is tough? Some high school teachers in Detroit could end up with as many as 62 students per classroom under a proposal geared at helping balance the district's budget, which is $327 million in the red.

The class-size increases come along with a recommendation to close nearly half of the struggling city's schools over the next two years, from 142 to 72, in a money-saving effort that would shutter empty buildings, lay off staff, force parents to pay fees for sports and consolidate some departments.

The plan also calls for cutting vocational and alternative schools, JROTC, truant officers and busing for students seeking GEDs.

The hard-times proposal was released last week as a part of a monthly recommendation made to the Michigan Department of Education by Robert Bobb, a former D.C. school board president and deputy mayor who was appointed in January 2009 by Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm as the district's emergency financial manager.

It is the latest of his stark yet determined efforts to get the failing school system on track after years of financial woes and mismanagement.

Mr. Bobb's efforts, while lauded by some on the national education reform scene, have not made him a popular figure among some teachers, school officials and parents, but his path toward overhaul is necessary, said Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington.

"I think it's definitely appropriate … but he's not going to win a popularity contest," Mr. Petrilli said of Mr. Bobb's massive fixes.

"He's like an emergency-room doctor up there, trying to stop the bleeding and he's doing some tough work that had to be done — laying off teachers, cutting costs, trying to find a way for this school district to be sustainable," Mr. Petrilli added of the tough choices ahead for the Motor City schools.

Over the past several decades, as the city's population has diminished along with property tax revenues and state aid, the system has struggled with its finances and its record of achievement. On the U.S. Department of Education's National Report card, the district's fourth- and eighth-graders posted the lowest reading rates of any urban school district. The district's high school graduation rate was 24.9 percent in 2008.

The dismal academic outlook in Detroit prompted Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in 2009 to call it "arguably the worst urban school district in the country."

School finances have been in a deficit for the past four years, forcing the Democratic governor, who left office this month, to hire Mr. Bobb as a turnaround specialist. As he strives to cut the budget deficit and return the schools to fiscal solvency, he also must now work with a Republican governor and legislature as he negotiates the return of academic control back to the Detroit Board of Education, which eventually will hire a new superintendent.

The city itself is plotting a rebound strategy after the Kwame Kilpatrick scandal and the ongoing rebirth of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, which has energized those invested in the city's fledgling renaissance.

Mr. Petrilli said it is not the first time that a struggling urban district has turned to massive overhaul, including shuttering many schools to make ends meet. He pointed to massive cuts in the Kansas City, Mo., district, which closed 26 of its 61 schools in August amid a $50 million budget shortfall. Like Detroit, Kansas City had drastic reductions in enrollment — from a peak of 79,000 students in 1979 to fewer than 17,000 today.

"This takes a lot of energy and leadership and stamina. It's not a lot of fun," Mr. Petrilli said. "But Detroit public schools were in such dire shape that the only path was dramatic overall. They were not on a sustainable path — financially and academically. He's trying to get the house in order up there."

The proposed plan calls for class-size increases in grades four to 12 starting this fall, and then all grades in fiscal year 2012. Kindergarten through third grade would rise from 17 to 25 now to 31 by the 2013-14 school year.

Class sizes in fourth and fifth grades would increase from 30 now to 39 in 2013-14. Sixth and eighth grades would increase from 35 to 47 in the 2013-14 school year. High school class sizes would rise the most — from 35 students now to 62 in 2013-14.

Whether the plan comes to fruition is another matter. District spokesman Steven Wasko said officials are working on but have not released details of alternative plans to the latest proposal, under which the large class sizes and school closures were suggested. The emergency financial manager updates the state education department monthly of his progress.

Even as ideas are being formulated, the head of Detroit's teachers union said the proposal on the table will never happen.

"It is the union's contention that the district's deficit can be resolved without the dismantling of the Detroit Public Schools and our contract," Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson said in a statement published last week.

The union's contract with the district said teachers receive more payments when class sizes exceed a certain benchmark. It filed a charge of unfair labor practices in July in an attempt to make sure class sizes were not increased.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.


Speakers tell school funding panel the answer is more money
Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, CT MIRROR
October 25, 2011

WATERFORD--Parents, school officials and teacher unions had one message for the panel responsible for resolving the highly-criticized formula used for financing schools across the state: Increase funding.

"I'm sure you've heard what I'm going to say from a lot of people. [State funding] is not hitting anywhere near an actual reflection of what the actual costs are," Donald Blevins, chairman of the Waterford Board of Education and president of the state's school board association, told the panel.

The state's largest teachers union says the poorest districts are underfunded $5,300 per student and statewide the shortfall is $1.5 billion a year.

But top officials say the reality is the state is strapped financially and the chances of a wave of additional money being approved for schools is nil.

"I'm not going to deny that more money is an advantageous goal," said Benjamin Barnes, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's budget chief, shocked by the $1.5 billion shortfall in state funding cited by the Connecticut Education Association. "I flinched."

A parent of three children at the last public hearing in New Haven brought an tiny apple pie to convey the same message of state underfunding education.

"The pie is too small," Ester Santana told the panel, which is co-chaired by Barnes and Rep. Andrea Stillman, House chair of the legislature's Education Committee.

Three out of every ten dollars spent on education in Connecticut comes from the state, which is comparable to other Northeast states, according to the State Department of Education in its annual report released earlier this month.

But parents and education officials at Tuesdays meeting said the state has a more severe achievement gap between low-income students and their peers than the surrounding states.

"It's simply unacceptable to underfund education," said Erika Haynes, a parent of four children in Windham, a district that the state recently intervene in for failing too many children. "We are where we are because of money."

No one on the financing panel disagreed during the three-hour barrage of requests for more funding that additional money wouldn't help, but they aren't expecting to find a pot of money. Rather, the panel intends to figure out how to more fairly disperse the $1.9 billion the state is providing.

"We all have the recognition that there is a bottom line... What would you do if we didn't have another dollar?" asked Sen. Toni N. Harp, D-New Haven and the co-chair of the legislature's Appropriations Committee.

That comment solicited whispers from the packed school cafeteria that a formula with no additional funding would be horrible, but not a surprise.

"It's a shame. I don't know about formulas. I don't know about percentages. I know that more money needs to go to education," said Susy Reyes, a parent with one child in Bridgeport Public Schools, another district the state recently intervened in and replaced their board of education.

Rep. J. Brendan Sharkey of Hamden, the House Majority Leader, said earlier in the day he is expecting the panel to provide lawmakers a realistic path to better funding schools, which does not include a request for additional funding.

"I don't envision that we are going to have more funding," he said. "You can't solve the formula by adding more money, they need to make sure we have an equitable system."

The task force has set a goal of releasing a proposed overhaul to the school financing formula by next fall.



There was more to this Pelto letter.  He added a list of other State of CT funding programs "on the chopping block" as well as another letter to the editor regarding how little performance improvement CT gets from its highest cost for public education.  NOTE:  We do not say any of these "facts" from letters to the editor are accurate...

State may change education aid
Connecticut funding formula may be overhauled
New London DAY
By STEPHANIE REITZ Associated Press
Article published Jan 2, 2011

Hartford - Connecticut's formula to determine state aid for local schools could be on the verge of a major overhaul after decades of criticism that it hasn't helped close achievement gaps between poor and rich towns.
A coalition of lawmakers and education advocates is urging incoming Gov. Dan Malloy to settle a 2005 lawsuit against the state over alleged inequities in the state's Education Cost Sharing formula.  As mayor of Stamford, Malloy was among the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which calls for major changes in the ECS formula.

"It's time now for people of good will to sit down and resolve this issue. We can't lose another generation of young people to an unequal and, in some cases, an inadequate education system," said state Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport.

The ECS formula has been tweaked regularly since it went into effect in 1988, a hybrid of two earlier plans intended to ensure more funding equity between wealthy and poor communities. It uses a complicated equation that considers the number of students, a town's wealth or poverty and other factors.  Its intention is to split school costs 50-50 between the state and municipalities, a goal that's never been reached. The closest the state got was 45 percent in 1989, and it's around 42 percent now.

It's also spawned a few lawsuits, including a 1998 case in which 9-year-old Jedidiah Roesler of Meriden and his mother, Karen, were among more than a dozen plaintiffs on behalf of municipalities that believed they were shortchanged.  Jedidiah, now a 22-year-old college student, is among thousands of youths whose school careers mostly or completely coincided with the ECS formula's life span.  Karen Roesler said she joined the lawsuit hoping it could help students whose families did not have the time and educational background to be as involved as her family was, and who might lose out on the best possible education of the funding issue.

"It's been so many years now and yet here we are in Connecticut, still struggling with the same issues of equity in education," Karen Roesler said.

"What I did learn from being involved in that suit with Jed was how complicated that (ECS) formula was and that in the end, it wasn't really followed anyway."

That lawsuit eventually was dropped, with many of its claims over the ECS formula absorbed into larger cases, including the 2005 one that's currently pending.  The plaintiffs, the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, are a group of officials and parents from more than a dozen cities and towns, including Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport.  Their lawsuit says the vast differences in test results, graduation rates and other factors between many rich and poor towns show that some of Connecticut's nearly 500,000 students are not receiving an adequate education.

The coalition says the way to close that gap is to overhaul the ECS formula. Dianne Kaplan deVries, the coalition's project director, said members are confident that Malloy understands their concerns and the complexity of the case.

"The primary backbone of the ECS formula is fine, but so many of its elements were not based on reality," deVries said.

A Superior Court judge had dismissed part of the coalition's case regarding funding in 2007. The Connecticut Supreme Court revived the case last spring, saying the constitution promises an education that is good enough to prepare students for a job or college. It's tentatively set for trial in 2014.  The push to fix the ECS formula comes as Connecticut faces a $270 million shortfall in that school funding budget starting July 1. That's because federal stimulus money, used to cover an ECS gap last year, will run out.

The $270 million is part of a $3.67 billion budget shortfall that Malloy will be forced to address in the 2011 budget year.  Malloy said this week that although resolving problems with the ECS formula is a high priority during his administration, his most immediate concern is ensuring the budget shortfall is covered and public schools don't face major cuts this fall.

The formula is being closely watched in Connecticut municipalities, where local officials would have to raise taxes or slash spending if the ECS money shrinks.

"At least in the short term, our focus is going to be on seeing that ECS is stable," said Robert Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. "We have felt for years that if (ECS) was fully funded, it would do what people wanted. But people are finding the more they delve into it, the more complicated it seems."

State colleges and universities bracing for budget storm
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIROR
December 29, 2010

Officials at Connecticut's public colleges and universities are bracing for another tough budget year as the legislature and new governor grapple with next year's $3.67 billion deficit.

"Public universities are definitely on the firing line," said Higher Education Commissioner Michael Meotti. "The next several years are going to be the toughest budget years higher education has faced in the last 50 or 60 years."

"We all know cuts are coming. It's just a matter of how much," Connecticut State University System Chancellor David G. Carter told a student member of the Board of Trustees at a recent meeting.

And legislators are not trying to allay those concerns.

"Public universities are preparing for what they expect to come, and that's cuts from the state," said Rep. Roberta B. Willis, co-chairwoman of the legislature's Higher Education Committee and a Democrat from Salisbury. "Universities have to control their costs and find savings."

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy also has warned that state institutions will have to tighten their budgets. Even at the upbeat announcement of a new president for the University of Connecticut last week, he would only commit to funding the school "at a level that is appropriate," without promising there would be no cuts.

The dire budget predictions come against the backdrop of a new report by the legislature's research office saying that the growth in higher education budgets has far outstripped the level of state General Fund support for the institutions.

While combined spending by the state's three higher education systems -- UConn, CSUS and the Connecticut Community Colleges -- grew by nearly 230 percent over two decades, to $1.94 billion in fiscal 2009, the General Fund contribution increased by less than 83 percent, to $556 million, according to the Office of Legislative Research.

Meanwhile, in-state tuition and fees increased by 239 percent at the community colleges, 284 percent at UConn and nearly 353 percent at CSUS.

The rising cost of higher education has caused concern and prompted several reviews, including one by the legislature's bipartisan Program Review and Investigations Committee into how colleges and universities are governed.

"The public in general has expressed discontent with the rises in higher education costs and spending," says a staff report approved unanimously by the committee. "UConn and CSUS have been consistently ranked among the most expensive public university systems in the nation (numbers 9 and 11, respectively, in 2009 among peer institutions)."

But higher education officials warn cuts in state support would likely lead to even higher tuitions.

"We are left with no choice but to increase tuition so we can provide the same level of education... We are beginning to price people out of education," said Mary Anne Cox, assistant chancellor for Connecticut's dozen community colleges.

Last week, the board of the community colleges approved increasing tuition by almost 3 percent -- to almost $3,500 a semester for in-state students. And if state funding is cut in the coming months to help close the state's deficit, Cox said the board would surely have to revisit tuition levels.

"There aren't very many options" for cutting costs, she said, saying most spending increases are for personnel. The college system's contract with unionized employees provides for 5 percent raises in the coming year, she said.

UConn will likely determine how much tuition will be for next school year in February.

"We've known for some time that (the upcoming year) is going to be a very difficult budget year. Just how rough it will be for UConn depends on what our state appropriation looks like," UConn's budget director Richard Gray wrote in a statement.

But things could have been worse for Connecticut's public colleges over the last few years, said Bruce Vandal, director of postsecondary education for Education Commission of the States.

"There are states that are abandoning or retrenching their expenditures for universities... Connecticut has not begun to do that, so that's good," he said.

Six states -- including Rhode Island, South Carolina and California -- have reduced the actual amount they spend on higher education by five percent or more in recent years, reports the National Conference of State Legislators.

But with the recent signals from Connecticut lawmakers, university leaders are beginning to worry their state funding levels are in jeopardy.

School Board Considers Social Media Rules for Employees
WestportNow
By James Lomuscio
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

With the popularity of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and MySpace, Westport Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon asked the Board of Education Monday night to consider a policy regulating employees’ use of social media, even for personal use.

The board, which only had four of its seven members present, will vote on the action at its Jan. 4 meeting.

Landon said that the proposed policy is an extension of the Acceptable Computer Network Use policy requiring all faculty, staff and school board employees to use the school network for emails so that all communication is archived.

He said the policy is designed to protect employees against claims of inappropriate conversations.

“We’ve asked teachers not to use Facebook because there is no way to archive this,” said Landon.

Donald O’Day, school board chairman, questioned whether the policy should be extended to school volunteers who use social media to communicate about school functions. Landon said he would seek legal opinions.

The policy states that while the school board recognizes the importance of social media and acknowledges employees’ First Amendment rights, the board will regulate social media use, even personal use, under certain circumstances.

They include: it interfering with the school district’s work; being used to harass co-workers and others in the school community; creating a hostile work environment; breaching confidentiality obligations; disrupting work of the school district; if it “harms the goodwill and reputation of the school district;” and if it “violates the law, board policies and/or other school rules and regulations.”

Regarding personal use, employees were asked to refrain from inappropriate speech and postings that could reflect poorly on the school district and to maintain “appropriate professional boundaries with students parents and colleagues.”

For example, the proposed policy states that it is inappropriate for a teacher “to friend” a student or his or her parent to establish a special relationship.

It also states it is not appropriate for an employee to give students or parents access to personal postings unrelated to school.
Posted 12/21 at 09:03 AM

Weston's new school buses are safer in more ways than one
Weston FORUM
Written by Kimberly Donnelly
Thursday, 16 December 2010 00:00

Over the past several weeks, many Westonites noticed an overabundance of school buses filling the parking lot of the bus depot on the corner of Weston Road and School Road — and spilling over onto the lawn, the side lot, and even in the elementary school parking lot.

This week, passersby should notice that the bus depot looks back to normal. But, actually, a big change has taken place.

Not only are Weston’s 20 school buses (plus two spare ones), provided by First Student, brand new, but they are also now all equipped with active audio and video recording devices.

When the school district renewed its contract with First Student last year, the bus company agreed to replace the district’s buses with brand new ones for the same cost per bus it had charged the previous year, said David Lustberg, the district’s transportation coordinator.

For an additional $1.20 per bus per day, the school board decided to authorize the installation and use of cameras on the buses.

The new buses with cameras began to roll out at the beginning of the month. Each bus had to go through an inspection, however, and so, Mr. Lustberg said, there were several weeks when both the old and new buses were parked at the bus depot.

This week, the last of the old buses were scheduled to be replaced with the newer ones.

According to school board member Dick Bochinski, who was among the board members to take a “test ride” recently, “They’re quieter, more fuel efficient, safer with higher padded seats, and the recording devices will help deter any potential misconduct.”

With winter knocking on the door, Mr. Lustberg pointed out that another advantage is all the buses have new batteries, heaters, and engine systems, making cold mornings much less problematic.

“We had our first good test a few days ago when it was 10 degrees at start-up time, and all the buses started immediately and the heat kicked right on,” Mr. Lustberg said. “We’re looking forward to less bus trouble and having to use fewer spares, and having fewer breakdowns.”

It’s the cameras that have been the focus of most of the attention given to the new buses, though.

At its September meeting, the school board adopted a new policy to address the use of the cameras and recording devices on the buses “as an aid in monitoring student and adult behavior. The recordings from these cameras will be used to assist school administrators in deciding upon appropriate disciplinary action.”

Mr. Lustberg said he has not heard any negative response about the cameras and audio recorders. Drivers like having them, he said, because it means they can concentrate on driving; parents like it because it’s a way of seeing what’s going on; and administrators like it because it should be a deterrent that helps to maintain appropriate conduct on buses.

“Everyone thinks it will lead to better behavior by the kids,” Mr. Lustberg said.

First Selectman Gayle Weinstein agreed. “Given the number of bullying incidents we’ve had, at least the cameras provide another set of eyes. I’m all for it. And as a parent, I think it’s a great idea,” she said.

Staff and students, including contracted drivers, are prohibited from tampering with the recording devices for any reason.

Mr. Lustberg said the video, recorded from both the front and the back of the buses during the morning and afternoon trips, runs on a 30-day loop. After 30 days, the recordings “drop off,” so any incidents need to be reviewed within the 30-day window. However, when an incident is reviewed, it may be downloaded to a computer and saved indefinitely if needed, Mr. Lustberg said.

According to the school board’s policy, “Recordings considered for retention as a part of a student’s behavioral record will be maintained in accordance with established procedures governing access, review and release of student records.”

Recordings also may become a part of employee records. “This provision applies to all employees of the district as well as all contractors, agents and their employees,” the policy states.

The policy, which is available in its entirety on the school district’s Web site, www.westonK12-ct.org, spells out who may request to review recordings and how those requests are to be made and considered.

There is a relatively small window of time to request viewing: Requests must be made in writing to the appropriate school principal within seven school days of the date of recording one wishes to review.

Cromwell Must Give $1.3 Million Back To State For Woodside School
By MELISSA PIONZIO, mpionzio@courant.com
The Hartford Courant
5:00 PM EST, December 10, 2010

CROMWELL —

Enrollment at Woodside Intermediate School is lower than projected, a state audit has found, prompting the state to ask the town to return of $1.3 million used to build the school.

There are 494 students enrolled at the school, 105 fewer than predicted by the school building committee when the school was in the planning stages in 2001.

"We have a formula that authorizes payments per square foot per student," said Tom Murphy, spokesman for the state Department of Education. "With this school, there is a square footage allotment per pupil that the state will reimburse or cost share. But if you build a school that is too large, then the state will only pay up to the authorized square footages."

The state initially sought $1.6 million from the town, but reduced the amount by $377,000 by decreasing the square footage used in the grant calculation, Murphy said. The 84,000-square-foot school was completed in 2006 at a cost of $27.4 million.

Superintendent Matthew Bisceglia said the town got the data to support its enrollment projections through studies conducted by a state education consultant and an educational consulting agency. Bisceglia, who was not superintendent when the school was built, said he questions the validity of such projections, pointing out that the consultant's study projected that Cromwell's overall student enrollment for 2010-2011 would be lower than it actually is.

"They projected for the 2010-2011 school year we'd have 1,717 students for the district; we have 2,040," he said. "Additionally, they said we'd have 485 students at the high school; we actually have 603."

Bisceglia said Mark Cohan, who was the superintendant at the time, hired Education Leadership Services LLC to help plan the type of intermediate school the town would need. That information was provided to the state, he said.

"Based on data they reviewed, such as enrollment dynamics and building permits, the company suggested that Cromwell plan for 600 students at the intermediate level by the end of the decade," said Bisceglia.

Although Woodside's enrollment is lower than projected, Bisceglia said he is confident that the school will serve 600 students by 2020.

"You have the enrollment projection done by the state and the educational leadership services coming up with a very strong projection and you have the unique characteristics of Cromwell, which included an incredible amount of open space," he said. "Even today as you drive by Woodside Intermediate School, there are two new housing developments going up. Had the economic downturn not taken place, we would see many more of those homes being purchased, being built and many of the building permits that were projected not being scrapped."

Murphy said the state will work with Cromwell to determine how it can repay the $1.3 million. The town can also ask the General Assembly to review the matter, or try to increase enrollment at Woodside.

Murphy said ways to do that include encouraging "public school choice, students coming from other districts. If they do have that in place and those students do attend that school, it does offer some opportunities for discussion and those numbers would need to be looked at. We want to work with the school district to resolve these issues, but these are significant dollars and there is a school with 100 open seats."

Bisceglia, who has requested a meeting with state Department of Education officials, said 73 students from other districts attend Cromwell schools through the Open Choice program. He asked why state officials accepted the town's application in the first place, since the state audit also found that the town didn't supply sufficient data with its application.

"Because this is an independent committee, why didn't the state write to them and tell them they need more documentation?" Bisceglia. asked "Why didn't they give them some guidance as to what they were really looking for?"

Education panel rejects proposal to change school funding rules
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
December 6, 2010

A panel of municipal, education and business leaders Monday failed to reach agreement on a proposal to require that state funds for education follow students who leave their local public schools for alternative institutions.

The business and education reform leaders on the panel backed the proposal, but representatives of towns, local schools and unions defeated their efforts.  Alex Johnston, head of the New Haven-based school reform group ConnCAN, called the proposal a "policy answer" to improving public education in the state.

"We are not funding school choice in a way that makes sense right now," he said.

About 27,000 students in the state attend magnet schools and another 1,300 students attend public schools outside their home districts through a choice program. Although the state provides some funding for the alternative schools, it also continues to fund the local school after the student is gone.

"The way we fund magnets and school choice programs is not fair. When a student leaves a school, so should the money. The school responsible for that student deserves that money," said Dudley Williams, an executive at GE Asset Management who was named co-chair of Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's education policy advisory group Monday.

"money follow the child"

CCM's Jim Finley (r): 'This would cause a lot of pain for schools'

But local officials and union leaders said Monday it would be unfair to take money from an already cash-strapped school and send it to another.

"We are concerned about the impact on the individual districts," said John Yrchik, head of the Connecticut Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union. "You would be making it more difficult for districts to function."

Jim Finley, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, agreed.

"This would cause a lot of pain for schools," he said after the meeting. "Maybe we can consider this when schools begin to be adequately funded by the state. Right now they are not."

The panel, which was created by the State Board of Education to make recommendations on school finance issues, did forward other proposals to the board, including:

    * Allowing parents to enroll their children in any charter, magnet or school choice program
    * Having the state fully fund its 50 percent share of education
    * Reorganizing the funding formula for schools because it is not functioning effectively

Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan said he hopes whatever changes are made to how schools are funded, it is fixed once and for all.

"There needs to be dependability and stability of school funding," he said. "We cannot continue with this uncertainty."

Freund answers questions on 'stay-the-course budget'
MJ Mercanti-Anthony, Special To Greenwich Time
Published: 10:43 p.m., Tuesday, November 30, 2010
  
Superintendent of Schools Sidney Freund had a lot to answer for at Tuesday night's public hearing on his proposed budget.

After soliciting input on his initial 2011-12 budget proposal presented in early November, 144 questions came into the board office, including ones from school board and PTA members and the public, as well as town agencies like the Board of Estimate and Taxation and the Representative Town Meeting.  In front of the school board and a crowded audience Tuesday night at Cos Cob School, Freund applauded the board and the public for its analysis of the budget.

Coming in the second year of the district's strategic plan, he stated this was a "stay-the-course budget, but not a business-as-usual budget." As such, he argued the budget reflects the ongoing effort to clarify and increase the focus on improving classroom instruction through data-driven decision making.  Most questions and comments at the hearing from both board members and the public centered on staffing concerns. Eighty-five percent of the budget consists of staffing costs, while staffing additions account for 75 percent of the increase in the proposed $135.6 million budget over the 2010-11 spending package. The overall year-to-year increase is 3.4 percent.

Freund clarified his initial proposal, saying that the budget calls for an increase of 10.75 positions, not the 14.1 originally projected. The error stemmed from a failure to account for building-based administrators who teach part of the day. The new figure allows the budget to meet the BET-set staffing guidelines of 10.2 students per staff member.  In total, the budget calls for the creation of seven new elementary classes to maintain class-size guidelines enacted by the board.

On the issue of resources, Freund explained that due to the diffuse nature of schooling, precisely attributing student gains to specific resource allocations was not possible. Long term, he argued the best allocations are those that build the capacity of the instructional staff.  Board member Leslie Moriarty, conscious of the lack of student-performance growth in some areas, worried if the current staffing guidelines, particularly in regards to class size, were appropriate for furthering the board's initiatives.

In response, Freund argued that class-size research is inconclusive.

"The strongest predicator of student success is not class size, but quality of instruction," he said.

If given the option, Freund said he would rather increase the number of instructional coaches to train teachers in new instructional strategies. However, he reiterated that the current proposal follows board guidelines on class size.  Board member Peter Sherr challenged the superintendent, arguing that anyone could Google class size and see that is does make a difference, particularly in grades 3 and below. "Part of the reason our scores are declining are because bright kids are leaving the district," Sherr said.

He continued, "I've heard from lots of groups of parents that we want a hard cap (on class size). It sounds like we are not committed to that issue."

Freund reiterated that the proposal meets current guidelines as stipulated by the board.  A 72-page booklet answering all of the collected questions is available on the district's website at greenwichschools.org. Anyone with questions not covered on the website is asked to submit them to board President Steven Anderson by noon Thursday.  The board will hold another public hearing on Dec. 9 before voting on the budget at its Dec. 16 meeting.

"At that point it becomes the board's budget and we further it along to other groups by statute," Anderson said.  The board would submit the spending plan to the town by Dec. 30. The BET will take up the proposal before the Representative Town Meeting adopts the budget in May.

Lady Trojan swimmers splash their way to Class S title
Westport NEWS
By Eliot Schickler, eschickler@bcnnew.com
Published: 06:08 a.m., Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Miracles happen in sports from time to time and underdogs go on to win championships. In the fashion of David slaying Goliath with a slingshot, the underdog prevailed in the Class S swimming championships at Southern Connecticut State University on Tuesday when the Weston girls swimming team dethroned three-time defending Class S champion East Catholic, 568.5-561.5 points in the 26-team field.

Weston's slingshot struck the bullseye square in the face because of its depth. Although the Lady Trojans won only one event, taking the 200-yard freestyle relay with a time of 1:42.80 behind freshman Dacia Gross, junior Catie Ledwick, senior co-captain Karen Bottger and freshman Katie Johnson, they won because they had many other All-State performances.

Bottger took second in the 200-yarrd freestyle (1:55.84) and third in the 500-yard freestyle (5:17.95). Sophomore Olivia Clark almost made All-State in the 500-free but settled for fourth (5:19.43) and was an All-Stater in the 100-yard breatstroke (1:09.09). Johnson was an All-Stater in the 100-yard freestyle (55.58) by placing third and sophomore Alex Edgar earned All-State in the 50-yard freestyle (25.75) by taking third place. Bottger, Edgar, Clark and Johnson earned All-State in the 400-yard freestyle relay (3:43.02) by placing second.

School's out for Klein
NYPOST
By SALLY GOLDENBERG and YOAV GONEN
Last Updated: 5:50 AM, November 10, 2010
Posted: 2:45 AM, November 10, 2010

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, a hard-charging innovator who brought unprecedented national attention to the city as a model for urban public-school reform, shocked the education world yesterday by announcing his resignation.  He will be replaced by Cathie Black, a publishing-world powerhouse who has headed Hearst Magazines for the past 15 years and who Mayor Bloomberg said was selected largely for her managerial skills.

Like Klein when he was appointed to run the country's largest schools system back in 2002, Black will take the helm of an operation with a $23 billion budget, 1.1 million students and 135,000 employees having had almost no experience in education.  She will become the city's first female schools chancellor when she takes over sometime around the new year.  Klein, who has been heralded as an educational reformer, said he is taking a position as an executive vice president at News Corp., the parent company of The Post.

"Thank you for giving me the best job I've ever had," Klein told Bloomberg at a press conference at City Hall yesterday.

To the city's public-school parents, Klein added, "Being responsible for educating your children has been both daunting and humbling. I want you to know, I gave it my all."

Klein, 64, took over a schools system that was by all accounts dysfunctional and that had seen a revolving door of chancellors attempt, and for the most part fail, to make lasting improvements.  Hand-in-hand with Bloomberg -- the first mayor to have direct control over the city's public schools -- Klein set about restructuring not just the chaotic organization of the system but also its defeatist culture.  Among the initiatives with which he targeted his so-called three pillars of school reform -- leadership, empowerment and accountability -- Klein:

* Assigned schools A through F letter grades and closed schools that had consistently received poor grades.

* Created a hospitable environment in which more than 125 charter schools could flourish, including by providing them with free public building space.

* Battled to eradicate longstanding teachers-union protections, such as tenure, seniority rights and lockstep pay, which he believed benefited educators, but not students.

* Handed much of the budget and educational decision-making power to schools, rather than ruling from a central bureaucracy.

During his tenure, Klein oversaw a 15-percentage-point increase in graduation rates, according to the city's calculations. It now stands at 63 percent, according to a new methodology.  Klein also oversaw steady gains in elementary- and middle-school math and reading test scores.

"He really was and is a transformative leader," said Sy Fliegel, a former educator and current director of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association.

"His reorganization and what he's doing now is a major innovative change, because I always thought schools were the center of change -- and that's where he's putting the power."

But Klein also took his fair share of punches throughout his tenure -- often after alienating parents and when butting heads with the leaders of the powerful teachers union.  Many parents and teachers have been fuming for years over what they see as Klein's reliance on test scores -- which are used to decide which students to hold back, which teachers to give tenure to, and which schools to close.

"Chancellor Klein's tenure has been controversial, and even divisive, in part because he never figured out how to work effectively with parents," said Zakiyah Ansari, a parent organizer for the Alliance for Quality Education.

But others say that Klein brought a tidal wave of positive change to the city -- and that he was particularly effective at recruiting talented teachers and principals.

"Joel Klein built an incredible base in his term, and now it is up to the rest of us to build on that base and continue the push to save public education from itself," said Joe Williams, director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Education officials propose a plan to expand school choice--at a cost
CT MIRROR
Jacqueline Rabe
November 8, 2010

State education officials are proposing a series of measures to expand opportunities for Hartford schoolchildren to attend suburban schools--but the multi-million-dollar plan will be a tough sell with the state facing a massive budget deficit.

The plan would provide money to reopen suburban schools that have been closed, with the requirement that 25 percent of their enrollment be Hartford students. It also would more than double current reimbursements for districts that enroll a certain threshold of Hartford students, increase transportation grants to get students to alternative schools and give the state education commissioner authority to require suburban districts to enroll Hartford students.

The state is under court order in the Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation case to reduce the racial isolation of Hartford's largely black and Hispanic school population. In an interview last week, Education Commissioner Mark K. McQuillan said the alternative to the state's taking action on its own is to face another court mandate.

"We have to do more. We can make the investment now, or we can go back to court and they can make us meet our objectives," he said. "I imagine a court mandate will look very similar to what I am proposing."

The plan would cost $2 million a year for a pilot program to reopen four closed schools; $5.9 million a year to increase the reimbursement to suburban districts for enrolling Hartford students; and an additional $7 million a year to increase transportation grants.

McQuillan said the costs could prove to be a major problem, considering the state is facing a $3.3 billion deficit the coming year.

"We need to get people to make this commitment," he told State Board of Education members during a meeting Thursday.

McQuillan said reopening closed schools is less expensive that building new magnet schools, which has been the principal strategy for complying with Sheff so far.

The state has spend more than $1 billon on magnet schools since the 1996 order; they currently enroll about 5,200 students.

State Department of Education officials say a less expensive alternative is to increase enrollment in the state's Open Choice Program, which has about 1,300 student attending public schools in a district outside their own, well short of the SDE goal of 3,000 students.

Martha Stone, a lawyer for the Sheff plaintiffs, said the state is still falling "significantly short" of its obligation to provide alternative schools -- whether it's charter, magnet or enrollment in a suburban schools.

"There's a huge demand of students wanting to leave their current school. The problem is there are not thousands of seats at suburban schools. The suburban districts aren't offering the spots," she said.

McQuillan said part of the problem is that there are not adequate incentives for suburban districts to accept Hartford students.

James Caradonio, who heads the Greater Hartford Regional School Choice Office, said some superintendents and principals tell him they would loose money by taking students from the city.

"It's absolutely not enough money. It's common sense why we still have a shortage of spots," he said.

Districts are currently reimbursed $2,500 for each student they enroll. McQuillan plans to ask state lawmakers to increase that to $6,000 for districts that offer 3 percent of their seats to Hartford students.

The proposal to reopen closed schools would start as a pilot program and would provide $250,000 a year for each participating school for renovations, computers, lab equipment or other instructional materials if 25 percent of the school's students are from Hartford.

McQuillan is also proposing that he be allow to require suburban schools accept more Hartford students, a proposal he admits is a long shot and will face a lot of resistance if the appropriate funding does not accompany such a mandate.

Stone said requiring suburban districts accept Hartford students, increasing the funding for each student they enroll and reopening closed schools to provide more options are good steps toward the state's meeting its obligations.

"We would support this," she said. "The goal is to offer more seats in schools for Hartford students."

Education commissioner proposes increasing kindergarten enrollment age
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
November 4, 2010

Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan is proposing an increase in the minimum age for students to enter kindergarten--a move that could delay the start of public school for 10,000 students a year.  McQuillan told members of the State Board of Education Wednesday the proposal will narrow the age range for students in kindergarten, which now includes children from 4 to almost 7 years old. Such a wide developmental range makes it difficult to meet the needs of all the children in the class, he said.

Connecticut currently allows students to be enrolled in kindergarten if they will turn 5 by Jan. 1 of that school year. Most states have cut-off dates sometime between Aug. 31 and Oct. 16, according to the State Department of Education.  McQuillan's proposal would push the cut-off date back a month at a time, until by the 2014-15 school year, children would have to turn 5 by Sept. 1 in order to enroll in kindergarten. Ultimately, the change would affect about a quarter of some 40,000 kindergarten students in the state.

"No one would be disadvantaged," McQuillan said.

But not everyone agrees, including State Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislature's education committee. McQuillan's proposal would likely need to be approved by his committee.

"It's sounds to me a bit divorced from reality. Having access to kindergarten or education for everyone is important," he said.

Sherry Linton-Massiah, an early-education advocate for the Connecticut Association of Human Services, said it's true that not all children are ready for kindergarten before age 5, noting that she chose to pay "a small fortune" to send her son to preschool for an extra year. But not everyone can afford that.

"Do some children start kindergarten too early? Yes, absolutely," she said. "But we can't leave these children with no learning environment."

Fleischmann agreed. "It just sounds problematic to stop providing kindergarten to some families in the middle of a fiscal crisis."

McQuillan's proposal also includes state funding of preschool for an estimated 4,700 children from low-income families. Officials at the SDE estimate that would cost almost $37 million every year, some of which would be offset by the state not having to pay for a portion of kindergarten for those students.

"This is not about the costs. This is an education matter and providing education in a more effective way," said Brian Mahoney, the chief financial officer at the SDE.

Fleischmann said picking up the cost of preschool for only some of the 10,000 children affected by the age change would be unfair to families who don't get the benefit.

"Those parents would be screaming," he said.

Linton said she could support the commissioner's proposal if preschool was paid for all 10,000 students that would now be deemed too young for kindergarten. But with the state facing multi-billion dollar deficits, that's unlikely to happen.  Shifting all these students from kindergarten to preschool programs worries Mary Loftus Levine, Connecticut Education Association's director of public policy.

"We prefer teachers who are certified working with these children. Some preschools pay so poorly and their requirements are not as strict; it's hard to attract good teachers. You need more than just a babysitter," she said.

Current law does require by 2015 every preschool classroom funded by the state be staffed with a teacher with a degree or certificate in early childhood education, child development or related field.

Rising enrollment strains community colleges
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
October 5, 2010

The state's community colleges are once again experiencing record enrollment growth, an expansion that college officials say could force them to stop accepting all applicants.

"We can't continue at this pace," said Anita T. Gliniecki, president of Housatonic Community College, adding the almost 50 percent enrollment increase in the last five years has her campus at capacity. "We cannot continue to grow without additional staff and additional funds."

This is the twelfth consecutive year the state's dozen community colleges experienced a surge in enrollment, from about 39,000 during the 1998 fall semester to a preliminary count of more than 58,000 this semester, the Connecticut State Department of Education reported Monday.

"We have lived with this philosophy of open enrollment at these colleges for decades. We can't afford to fund this open enrollment model indefinitely," said State Higher Education Commissioner Michael P. Meotti. "Enrollment is outstripping capacity. People can't get into classes and programs."

Vanessa Morest, dean of institutional effectiveness at Norwalk Community College, said 90 percent of the classes at NCC had more students trying to enroll than spaces available at the start of this semester. A few years ago, she estimates students were shut out of just over half the classes.

"We're an open admission college. But that doesn't mean people will be able to get into their classes. That's a major problem," said Kim Ebert, director of enrollment at NCC.

Community college leaders say this enrollment increase comes at the worst possible time, since it is unlikely state lawmakers, facing huge budget deficits, will find more money for community colleges.

"Increased costs are inevitable when you have this big of an increase in the number of students. We are looking at a very, very grim picture," said Mary Anne Cox, assistant chancellor of Connecticut Community Colleges

Community colleges have been level-funded at about $158 million since the 2008-09 school year. In that time, enrollment increased 14 percent.  But Rep. Roberta B. Willis, co-chairwoman of the legislature's Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee and graduate of Northwestern Community College, said she is not ready to consider requiring that the state's community colleges start turning people away.

"I will not consider that until it's the last resort," she said. "You would be closing the door on a lot of people that are asking for an education. ... I don't want to leave people behind."

With or without legislative action, Cox said the record enrollment growth already has community colleges headed down this path.

"We'll soon have to turn students away, there is no question about it," Cox said. "This comes at the worst possible time. There may be no where else for these students to go."

Community colleges have long served as an inexpensive alternative for those to whom other higher education choices are a financial or academic stretch.  Katherine Monsalve, a 21-year-old single mother from Fairfield, said she couldn't afford to go anywhere but Housantonic Community College.

"When I heard Sacred Heart was in the $30,000 a year price range, that's when I looked at this school. That's a lot of money," she said. "This school is a lot cheaper. That helps."

Meotti calls community colleges a "bargain" for students, as tuition and fees are just $3,400 for a full-time in-state student this semester. Tuition and fees at the University of Connecticut this fall is $10,416.

"People see going to these colleges as a smart investment," he said, noting that more students go to the state's community colleges than Connecticut State University System or UConn. "The limited amount of space [at community colleges] is something we must talk about."

He said it makes no sense to accept someone into a class that there is no chance they are going to pass, while shutting out another student that has a good chance of passing the class.

"It's not really doing you any favors to let you in a class that you are doomed to fail," he said.

Willis does not see the 80 percent of students needing remedial classes as a problem for the community colleges, rather an opportunity to get them academically where they should be.

"Yes, that's a huge, huge burden on community colleges. But where else are they going to learn?" she asked. "In order to turn this economy around, they have to be able to work. ... This would be closing the door on a lot of people before they even have a shot."

But Meotti is focusing on the likelihood being that state funding will decrease, so community colleges will soon only be able to afford a limited number of students. "You have to be a realist. ... We are going to accept the budgetary reality that the odds are funding is going to decrease."

And with that decrease, he believes the decade-old policy of accepting everyone that applies to community colleges needs to be reconsidered.


Does performance on SAT 2010 relate to per pupil cost? 

Town-By-Town SAT Scores
By GRACE E. MERRITT, gmerritt@courant.com
2:08 PM EDT, September 27, 2010

HARTFORD —

Students in Connecticut's wealthy southwestern towns, particularly Weston, had the best scores overall on the 2010 SAT test while some of the state's larger cities fared the worst, according to town-by-town results released by the state Department of Education.

Weston High School had two of the highest mean scores in the state, 587 on the reading portion of the test and 610 on the writing portion. Darien High School had a mean score of 611 on the mathematics test. A perfect score on the individual subject tests is 800.

Closer to the Hartford region, Avon, Farmington, Glastonbury, Simsbury and EO. Smith High School in Regional District 19 in Mansfield did well on the college entrance exam, Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy said Monday. Simsbury ranked fifth best in the state for reading with a school of 575.

Statewide, the average math score was 510, reading was 505 and writing was 510. Though the scores were up slightly overall, they really just regained ground lost over the past five years. State education officials said they were not satisfied with student progress and intend to take steps to improve student performance overall.

Murphy said the trend underscores the correlation between wealthy school systems and student achievement.

"It's clear that students in the towns with high scores, parents do have resources for SAT prep courses, additional tutoring and exploration of the PSAT and the ability to take the SAT multiple times," Murphy said.

"In addition to that, these students are more likely to have the highest percentage of parents with dual college degrees and an appreciation for the educational enterprise. So there's a lot of support for each student to succeed."

Some urban districts did not fare well, with schools such as Bulkeley High School in Hartford and Bassick High School in Bridgeport and James Hillhouse High School in New Haven scoring in the upper 300s all three subject areas.

The Hartford Culinary Arts Academy, a school within Weaver High School, had the worst reading score and second worst math score in the state. Stamford Academy, an alternative high school for students who have not succeeded in a traditional high school setting, posted the worst math and second worst reading scores. Eli Whitney Technical High School, a state-run technical school in Hamden, also fared poorly across the board and posted the worst writing scores in Connecticut.

Besides struggling with poverty at home, some students in urban schools are not native English speakers and many of the high schools do not offer rigorous college prep courses, Murphy said. New legislation passed this May should help address the coursework disparity because it requires all students to take more rigorous courses and requires high schools to offer Advanced Placement courses, Murphy said.





Links to Gallis Report and METROPATERNS...
From "Casablanca" - I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!  [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money] :Guess what - they discovered...The Two Connecticuts

Conn. has worst achievement gap between low-income, nonlow-income students
New London DAY
Article published Aug 31, 2010

Hartford - A Connecticut education group says the state has the worst performance gap between low-income and non-low-income students in the country. The Connecticut Commission on Educational Achievement announced Monday that it has found 4th- and 8th-grade low-income students are on average about three grade levels behind their peers in reading and math. It also said 60 percent of low-income students graduated from high school in 2009 compared with 86 percent of more affluent students.

The group says it plans to release a report Oct. 20 with suggestions on how to close the gap.

Connecticut was not a finalist in the Obama administration's Race to the Top education grant program.

The state was seeking $175 million in federal funding to help jump-start a series of education reforms passed by the legislature this year.


Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy:  4th grade class in Las Vegas, Nevada - not in Weston, CT!

At one school, new technology means blackboard is a relic
LAS VEGAS SUN
By Rick Lax
Monday, Aug. 30, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

The old classroom blackboard is dust.

Every classroom in the K-12 Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy is equipped with a SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard. The boards are also being used in other Clark County schools.

The SMART Whiteboard is a multitasking every-tool that functions as a traditional blackboard, an overhead projector, a video player and tablet computer.

You can write on the SMART Whiteboard with your finger and erase it with your palm, or you can use a digital pen and eraser.

Teachers can make printouts of material that appears on the SMART Whiteboard, and then distribute the printouts to students who missed class or have trouble taking notes because of learning disabilities.

The SMART Whiteboard is equipped with an audio recorder, so teachers can upload the whole day’s lesson onto the Web. Students can then access the lessons from home. No more excuses for forgetting who got what in the Louisiana Purchase.


COST REDUCTION PROGRAM (Heating-Cooling), WESTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NOV. 9, 2009 - JULY 10, 2010


JONES: Lawsuit taxes go public
They're not hidden anymore - they're on your tax bill
The Washington Times
By Bob Dorigo Jones
6:08 p.m., Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The "hidden" lawsuit tax that all Americans pay because we live in the most lawsuit-happy society on earth isn't hiding in Detroit anymore. Beware - it may come out of hiding soon in your city, too.

Because of mounting lawsuits against public schools in the Motor City, taxpayers there have been forced to pay a new special levy over and above the other taxes. It's an alarming development and should be a warning sign to residents of other cities across the nation of what will happen if courts and policymakers fail to address the growing problem of excessive litigation in our country.

In July, the Detroit Free Press reported that property owners there are getting socked with a new markup on their summer property tax bills to pay off lawsuits against the schools. Like most school districts and cities in the United States, the Detroit Public School District is facing a financial emergency brought on by, among other things, the struggling national economy.

Rather than roll the costs of the lawsuits into the general-fund budget as they try to pay other bills, officials chose to use a little-known law that allows them to charge a "judgment tax levy." Worse yet, this lawsuit tax doesn't require voter approval.

For years, consumer advocates like myself have been sounding an alarm about the hidden lawsuit tax built into everything we buy. All of the lawsuits against doctors, job providers and even charities add a staggering amount to the cost of the things we buy every day - not to mention the quality of life in our communities.

According to the most thorough analysis of the total legal costs in America conducted to date, an American family of four pays an "excessive tort tax" of about $7,800 a year in higher prices, fewer new products and reduced access to health care. This study was conducted by the Pacific Research Institute and is the most realistic look at how much we pay for excessive litigation.

Although the lawsuit tax hasn't appeared on the receipts we get when we buy a car or go to the doctor, the costs are there nonetheless. Now, with Detroit's schools adding a special levy for the lawsuits, one portion of the tax is out in the open.

With other cities and school districts facing financial crises of their own, how much longer will you be able to avoid a special levy on your tax bill? Just this week, an advocacy group in California called Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse released a study revealing that 12 school districts in the Golden State have had to pay $98.7 million in litigation costs over the past three fiscal years. That's troubling, for sure, but it's only a fraction of the total cost of lawsuits because there are nearly 1,000 school districts in California.

School districts aren't the only governmental units being crippled by the cost of litigation. In 2008, it cost New York City $554 million to pay off lawsuits. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was quoted as saying, "Court settlements are killing us," and one major newspaper said the city should be known as "Sue York."

Taxpayers should wake up to the hidden - and not-so-hidden-anymore - tax that's piling up because of the proliferation of lawsuits. Because we're in election season, voters should ask candidates where they stand on this issue. It's time for policymakers to tackle the problem of lawsuit abuse because the true costs are coming out of hiding. Your city might be next.
-----
Bob Dorigo Jones is senior fellow at Foundation for Fair Civil Justice.

Applications, enrollment up at private schools
Stamford ADVOCATE
Maggie Gordon, Staff Writer
Published: 09:52 p.m., Sunday, August 22, 2010

STAMFORD -- Many local private schools are experiencing increased enrollment for the new academic year after struggling in recent years.

King, a private school on Newfield Avenue, is seeing record high enrollment for the upcoming school year, according to Director of Admissions Carrie Salvatore. King recently raised its enrollment cap to 685 students, and each available seat will be filled in September, Salvatore said.  The school, which costs $32,500 annually for high school students, also received an increased number of applications this year -- both for admission and financial assistance, she said.

"There was a slight increase in applications for financial assistance this year, and an uptick in current families who had never required assistance in previous years needing it for a one- or two-year help with tuition," Salvatore said.

But the majority of requests for assistance occurred two years ago, she said.

"This year, I think we saw a lot of that start to settle," she said.

The unemployment rate in Fairfield County was 8 percent in June, according to the Connecticut Department of Labor. It was 5.1 percent in June 2008 before jumping to 8.1 percent in June 2009.  About 12 percent of families who send students to King receive financial aid, according to Salvatore. The packages range from $3,000 to $32,000, and the average grant hovers near $15,000, she said.  King's ninth-grade class will have 88 members this fall, making it the upper school's largest incoming class yet, she said. In total, the school system, which serves students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will host 130 new students this year.

"I think we've been really lucky. We really weathered the financial storm last year quite well. Even though we saw slightly higher attrition, we had more applications coming in," she said.

King was not the only independent school to experience higher rates of attrition in recent years.

"It has happened that families have not come back because of financial reasons -- we've felt it as other schools have," said Nancy Hayes, director of admissions at New Canaan Country School, which serves about 615 students in pre-kindergarten through ninth grades. The school's annual price tag ranges from $23,500 to $30,000 plus fees, increasing as children grow older.

"I think the impact was greater last year in the 2009-10 admission season," she said. "There's always a normal amount of attrition anyway. I would say our attrition has been less this year than it was last year, and retention was stronger."

In fact, retention rates for students entering ninth grade increased 20 percent over last year, she said.  The eighth-to-ninth-grade transition typically comes with attrition as families make decisions about a student's high school years, said Sam Gaudet, director of admissions at St. Luke's School, also located in New Canaan, which serves students in fifth through 12th grade.

"Our retention for eighth to ninth has been pretty good," Gaudet said.

The preparatory school, which costs about $32,000 a year, has received 20 percent more applications for the upcoming year than last year, he said.

"Certainly last year, you saw more families applying for financial aid, but when we compare this year to last year, it's been pretty flat," he said.

Last year, some of the area's Catholic schools, run by the Diocese of Bridgeport, took on new students who had previously attended more expensive private schools, according to Joann Borchetta, principal of St. Cecilia Elementary School, located on Newfield Avenue.

"This year, we're seeing less of the kids coming from other private schools," she said. "Last year, I wouldn't call it significant, but it certainly let us know that something was different."

The number of Stamford children attending St. Cecilia's in the 2010 academic year increased by 5 percent over the 2008 academic year, while the percentage of Stamford children attending King decreased by 6 percent, according to data from the state Department of Education.

The diocese's schools charge $5,500 per "certified" pupil, and an additional $2,000 if the students are not certified. Students are certified by a pastor based on attendance at church and whether they are "living the faith," Borchetta said.

Administrators at the elementary school projected they would teach 276 students in the 2010 academic year, but they ended up hosting 302 students, she said. The projection for this year was 275 students; administrators are now expecting about 300 students again, according to Borchetta.

"Tough times make people make honest decisions, and we're seeing parents who are totally committed to the education and the future of their children," Borchetta said. But while several local administrators say parents are choosing to invest in their children's future by choosing private schools, Borchetta noted that the choice and the sacrifices involved aren't always easy.

"We do offer a very minimal amount of tuition assistance," she said. "Earlier, I was on the phone with a mother, and she said that if she could just get some financial aid instead of working her day job and six nights a week, she would work her day job and three nights a week to keep her kids in Catholic schools."

Weston schools have applications for free/reduced lunches
Weston FORUM
Written by Kimberly Donnelly
Sunday, 22 August 2010 00:00

Weston Public Schools has adopted the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Income Eligibility Guidelines for determining eligibility of children who may receive free or reduced price meals served under the National School Lunch Program.  The income guidelines that will be used from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011 (or until new income guidelines are issued by USDA) are avialable on the school’s Web site, www.westonK12.org.

Application forms may be obtained by calling the Weston Public Schools Business Office at 203-291-1407 or by accessing the form at www.westonk12-ct.org. Click on the “Free & Reduced Priced Lunch” link on the homepage.  Copies are also available at the principal’s office at each school. Questions should be directed to the appropriate principal’s office: Hurlbutt Elementary School (203-291-1444), Weston Intermediate School (203-291-2700), Weston Middle School (203-291-1500), or Weston High School (203-291-1600).

The information provided on the application is confidential and will be used only for the purposes of determining eligibility, and may be verified at any time during the school year by school or other program officials. Applications may be submitted at any time during the year.

Application forms for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) —formerly known as Food Stamps — or Temporary Family Assistance (TFA) households require the child’s name, the child’s SNAP/TFA case number and the signature of an adult household member.  Households receiving assistance under the SNAP/TFA programs will be notified of their eligibility and their children will be provided free benefits unless the household notifies the school that it chooses to decline benefits. Households receiving SNAP benefits or TFA for their children should only submit an application if they are not notified of their eligibility by Sept. 2, 2010.

Households receiving SNAP benefits or TFA for their children may receive a direct certification letter from the Department of Social Services. These letters will automatically qualify a child for free meals or milk and may be submitted instead of an application to the school.  Application forms for all other households require a statement of total household income, household size and names of all household members.

Under the provisions of the policy for determining eligibility for free and reduced price meals, the principals will review applications and determine eligibility. If a parent is dissatisfied with the ruling of the determining official, he/she may wish to discuss the decision with the determining official on an informal basis.  If he/she wishes to make a formal appeal, a request either orally or in writing may be made to Dr. Jo-Ann Keating, Director of Finance and Operations, Weston Public Schools, 24 School Road, Weston, CT 06883; 203-291-1407.

If a household member becomes unemployed or if household size changes at any time, the family should contact the school to file a new application.


Video cameras a fixture on many school buses in the region
Greenwwich TIME
Amanda Cuda, Staff Writer
Published: 09:21 p.m., Saturday, August 21, 2010

When a child shoves a classmate, they see it. If a bus driver isn't following the rules, they're there. They're witnesses to unruly behavior, vandalism, traffic violations and countless other, less exciting instances taking place on school buses throughout the region. They're video cameras, and many school buses are equipped with them as a security measure.

About half the school districts in the state have the equipment on at least some of their buses, said Jim Salter, president of the Connecticut School Transportation Association, a nonprofit organization that represents nearly all the public and private owners of school buses in the state. There are a variety of reasons a district might choose to equip its buses with cameras, but Salter said the devices are mainly seen by school officials as a way to help protect students, even when they're not in the school building. "Most of these districts consider the school bus an extension of the classroom," Salter said. "I think the cameras are just another tool."

Shocking Behavior

Most school districts that employ the cameras mainly use them to identify and prevent relatively routine problems, such as fights among kids or other disorderly behavior. But, sometimes, what the cameras see is shocking.

That was the case earlier this year in Trumbull, when the parents of a 9-year-old autistic girl asked to review video footage from their daughter's bus. The child, who doesn't speak, had come home from school several times with bruises and sprained fingers. Upon reviewing the footage from the bus, the parents -- and later police -- reportedly saw evidence that school bus monitor Jennifer Davila, 24, repeatedly hurt the child while the girl was a passenger on the bus, driven by Davila's mother. Davila was arrested Aug. 10 and charged with three counts of risk of injury to a child and three counts of third-degree assault on a disabled person. The videos also allegedly revealed that the bus driver was text-messaging while operating the vehicle. That incident is under investigation by police.

Trumbull has had cameras on its school buses for about 10 years, said Dawn Perkins, transportation coordinator for the Trumbull Public School system. She said the cameras are intended to catch, and prevent, a variety of problems, including conflicts among students and vandalism. About 90 buses serve the district, all of which have four cameras aboard. The cameras are owned by First Student, the bus company the school district contracts with to provide transportation. However, the footage is owned by the district, meaning all requests to view the footage must go through school officials.

Typically, Perkins said, footage is only reviewed if there is a request from a parent, administrator or someone else, though she does do periodic random checks of the footage. The hard drive with the footage on it is reset after about 30 days. Prior to the incident with Davila, Perkins said the district has been asked to review the video footage on occasion, including at least one request that involved a bullying incident. "We've had some people come to us with concerns," she said.

An eye on Safety

Aside from Trumbull, districts in the region that have cameras on at least some of their buses include Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford and Milford. Most school officials from districts that employ cameras said they, like Perkins, typically just review footage when there's some sort of complaint. In Bridgeport, Raul Laffitte, director of transportation for the school system, said there were about a dozen such complaints last year, mostly regarding behavior issues among students.

Laffitte said the Long Island, N.Y.-based bus company We Transport provides the majority of the district's buses -- 114 large buses and 59 smaller ones -- and all those vehicles are equipped with cameras. However, the city owns and operates 18 buses, which are used by special education students, and only three of those have cameras. Laffitte said the absence of cameras on those vehicles is mainly due to budgetary concerns, and the district is trying to find the funds to add the equipment.

Salter said, depending on type and number of cameras, outfitting a bus with the equipment can cost from $800 to $4,000 a bus. There can be as many as four cameras on a bus "depending on what the district is looking for," said Salter, also vice president of the Simsbury-based school bus company Salter's Express.

Fairfield's 31 buses that serve special education students don't have cameras, though the other 95 buses do. Fairfield transportation supervisor John Ficke said that in the negotiating stages of the bus contracts there were confidentiality concerns about having cameras on the special education buses. Meanwhile, Stratford Superintendent of Schools Irene Cornish said four vans used by the district for transportation of special needs students are without cameras, but all the vehicles owned and operated by the district transportation provider, Durham School Services, have cameras aboard. Durham provides 39 buses and 26 vans to the district.

The cameras do offer an extra level of security, school officials said. Cornish said she used to work in a district in Massachusetts, and "we insisted on having monitors on the buses" to watch the children. But finding, and paying for, monitors for all the buses was difficult. Cameras are a viable alternative.

Like Laffitte, Cornish said most of the requests her district gets to review footage involve issues among students, though she does recall at least one complaint about a driver. "There was one instance where there was an accusation that bus driver had grabbed a student's arm," Cornish said. Upon reviewing the tapes, officials found no evidence of the alleged incident.

Despite that incident and the one in Trumbull, most officials said the cameras mainly serve to keep students from acting out. As a confined space in which a variety of kids are in close contact, buses can be a tense place, Cornish said. That's particularly true of the rides home in the afternoon, when the students are energized by the freedom that comes with the end of the school day.

"They're excited," she said. "They're wide awake and there's potential for things to get out of hand."

But, Salter said, the cameras can serve to keep them in line. "The kids know they're there, so that should be a deterrent to some bad behavior," he said.


RACE TO THE TOP OF THE NOVEMBER 2, 2010 ELECTION?
The only winner NOT on or near the East Coast was Ohio - that's where people from Weston moved when the economy tanked in the earlier part of this country's history.  Oh - and Hawaii. 

Governor: Connecticut denied grant in federal 'Race to the Top' program
DAY
By STEPHANIE REITZ Associated Press
Article published Dec 16, 2011

Hartford - The U.S. Department of Education has denied Connecticut's application for up to $50 million in grants to boost its early childhood education programs, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Thursday.

Connecticut officials were notified that the state is not among the winners in the latest round of federal "Race to the Top" grants, Malloy said. A formal announcement is expected today.  It was the second year in a row Connecticut was rejected by the highly competitive grant program, which calls on states to coordinate and improve education for children in the critical time before kindergarten.  It places special focus on reaching poor children who need the services the most, but whose families can least afford them.

Connecticut was competing with 34 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Connecticut's application promised to cut in half the percentage of its students who enter kindergarten unprepared, and also said the state will add 1,000 new state-funded preschool seats for needy children starting in July 2013 - whether or not it won the federal grant.  It's also making a push to reach more young children whose caregivers are family members and friends, and who might otherwise not get the benefit of early learning programs in more formal settings.

"High-quality education for all of Connecticut's children is a top priority for my administration, and we should be pleased with the strong application that we submitted; it will serve as a roadmap as we move forward on education reform," Malloy said in a statement.

"However, we were aware going in that we were at a disadvantage - a lack of investment over the past decade meant that we did not have the infrastructure in place, or have a well-developed or coordinated early learning system."

'Determined to move forward'

"That will change," Malloy said. "This federal funding would have accelerated our efforts, but we are determined to move forward to improve early learning in Connecticut and keep our commitment that all of Connecticut's students receive a high-quality education."

Officials who worked on Connecticut's application and its supporters said boosting early learning programs and preparing more students for kindergarten was within the state's grasp if it won the money to coordinate current programs, fill gaps where others are needed, and get the best teachers in place.  State officials said that what set Connecticut's application apart from other states was its push to reach more children whose caretakers are neighbors, relatives and family friends, and who might otherwise have little exposure to education programs before kindergarten.

Officials estimate at least 40,000 of Connecticut's most high-need young children are in that situation. Several programs are already in place to train those caregivers to prepare the children before kindergarten, but state and local officials say they know thousands of other children could be helped if they could reach them.

The state hopes to identify the youngsters through their families' participation in other state and federal programs, such as HUSKY health care; the Care 4 Kids childcare credit program; welfare and food stamp assistance; Birth to Three early intervention services and other programs.

At least 80,000 of Connecticut's 210,500 children ages 5 and younger are considered to have "high needs."

That means they are living in poverty, have a learning or developmental disability, come from homes in which English is not the primary language, or a combination. Many are in the state's poorest cities.  Although the state's investment in early learning programs has been climbing steadily over the last four years, the wide achievement gap between its wealthy and poor children is obvious, even in kindergarten - something the Race to the Top grant application was intended to address.

State-mandated assessments of young children show that in wealthy communities, about 95 percent of children are well-prepared when they enter kindergarten. In poor communities, it's 70 percent.  Malloy has said that the next legislative session will be focused on education.

"Over the past 11 months we've been aggressive about bring federal dollars back to Connecticut," Malloy said, noting that the state has received hundreds of millions of dollars for transportation projects.

"We will go back to Washington for education funding at every opportunity," he said.

State's teacher evaluation plans too weak, federal reviewers say
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
August 25, 2010

The weakness of a plan to link teacher evaluations to student performance was a key factor in Connecticut's failure to qualify for millions of dollars in federal school aid, according to a government report released Wednesday.

The proposed evaluation system lacks detail, won't be ready for years, and fails to include adequate provisions for rewarding successful teachers or removing ineffective ones, said reviewers for the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top school reform competition.

"They were not satisfied [the plan] was aggressive enough," said state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan.

Race to the Top

The plan for revamping teacher and principal evaluations was one of several areas where McQuillan believes Connecticut's approach differed sharply from the strategies espoused by Race to the Top, the Obama administration's $4.3 billion effort to spur school reform.

Those differences, including a divergence of views on how to turn around low-performing schools, hurt Connecticut's chances in the high-stakes competition, McQuillan said.

While neighboring states of Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island were among 10 winners named this week in the competition, Connecticut's application had already been eliminated, failing to qualify as a finalist last month.

Connecticut won praise from reviewers in some areas, including its emphasis on math and science education, but lost ground for failing to turn around low-performing schools and for making only slow progress on data systems to measure student performance.

A major shortcoming, according to reviewers, was the weakness of the state's proposal to link teacher evaluations with student progress - a central goal in the Obama administration's education strategy.

One reviewer described Connecticut's plan as "very weak," saying it contains "no real commitments . . . to using the new evaluation system data for making compensation, tenure or removal decisions." Another said the proposal to create "a collaborative framework" for designing pay and evaluation systems through union bargaining had little substance. "This is a very weak statement of commitment for recognizing the successes of highly effective teachers," the reviewer wrote.

McQuillan said, "You have this push by the federal government to create measures of teacher effectiveness that are very aggressive." However, he said the matter is complicated, with experts disagreeing on strategies such as using student test scores in reading and mathematics as a factor in evaluations.

"That sounds very seductive," McQuillan said, "but when you think about it, how many teachers do we have that don't teach reading and math, per se?"

Under legislation passed earlier this year, the state will help schools develop an evaluation system that links teacher performance more directly with student progress but also takes into account a range of other factors, including class size and student characteristics such as socioeconomic status and English language proficiency.

"We felt we needed to take a very careful approach, field test it, and come forward with a plan," McQuillan said.

Connecticut failed to qualify for up to $175 million in Race to the Top funds despite a sweeping school reform package passed by the state legislature in May. It was the second time Connecticut failed to make the cut. An earlier application also was rejected in March.

Connecticut's latest application received a score of 379 points of a possible 500 - an improvement of 34 points over the score on its earlier application. Nevertheless, out of 36 applicants, Connecticut ranked 25th - the same rank it held in the first round of competition.

The teacher evaluation plan was "probably the single greatest area [of weakness] the reviewers singled out," said Alex Johnston, CEO of the New Haven-based school reform group ConnCAN.

States such as New York and Rhode Island made student performance a substantial element of teacher evaluations and pledged to use those evaluations in making decisions on staffing, including removal of ineffective teachers, Johnston said.

"They did create consequences based on the evaluations," he said. "Clearly, that's an area where Connecticut didn't go."

One leading teachers' union official questioned whether some of the systems in other states go too far in imposing consequences.

"That may have won them points. It may have won them money, but I don't think it's a good way to go," said Sharon Palmer, president of the American Federation of Teachers - Connecticut.

"I think we have significant work to do in that area, but honestly I'm glad Connecticut didn't rush to some draconian system," she said.

"Before we jump to a punitive plan, we have to have development of a system that works well. . . . What we've always advocated as a union is more mentoring and professional development for teachers so they are getting a chance for success."

Another factor that may have hurt Connecticut's application is that its key strategy for improving low-performing schools - known as the Connecticut Accountability for Learning Initiative (CALI) - does not match up directly with the school turnaround models outlined in the Race to the Top guidelines, according to McQuillan.

Those models include replacing most or all of the teaching staff at low-performing schools, converting schools to a charter model or even closing failing schools, but McQuillan said there is little scientific research to support those strategies.

The state's CALI model requires schools to revise classroom strategies, create new tests and adjust curriculum based on a thorough review of student performance data.

In the Race to the Top report, one reviewer said Connecticut's application provided little evidence to suggest that CALI has helped to improve learning or close the achievement gap that finds many low-income and minority students lagging behind white and more affluent students.

McQuillan, however, said the most recent results of statewide testing show encouraging progress at schools using the CALI program, but those results were not available until July - long after the Race to the Top application was filed.
Connecticut Out of Running for Key Education Grant
Deirdre Shesgreen, CT MIRROR
July 27, 2010

WASHINGTON-Connecticut is out of the running for a coveted federal education grant that state officials had said was vital to implementing the sweeping new school reforms passed in May.

At the end of the legislative session, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed a landmark education reform package into law that was aimed at bolstering Connecticut's efforts to win $175 million in federal funding under President Obama's Race to the Top education initiative.

To make the state more competitive, the legislature created a new teacher evaluation system, increased high school graduation requirements, and strengthened charter schools, among other steps. That law, state officials said, would give the state a stronger hand as it applied for a share of $4.3 billion pot of federal Race to the Top funds.

Education advocates and state leaders hailed the new law but said federal funding would be necessary to help put these new measures into place...Sorry about that

Read exerpt here.
Money's an old issue in state's schools, new book says
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
July 26, 2010

Throughout its history, public education in Connecticut has enjoyed a flattering - though often misleading - reputation among citizens who wanted excellent schools but were reluctant to pay for them.

That blunt assessment comes from a new book by one of the state's most noted authorities on education, former state historian Christopher Collier.

The ongoing struggle over school finance, from the 18th century School Fund to the 20th century legal battles over school equality, is one of many topics in Collier's ambitious, meticulously researched history of public elementary and secondary schools.

From the description of crowded, ramshackle 19th century rural schoolhouses to the weighty battles over education finance, academic standards and school desegregation, Collier traces the development of public education in Connecticut from the Colonial era to modern times.

"I knew that we needed a history of the public schools," said Collier, 80, who wrote the 893-page book after retiring as a University of Connecticut professor in 2000 and as state historian in 2004.  "I think of it as a gift to the public. . . . It was a retirement project that was fun to do."

The product of six years of research, "Connecticut's Public Schools: A History, 1650-2000," is designed chiefly as a reference work for libraries and schools, but casual readers, too, can glean insights about how the state's schools took shape. How did kindergartens start in Connecticut? When did graded schools develop? Which of two rival statewide teachers' organizations opposed the right to strike?

"The book . . . has a lot of emphasis on pedagogy, how were things taught," said Collier, a former junior high and high school teacher and longtime professor at the University of Bridgeport and UConn.

Collier explores matters such as the development of curriculum, the rise of the common school, the creation of comprehensive high schools, the origin of town control of schools, the focus on citizenship education, and the changes in teaching methods.

"It's just an encyclopedic work. . . .It's just amazing," said Wesley Horton, the Hartford lawyer who is featured in the book at the center of two of the state's most significant education lawsuits dealing with school finance and school desegregation.

The book, said, Horton, "points out a lot of the warts in Connecticut. I've always thought of Connecticut as being way ahead of the rest of the country . . . I didn't know how cheap our Yankee forefathers were."

Readers will find that today's battles over matters such as school finance, curriculum reform and teacher pay are echoes of earlier struggles.

For example, the book describes Connecticut's initial school law, the Code of 1650, as "an unfunded mandate," a phrase often heard today in complaints by town officials about state-ordered school expenses. In 1795, the creation of a state fund earmarked for schools was envied elsewhere in the United States, but the fund failed to provide even minimal support. "Connecticut taxpayers were profoundly reluctant to actually give up any money to support the public schools, particularly when they had no children of school age of their own," Collier writes.

The book profiles prominent figures in Connecticut education such as Henry Barnard, the 19th century legislator and educator who campaigned tirelessly, though not always successfully, to reform education in an era when many schools suffered from neglect and poor teaching.

Collier also features more obscure figures, people he refers to as "unsung heroes," including Charles D. Hine, secretary of education in the late 19th and early 20th century. Hine brought Connecticut's educational system into the modern era with reforms such as state teacher certification, compulsory attendance laws and a system of state-operated trade schools.

Hine was "a giant in the history of Connecticut education . . . [yet] nobody had ever heard of him," Collier said in a recent interview.

Collier, a veteran of nearly a half century of teaching experience, said he wrote the book from his perspective as a teacher, providing detailed descriptions of how teachers of different eras taught subjects such as reading, spelling, penmanship and arithmetic.

"Throughout the book, one of the themes is what really counts is the teacher in the classroom," he said.

From elsewhere in CT...  
For region's school systems, time may be money
Towns consider adopting single calendar with shared vacations for budget savings
By Claire Bessette, New London Day Staff Writer
Article published Jul 23, 2010
   
A regional calendar, where schools from town to town have the same vacations, could save local school districts significant dollars.

The Southeastern Connecticut Association of School Superintendents met at the LEARN regional office in East Lyme last week to iron out a proposed school calendar for the 2011-12 school year with uniform vacations, start dates and some shared professional development days.

The proposed calendar will be presented to boards of education in the hopes that all - or at least most - adopt it in the coming months. Superintendents also were asked to calculate savings for their specific towns.

"I'm very pleased with the superintendents who really tried to craft a calendar that makes sense," said Montville Superintendent Pamela Aubin, association chairwoman. "Part of the idea of regionalizing is giving up local control."

The proposed calendar would have students starting school the Wednesday before Labor Day. Each town would decide when teachers would return for preparation. Two uniform professional development days are scheduled - the day after Columbus Day and on Veterans Day. The idea is to bring teachers from different towns together for specified professional training on those days.
The calendar calls for a four-day February break - a possible point of contention for towns that still have a full week of February vacation - and an April vacation starting on Good Friday and running through the following week.

The calendar has 180 school days, the state minimum, ending June 8. Towns could tack on extra days or snow days at the end and set their own graduation dates, Aubin said.

Savings could be high

School districts provide bus transportation to students who go to school in other towns. Eight towns send buses to Norwich Free Academy, and most local towns send some students to Norwich Technical School, Ella T. Grasso Southeastern Technical School, Ledyard High School vocational-agricultural program and various magnet and charter schools.

A lack of a regional calendar means some districts are busing students to out-of-town schools even on days when the district's schools are closed.

Norwich Board of Education Chairman Charles Jaskiewicz said the city would save $330 per bus per day by not running buses on days when Norwich schools are closed.
Preston Superintendent John Welch said conservatively Preston could save about $50,000 per year with the uniform calendar.

Shared professional development would also produce some savings. The state requires continued training for teachers, and it can be expensive for small towns to bring in experts for a few staff members, such as physical education, music or art teachers, Aubin said.

Aubin said superintendents also would reach out to the parochial schools, including St. Bernard High School in Montville.

Thomas Murphy, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the technical high schools would be limited in their participation. The 17 state technical schools must work together on professional development because of their specialized fields, for example. Tech schools have 183 school days, rather than 180. Tech school teachers also have to take state employee furlough days.

"The tech schools are willing to work to work with them, but there are some limitations," Murphy said.

New London Superintendent Nicholas A. Fischer said his board probably would review the proposed uniform calendar in September. New London is one of the towns that still have a full-week February vacation, so the board would have to weigh the benefits of having a regional calendar against that tradition. Fischer has not yet calculated potential savings from the proposed uniform calendar.

Norwich Free Academy representative Kristin Peckrul, who works on the school calendar, said the proposed calendar appears to present no major conflicts for NFA, the region's largest high school. NFA does have school on Election Day, but Peckrul said school officials would consider the proposal to make that a professional development day.

The start date and the proposed four-day February vacation could cause the most debate. At the meeting, shoreline town representatives in particular like starting after Labor Day to avoid summer tourism season, Aubin said. About one-third of the towns still have a full-week February vacation.

"We're never going to please everyone," Aubin said. "It's going to depend on how committed the various boards are to the regional calendar."

Malloy outlines education plans--but where's the money?
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
June 29, 2010

If Dan Malloy is to win support for his ambitious plan to revitalize Connecticut's education system, he will have to persuade some doubters.

The Democratic candidate for governor outlined ideas such as expanding preschool classes, promoting innovation and increasing college graduation rates, but the 15-page education plan released Monday is likely to face steep challenges.

The biggest challenge is how to pay for it.

Despite the ambitious education plan, Malloy did not win the endorsement of the Connecticut Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union. The 40,000-member CEA endorsed Ned Lamont, Malloy's opponent in the Democratic primary election Aug. 10.

Nevertheless, Malloy said Monday, "What I believe is, if you showed our plan to most teachers, most administrators . . . they would be supportive of it."

Subprime goes to college
NYPOST
By STEVE EISMAN
Last Updated: 4:54 AM, June 6, 2010
Posted: 12:28 AM, June 6, 2010

Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive and morally bankrupt as the subprime mortgage industry. I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task.

The for-profit industry has grown at an extreme and unusual rate, driven by easy access to government sponsored debt in the form of Title IV student loans, where the credit is guaranteed by the government. Thus, the government, the students and the taxpayer bear all the risk, and the for-profit industry reaps all the rewards. This is similar to the subprime mortgage sector in that the subprime originators bore far less risk than the investors in their mortgage paper.

In the past 10 years, the for-profit education industry has grown 5-10 times the historical rate of traditional post secondary education. As of 2009, the industry had almost 10% of enrolled students but claimed nearly 25% of the $89 billion of federal Title IV student loans and grant disbursements. At the current pace of growth, for-profit schools will draw 40% of all Title IV aid in 10 years.

How has this been allowed to happen?

The simple answer is that they’ve hired every lobbyist in Washington, DC. There has been a revolving door between the people who work for this industry and the halls of government. One example is Sally Stroup. In 2001-2002, she was the head lobbyist for the Apollo Group — the company behind the University of Phoenix and the largest for-profit educator. But from 2002-2006 she became assistant secretary of post-secondary education for the Department of Education under President Bush. In other words, she was directly in charge of regulating the industry she had previously lobbied for.

From 1987 through 2000, the amount of total Title IV dollars received by students of for-profit schools fluctuated between $2 billion and $4 billion per annum. But when the Bush administration took over, the DOE gutted many of the rules that governed the conduct of this industry. Once the floodgates were opened, the industry embarked on 10 years of unrestricted massive growth. Federal dollars flowing to the industry exploded to over $21 billion, a 450% increase.

At many major-for profit institutions, federal Title IV loan and grant dollars now comprise close to 90% of total revenues. And this growth has resulted in spectacular profits and executive salaries. For example, ITT Educational Services, or ESI, has a roughly 40% operating margin vs. the 7%-12% margins of other companies that receive major government contracts. ESI is more profitable on a margin basis than even Apple.

This growth is purely a function of government largesse, as Title IV has accounted for more than 100% of revenue growth.

Here is one of the more upsetting statistics. In fiscal 2009, Apollo increased total revenues by $833 million. Of that amount, $1.1 billion came from Title IV federally funded student loans and grants. More than 100% of the revenue growth came from the federal government. But of this incremental $1.1 billion in federal loan and grant dollars, the company only spent an incremental $99 million on faculty compensation and instructional costs — that’s 9 cents on every dollar received from the government going toward actual education. The rest went to marketing and paying executives.

Leaving politics aside for a moment, the other major reason why the industry has taken an ever increasing share of government dollars is that it has turned the typical education model on its head. And here is where the subprime analogy becomes very clear.

There is a traditional relationship between matching means and cost in education. Typically, families of lesser financial means seek lower cost colleges in order to maximize the available Title IV loans and grants — thereby getting the most out of every dollar and minimizing debt burdens.

The for-profit model seeks to recruit those with the greatest financial need and put them in high cost institutions. This formula maximizes the amount of Title IV loans and grants that these students receive.

With billboards lining the poorest neighborhoods in America and recruiters trolling casinos and homeless shelters (and I mean that literally), the for-profits have become increasingly adept at pitching the dream of a better life and higher earnings to the most vulnerable of society.

If the industry in fact educated its students and got them good jobs that enabled them to receive higher incomes and to pay off their student loans, everything I’ve just said would be irrelevant.

So the key question to ask is — what do these students get for their education? In many cases, NOT much, not much at all.

At one Corinthian Colleges-owned Everest College campus in California, students paid $16,000 for an eight-month course in medical assisting. Upon nearing completion, the students learned that not only would their credits not transfer to any community or four-year college, but also that their degree is not recognized by the American Association for Medical Assistants. Hospitals refuse to even interview graduates.

And look at drop-out rates. Companies don’t fully disclose graduation rates, but using both DOE data and company-provided information, I calculate drop out rates of most schools are 50%-plus per year.

Default rates on student loans are already starting to skyrocket. It’s just like subprime — which grew at any cost and kept weakening its underwriting standards to grow.

The bottom line is that as long as the government continues to flood the for-profit education industry with loan dollars and the risk for these loans is borne solely by the students and the government, then the industry has every incentive to grow at all costs, compensate employees based on enrollment, influence key regulatory bodies and manipulate reported statistics — all to maintain access to the government’s money.

In a sense, these companies are marketing machines masquerading as universities. Let me quote a bit from a former employee of Bridgepoint Education, operators of Ashford University:

“Ashford is a for-profit school and makes a majority of its money on federal loans students take out. They conveniently price tuition at the exact amount that a student can qualify for in federal loan money. There is no regard to whether a student really belongs in school, the goal is to enroll as many as possible. They also go after GI Bill money and currently have separate teams set up to specifically target military students. If a person has money available for school Ashford finds a way to go after them. Ashford is just the middle man, profiting off this money, like milking a cow and working the system within the limits of what’s technically legal, and paying huge salaries while the student suffers with debt that can’t even be forgiven by bankruptcy. We mention tuition prices as little as possible . . . this may cause the student to change their mind.

“It’s a boiler room — selling education to people who really don’t want it.”

How do such schools stay in business? The answer is to control the accreditation process. The scandal here is exactly akin to the rating agency role in subprime securitizations.

In order to be eligible for Title IV programs, the universities must be accredited. But accreditation bodies are non-governmental, non-profit peer-reviewing groups. In many instances, the for-profit institutions sit on the boards of the accrediting body. The inmates run the asylum.

The latest trend of for-profit institutions, meanwhile, is to acquire accreditation through the outright purchase of small, financially distressed non-profit institutions. In March 2005, Bridgepoint acquired the regionally accredited Franciscan University of the Prairies and renamed it Ashford University. On the date of purchase, Franciscan (now Ashford) had 312 students. Bridgepoint took that school online and at the end of 2009 it had 54,000 students.

So what is the government going to do?

Most importantly, the DOE has proposed a rule known as “Gainful Employment.” The idea behind the rule is to limit student debt to a certain level. Specifically, the suggested rule is that the debt service-to-income-ratio not exceed 8%. The industry has gotten hysterical over this rule because it knows that to comply, it will probably have to reduce tuition.

I cannot emphasize enough that gainful employment changes the business model. Gainful employment will cause enrollment levels to grow less quickly. And the days of raising tuition would be over; in many cases, tuition will go down.

By late 2004, it was clear to me and my partners that the mortgage industry had lost its mind and a society-wide calamity was going to occur. It was like watching a train wreck with no ability to stop it. Who could you complain to? The rating agencies? They were part of the machine. Alan Greenspan? He was busy making speeches that every American should take out an ARM mortgage loan.

Are we going to do this all over again? We just loaded up one generation of Americans with mortgage debt they can’t afford to pay back. Are we going to load up a new generation with student loan debt they can never afford to pay back?

If nothing is done, then we are on the cusp of a new social disaster. If present trends continue, over the next 10 years almost $500 billion of Title IV loans will have been funneled to this industry. We estimate total defaults of $275 billion, and because of fees associated with defaults, for-profit students will owe $330 billion on defaulted loans over the next 10 years.

Steven Eisman is the portfolio manager of the FrontPoint Financial Services Fund, and one of the first people to predict the subprime mortgage crisis. Adapted from a speech he gave to the Ira Sohn Investment Conference.

BIG BUSINESS OF COLLEGE

In 2002, the government changed regulations banning colleges from providing “any commission, bonus or other incentive payment based directly or indirectly on success in securing enrollments or financial aid.” Since then, there has been an explosion of advertising for ITT, DeVry, Phoenix University and other for-profit universities, which aggressively recruit students and help guide them to federal student aid. Investing expert Steve Eisman estimates that for-profit students will default on $275 billion in taxpayer-backed, federal student loans.

* Tuition and fees at private for-profit institutions averages $14,174, $859 (6.5%) higher than in 2008-09. Though average federal aid isn’t available, 80%-90% of funding for many for-profit companies comes from federal aid.

* At for-profit institutions, 96% of bachelor’s degree recipients had student loans in 2008, and their average debt was $33,050. At public and non-profit colleges, 65% of bachelor’s degree recipients had loans, and their average debt was $22,750.

* Nearly one in four Pell Grant dollars went to students attending for-profit schools in 2008-09 (24%, or $4.3 billion), almost double the share a decade earlier, according to the National Consumer Law Center.

* Though for-profit students account for 10% of all college students, they represent 44% of all loan defaults, according to the Department of Education.

Major for-profit educators include . . .

Apollo

Schools include.................... The University of Phoenix

Enrollment............................. 320,000-plus

Revenue................................ $2.7 billion

Profit margin........................... 28%

ITT Educational Services

Schools include....................... ITT Technical Institute

Enrollment................................ 70,000-plus

Revenue....................................$1.32 billion

Profit margin............................. 37%

Strayer Education, Inc.

Schools include......................... Strayer University

Enrollment................................. 55,000-plus

Revenue.................................... $512 million

Profit margin.............................. 34%

*Profit margins based on an UBS analysis

What the Obama administration is considering . . .

* The Department of Education is mulling a “Gainful Employment” rule that would limit student debt. A proposed limit would be a debt service-to-income ratio of no more than 8%. This would force universities to lower their tuition, or face declining enrollment because fewer students could afford school. After a discussion period, the rules will be issued in November and go into effect summer 2011.


JOINT MEETING SELECTMEN, FINANCE AND EDUCATION 6-14-10
One idea for educational change...think it would have legs in Weston?

4-day school weeks gain popularity across US
YAHOO
By DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Writer
4 June 2010

FORT VALLEY, Ga. – During the school year, Mondays in this rural Georgia community are for video games, trips to grandma's house and hanging out at the neighborhood community center.

Don't bother showing up for school. The doors are locked and the lights are off.

Peach County is one of more than 120 school districts across the country where students attend school just four days a week, a cost-saving tactic gaining popularity among cash-strapped districts struggling to make ends meet. The 4,000-student district started shaving a day off its weekly school calendar last year to help fill a $1 million budget shortfall.

It was that or lay off 39 teachers the week before school started, said Superintendent Susan Clark.

"We're treading water," Clark said as she stood outside the headquarters of her seven-school district. "There was nothing else for us to do."

The results? Test scores went up.

So did attendance — for both students and teachers. The district is spending one-third of what it once did on substitute teachers, Clark said.

And the graduation rate likely will be more than 80 percent for the first time in years, Clark said.

The four days that students are in school are slightly longer and more crowded with classes and activities. After school, students can get tutoring in subjects where they're struggling.

On their off day, students who don't have other options attend "Monday care" at area churches and the local Boys & Girls Club, where tutors are also available to help with homework. The programs generally cost a few dollars a day per student.

Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance. In fact, there is mostly just anecdotal evidence in reports on the trend with little scientific data to back up what many districts say, said University of Southern Maine researcher Christine Donis-Keller.

"The broadest conclusion you can draw is that it doesn't hurt academics," said Donis-Keller, who is with the university's Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation.

Many districts that have the shortened schedule say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. But others say that not only did they not save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers.

The school district in Marlow, Okla., is switching back to a five-day week after administrators decided students were not being served well by attending school only four days. The 440-student district tried the shorter week the spring semester this year to save $25,000 in operation costs.

"It was harder on the teachers. We were asking the kids to move at a quicker pace," said district Superintendent Bennie Newton. "We're hoping the four-day week won't come into play next year."

The move by Peach County in Georgia gets mixed reviews.

Parents like Heather Bradshaw worry that their children are getting shortchanged on time with teachers.

"I don't feel like they're having the necessary time in the classroom," said Bradshaw, a single mother with a fourth-grade son at one of the county's three elementary schools. "The schedule has slowed him down."

Other parents prefer the shorter schedule and don't mind the hassle of finding a babysitter one day a week.

"It makes the children's weekend a little better, so they get more rest," said LaKeisha Johnson, who sends her fourth-grade daughter to the Boys & Girls Club on Mondays.

The trend of four-day school weeks started in New Mexico during the oil crisis of the 1970s and has been popular in rural states where students have to commute a long way. Other districts have used it as a way to try to fix schools with a long history of poor student performance by shaking up the schedule and giving children more time to study outside of school.

Georgia, Oklahoma and Maine have changed their laws in the last couple of years to allow districts to count their school year by hours rather than days, allowing for a four-day week if needed. Hawaii schools were off every other Friday this year for schools to save money, giving them the state with the shortest school year in the country.

From California to Minnesota to New York, districts — mostly small, rural ones with less than 5,000 students — are following the trend, hoping to rescue their bleeding budgets.

For Peach County, the four-day week was enough of a success that the school district is trying it again next year, Clark said. The move saves $400,000 annually and is popular among teachers and students because they get extra rest, she said

"Teachers tell me they are much more focused because they've had time to prepare. They don't have kids sleeping in class on Tuesday," she said. "Everything has taken on a laser-light focus."

Judge: Connecticut town can't hold graduations in church
The Associated Press
Article published May 31, 2010

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) _ A federal court judge has ruled two Connecticut public high schools can't hold their graduations inside a local church, saying it's an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall made the ruling Monday in the case of Enfield High School and Enrico Fermi High School, also in Enfield.

The Enfield school board said they voted to hold services at The First Cathedral in Bloomfield because it had enough space at the right price.  But two students and three of their parents sued.

Hall said Enfield had unconstitutionally entangled itself with religion by agreeing to cover up much of the church's religious imagery.  She also said the town had coerced the plaintiffs to support religion by forcing them to enter the church for graduation.



19 States Named as Finalists for Race to the Top
Duncan Salutes State and Local Leaders for Leading "Quiet Revolution" for School Reform
U.S. Department of Education Dept. Press Release
July 27, 2010

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that 19 states are the finalists for more than $3 billion available in the second round of funding in the Race to the Top program.

"Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia submitted bold blueprints for reform that bear the signatures of many key players at the state and local level who drive change in our schools," Duncan said.

"Peer reviewers identified these 19 finalists as having the boldest plans, but every state that applied will benefit from this process of collaboratively creating a comprehensive education reform agenda," Duncan added. "Much of the federal dollars we distribute though other channels can support their plan to raise standards, improve teaching, use data more effectively to support student learning, and turn around underperforming schools."

Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied for the second round of Race to the Top. Including the 36 applications for the second round of Race to the Top, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied for either the first or second rounds – or both.

The 19 finalists are: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

Duncan named the finalists at the end of a major speech at the National Press Club. In the speech, Duncan saluted educators, elected officials, and private sector leaders for leading a "quiet revolution" of the education reform across the country.

"From educators to parents and political leaders to journalists -- there is a growing sense that a quiet revolution is underway in our homes and schools, classrooms, and communities," Duncan said. "This quiet revolution is driven by motivated parents who want better educational options for their children. It's being driven by great educators and administrators who are challenging the defeatism and inertia that has trapped generations of children in second-rate schools."

He highlighted the momentum for adopting rigorous standards, elevating the teaching profession to reward excellence, turning around low-performing schools, and building better data systems to inform reform.

While the work is being done by governors, superintendents, and teachers at the state and local levels, the federal government is supporting their work through Race to the Top and other reform programs, including the Investing in Innovation Fund, the Teacher Incentive Fund, the School Improvement Grants under Title I, and the federal charter school program.

Through all of these programs, the Department of Education will be distributing almost $10 billion to support reform in states and local communities.

"As we look at the last 18 months, it is absolutely stunning to see how much change has happened at the state and local levels, unleashed in part by these incentive programs," Duncan said.

Race to the Top's Next Steps

Race to the Top is an historic federal investment in education reform, with $4.35 billion available to support states in their comprehensive reforms. The Department is reserving $350 million for a separate competition to support consortia of states that are creating the next generation of assessments that will support reform.

In the first round of competition supporting state-based reforms, Delaware and Tennessee won grants based on their comprehensive plans to reform their schools and the statewide support for those plans. Almost $3.4 billion remains to award grants to winners in the second round.

The finalists chosen today will travel to Washington during the week of Aug. 9 to present their plans to the peer reviewers who scored their applications. After the state's presentations and an extended question-and-answer period, the peer reviewers will finalize their scores and comments.

The Department intends to announce the winners of the competition in September.

"Just as in the first round, we're going to set a very high bar because we know that real and meaningful change will only come from doing hard work and setting high expectations," Duncan said.

Duncan acknowledged that not all of the finalists would be awarded grants from the almost $3.4 billion remaining in Race to the Top. President Obama has requested $1.35 billion for the program in the administration's fiscal 2011 budget.


Will towns get stuck with the school reform bill?
CT MIRROR
James J. Finley Jr.
June 1, 2010

Governor Rell has signed the highly touted 'school reform' bill, a bill that passed both chambers of the General Assembly overwhelmingly, garnering 31 votes in the Senate and 106 in the House. The Mirror describes the bill as the product of an "unlikely coalition" and the Governor's press statement says "all of the interested parties - educators, unions, parents, students, legislators and others - [were] together at the table".

Nobody questions the need for school reform - the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has been in the forefront calling for an increased state role in closing the "achievement gap." But one group was not invited to the table when it was being discussed: Chief elected municipal officials - those with the ultimate responsibility for paying for any new unfunded state mandate - were left out of the discussion.

The siren call of $195 million over four years in new, temporary federal funds for new programs is alluring, but let's look at the abysmal job the state is doing in meeting its existing education finance responsibilities.

In each year of the current biennium, Connecticut's Education Cost Sharing program was kept level-funded to FY 08-09 only by use of $271 million in federal budget stabilization funds -- money that will likely be gone in FY 11-12. Further, the reform legislation imposes new costs estimated to be between $21 and $28 million. Adding together the loss of ECS funds and the new costs, and subtracting the Race To The Top grants, it is possible that by the time the new law takes effect, property taxpayers could be hit with almost $250 million per year in new education costs.

The state's history of fulfilling financial commitments to towns and cities is sketchy at best. The state's share of K-12 public education costs next year will be 32.7%, the lowest in over a quarter-century. For example, special education "excess cost" grants were funded at $120 million, but applications for reimbursements will be about $145 million - so municipalities and property taxpayers will be forced to eat the $25 million difference. Altogether, towns and cities have suffered cuts in state aid in this biennium of over $100 million.

On top of that, the state's ability to fulfill its commitment is questionable - it faces a structural deficit of about $3.5 billion for FY 11-12. Is it any wonder local officials wonder whether sufficient state funding will be forthcoming and, if not, who will pay for the reform bill's new costs?

Few dispute the potential benefits from the school reform legislation. It's no fun being the wet blanket who has to talk about its price tag. But today's school closings, teacher layoffs and program cuts are just the beginning. Is the state going to be willing to "increase" ECS funding by $271 million in FY 11-12 to keep it "level-funded" to FY 08-09 and appropriate additional funding for unreimbursed school-reform mandates on local school districts?

It's an old story in Connecticut - the state buys into new programs with high-sounding rhetoric and then refuses to fund them, forcing municipalities and property taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Let's not let that happen - again. Improving school performance is important to Connecticut's future. CCM urges every citizen - local officials, homeowners and business leaders - to press state candidates for a commitment to adequately fund K-12 public education, including newly mandated costs for school reform.

James J. Finley Jr. is executive director & CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. CCM is the statewide association of towns and cities.
Hoping for federal aid, Rell signs sweeping education reform bill
CT MIRROR
Jacqueline Rabe and Robert A. Frahm
May 26, 2010

Hoping for a second chance at millions of dollars in federal stimulus money for school reform, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed into law today a massive education bill...full story here.

Stacy A. Lore/Spectrum Kids: Amount to ‘counselor’ may exceed $300,000
Weston FORUM
Written by Patricia Gay
Thursday, 15 April 2010 00:00

The dollar amount the Weston school district paid to an ex-autism counselor who allegedly faked her credentials may be higher than initially anticipated.

According to Weston Police Detective Carl Filsinger, Stacy Lore and her company, Spectrum Kids, LLC, may have racked up more than $300,000 for services provided to Weston special needs students from 2005 to 2007.

“Our investigation is still ongoing, but it looks like the numbers will be up in the $300,000 range,” he said.

The initial estimate was between $100,000 and $200,000, but is being adjusted as bills and tax forms are reviewed and tallied.

Ms. Lore was arrested by Norwalk Police on Sunday, March 28, and charged with first-degree larceny, second-degree forgery, and criminal impersonation for allegedly providing services to children with autism in the Norwalk school district, while claiming to possess certifications and degrees she didn’t have.

Although Norwalk is the only department to file charges against Ms. Lore so far, the department issued a statement saying she provided services to other towns in Westchester and Fairfield counties.

Weston police were notified last summer about the investigation into Ms. Lore. At that time, Superintendent Jerry Belair contacted the families involved, and turned over to police all information the school had on Ms. Lore.

“The schools and their attorney acted quickly and have fully cooperated with our investigation,” Det. Filsinger said.

In 2005, when Ms. Lore was retained as an independent contractor to provide special education services, Janet Rosenbaum was director of pupil personnel services for Weston schools and would have had the responsibility of checking Ms. Lore’s credentials, Mr. Belair said. Ms. Rosenbaum retired from the district in 2007.

Mr. Belair said it is the schools’ intent to recover any monies if the allegations aganst Ms. Lore are true.


An economist offers ideas for tracking academic achievement

Robert A. Frahm
April 6, 2010

Despite the reams of test scores, enrollment figures, attendance records and other data it collects on public schools, Connecticut falls woefully short in trying to make sense of it all, a noted state economist says.

Lawmakers are writing legislation to design a new statewide data collection system to meet requirements of the federal Race to the Top school reform program, but Fred Carstensen said they are overlooking a solution that already exists.

"It's on a state computer" at the Department of Labor, the University of Connecticut professor said.

Carstensen, head of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, was referring to a research model developed as part of a groundbreaking study published by the center two years ago.

The study, "Next Steps: Preparing a Quality Workforce," tracked about 170,000 high school sophomores from Connecticut for more than eight years as they entered college and the workforce. The study, which focused on students who took a statewide 10th-grade test between 1996 and 2000, could easily be adapted to build a system to analyze the long-term performance of students, teachers and schools, according to Carstensen.

"Simply a remarkable study of immense potential," he said.

Connecticut officials are revamping the state's education data system as they gear up to compete for a second round of awards in Race to the Top, the Obama administration's $4.3 billion incentive program to spur innovation in America's schools. Only two states - Tennessee and Delaware - were named last week as winners of the first round.

Connecticut began building a new education data system five years ago, assigning each student a unique identifying number, making it easier to track student progress from year to year. However, the system still lacks several crucial elements, according to federal reviewers who examined the state's initial Race to the Top application.  The state, for example, has not yet completed procedures for matching student data to individual teachers or for linking data from elementary and secondary schools to higher education, reviewers said.

The reviewers gave Connecticut only 10 of a possible 24 points on a rating of its data system. Tennessee and Delaware each received the maximum 24 points.

Carstensen singled out Tennessee as a model, saying the state has gathered nearly two decades of detailed information to monitor long-term student progress and other factors related to school performance.

"The gap between Tennessee and Connecticut is just enormous," he said.

One of the most difficult problems confronting educators is the challenge of linking student progress to teacher and principal evaluations - a key goal of the Race to the Top guidelines.

Although lawmakers continue to revise the proposed legislation, Carstensen said the initial bill under consideration in Connecticut failed to take into account the complexity of the issue.

"There are an awful lot of things about school organization and the context in which teachers function to know you can't just look at student progress and say the teacher is at fault or the teacher deserves credit," he said. "That's just ridiculous."

He added, "How do you measure a teacher when 50 percent of the students change during the year?"

He said a meaningful system ought to include a wide array of data, "beginning with the [student's] earliest contact with the educational system," including pre-kindergarten programs, and continuing through college. He said it should cover factors such as class size, absenteeism, disciplinary issues, family characteristics, turnover of teachers and students, physical facilities, access to computers, school size, graduation rates and the presence of support personnel such as social workers.

Some local teacher unions have refused to support Connecticut's Race to the Top application because they object to the effort to link teacher evaluation to student performance.

"I have a huge problem with that," said Gary Peluchette, president of the Bridgeport Education Association, the local teachers' union in Bridgeport, one of the state's poorest cities. "Our kids come to school with a lot more issues than suburban kids do," he said. "Now you want to evaluate us based on test scores when the playing field is not level?"

Developing an evaluation system based on student data is tricky, but possible, said Stephen Coelen, author of the Next Steps study and senior research fellow at the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.

Coelen, who once worked at Tennessee's Center for Business and Economic Research, said Connecticut should build partnerships with universities and other research institutions to develop its data system. A strong system should collect data even when students move across state lines, he said. "States that take it seriously and have multiple [data] measures are going to be performing better in the long run," he said.

In New Haven, a recently approved teachers' contract won praise from the Obama administration because it provides for development of a system to link student and teacher performance.

Alex Johnston, head of the New Haven-based school reform group ConnCAN, has lobbied aggressively for legislation to bolster the state's data system. He disagrees with critics who say the proposed legislation is unfair to teachers or too simplistic.

"It's nobody's intention that the only pieces of data we'd be using [for teacher evaluation] are the [state] test scores," he said.  The proposed legislation "leaves a lot of room for districts to define student achievement growth," he said.

Johnston is a member of a working group of educators and others that is advising lawmakers on legislation related to the state's Race to the Top application, including the data collection proposal. The group was convened by Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, and Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, the co-chairmen of the legislature's Education Committee.

Gaffey has not talked to Carstensen about the legislation but said the working group shares the belief that the new data and evaluation system should not be oversimplified. "It sounds like we're on the same track," he said. "There has to be context beyond just what the numbers say."

Education falls into a judicial rabbit hole
DAY editorial
Paul Choiniere
Article published Mar 28, 2010

This is what the Connecticut Constitution has to say about the state's obligation to provide its children an education.

"There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state. The General Assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation."

This week the Connecticut Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, determined that simple phrase requires "that the public schools provide their students with an education suitable to give them the opportunity to be responsible citizens able to participate fully in democratic institutions, such as jury service and voting, and to prepare them to progress to institutions of higher education, or to obtain productive employment and otherwise contribute to the state's economy."

So states the plurality opinion written by Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr.

A few observations:

If the framers of the constitution intended that to be the required standard, they could have said it.  The court's majority ignored the plain fact that the constitution quite explicitly states that implementing the "principle" of a free education is the job of the elected General Assembly.  Finally, I would contend that the state's public schools already meet the standard cited by the court. Even in Connecticut's poorest schools a student who studies hard and does his or her homework should graduate with the ability to participate in our democracy, to serve on a jury or vote, and to obtain a trade or go to college.

Is the majority instead suggesting there is a constitutional requirement to assure that every student graduate with these abilities? Nice goal perhaps, but it is unrealistic, because achievement is ultimately up to the will of the individual student and the family commitment to education.

Is the court saying that every student, no matter where they live, should have the same opportunity to obtain an education that prepares them for a productive life? That is certainly a more valid goal, but there is no way of magically mandating it. The quality of teachers, of equipment, buildings and textbooks, and the ability to pay for all that, are significant factors in educational outcomes. But so too is the economic standing of a community, the level of education of the parents, and the level of poverty or affluence.

Connecticut has a serious problem with educational disparity between its urban centers and its affluent suburbs, its rural towns and its toady communities. In 2009 high school graduation rates for Hispanic students were 58 percent, 66 percent for blacks and 87 percent for whites, and not coincidentally these minority groups populate its distressed cities, while suburbia remains predominately white.

Addressing this problem, creating an environment in which all students have the best opportunity to succeed, must be a product of the political, not judicial process. It involves ending the overreliance on the property tax to fund education, increasing access to early childhood education and replacing or repairing crumbling inner city schools. But it also involves reviving the economic vitality of the state's cities, reversing the flight to the suburbs and rebuilding pride in education.

In 2007 Hartford Superior Court Judge Joseph Shortall recognized the court's limitations, ruling, quite correctly, that the state constitution does not guarantee an educational standard and it was not the role of the judiciary to supply one.

Filed in 2005, the lawsuit that Shortall dismissed argued that Connecticut's failure to maintain a suitable and substantially equal education system was a constitutional violation. The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, a group of municipal and educational organizations. Parents of students in New London, Plainfield, Windham, Hartford, East Hartford, New Britain, New Haven, Bridgeport and Danbury joined in the lawsuit.

It is Shortall's decision the Supreme Court has overruled. So back to Superior Court goes the case. But what does a judge do to correct the alleged constitutional violation? Does he or she order more education spending, with no responsibility for figuring out where it will come from? When filing the lawsuit, the coalition issued a study projecting $2 billion more a year is necessary to assure all schoolchildren get a good education.

But is more money really the solution? Hartford and New Haven have among the highest per pupil expenditure rates in the state, surpassed only by the most affluent towns, yet educational outcomes remain deplorable.

Does the judge become an education czar, outlining what classroom sizes, early childhood opportunities and classroom laboratories pass constitutional muster? Or does the judge simply make note that there is a problem - something lawmakers already recognize - and order it corrected without saying how?

In his dissent, Justice Peter T. Zarella issued a warning the majority should have listened to.

"Judges will become legislators because the courts will now be allowed, and very likely required, to define minimum educational 'inputs' and 'outputs' in order to determine whether the state has satisfied its purported constitutional mandate to provide Connecticut schoolchildren with a 'suitable' education," wrote Zarella.

The result, he said, will be "decades of confusion (that) produce a trail of wasteful litigation."

It is hard to imagine how that will benefit Connecticut's students.
UPDATED: Conn. high court sets minimum education standard
DAY
Associated Press
Article published Mar 22, 2010

HARTFORD (AP) - Connecticut's Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit that challenges the state's method of funding public schools, saying the state constitution promises an education that is good enough to prepare students for a job or college.The 4-3 ruling means the lawsuit, brought against the state by the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding in 2005, may go back to the Superior Court. The coalition argues that achievement gaps between rich and poor towns show some students are not receiving an adequate education.

The group, made up of officials and parents from several municipalities, says the way to close that gap is to overhaul the 22-year-old funding formula that determines how much state money the schools receive.

"The decision means that the state can no longer pay lip service to the notion of putting up a building and putting in a teacher and saying that's a meaningful education," said Robert Solomon, a Yale professor and attorney who supervised law students who argued the case for the coalition.

A spokesman for Attorney General Richard Blumenthal did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

A Superior Court judge had dismissed that portion of the coalition's case in 2007, agreeing with the state's argument that the constitution guaranteed access to education, but did not guarantee a standard of quality.

The current state education funding formula created in 1988, the Education Cost Sharing grant, distributes state education funds to municipalities using a complicated equation that takes into account poverty, tax bases and other factors.

Some local officials, particularly in struggling large cities, have said the system has failed and arbitrarily allocates funds for regular and special education.

Many of those officials involved in the case said they would like to scrap the formula and start over. Some suggested requiring the state to pay all education costs.

The coalition said schools across Connecticut are underfunded by $1 billion to $2 billion a year, and that legislators and Gov. M. Jodi Rell haven't done enough to address the inequities.


Community group scoffs at fees for community room
By Colin Gustafson, Greenwich TIME STAFF WRITER
Published: 09:50 p.m., Sunday, February 28, 2010 (we only saw this today, March 1)

If it was built as a community room, it should be open to the community.

That's the sentiment of members of a western Greenwich neighborhood group who say they have been unfairly denied free access to a "community room" at the rebuilt Hamilton Avenue School since it reopened a year ago.

District officials have asked the group to pay fees associated with custodial work and liability insurance to use the space.

Sylvester Pecora, co-chairman of the Chickahominy Neighborhood Association, is outraged by the idea of having to pay to use a room that he believes was built for groups like his in the first place. His group has not held any meetings in the room since it opened.

"This is a slap in the face," Pecora said. "It aggravates the hell out of me that they built this room primarily for the community, and now they tell us we can't use it without (paying)." The cost of using the room is unclear.

The schools chief recently said he's sympathetic to these concerns and would be willing to take another look at the practice of charging outside groups to use the space.

Closed in 2005 because of mold and structural issues, Hamilton Avenue School was supposed to have been rebuilt in 18 months. Instead the project took more than three years to complete, causing overall costs to swell by $2.2 million.

A former member of the building committee that oversaw the reconstruction, Pecora said he had always been under the impression during the planning and rebuilding of the school that access to its community room would be free for neighborhood groups.

Back when the reconstruction was first being planned more than five years ago, he said then-schools chief Larry Leverett billed the new Hamilton Avenue School as a "community school" that would serve as a center for education and, secondarily, for community activity as well.

Pecora said he was shocked to learn after the school reopened last February that his group would have to pay to use the room.

As recently as December, former Assistant Superintendent Sue Wallerstein told Pecora that the district could not make an exception to its facility-use policies by waiving the fees for his neighborhood association.

Pecora believes community members, after investing so much into pushing the delay-plagued project forward, have already paid for the school with their blood, sweat and tears -- not to mention their taxpayer dollars.

"I have been a taxpayer for more than 40 years. My children and wife went to the school," he said. "I don't like it when somebody ... tells me I cannot use it."

Not only that, but many have continued to invest their time and energy into improving the school environment, Pecora said. He pointed to his neighborhood association's recent efforts to ease vehicle congestion near the parking lot and reduce truck traffic on nearby roadways.

The school's PTA currently uses the space, free of charge for a certain number of hours, to hold some of its meetings. And just recently, the District 3 delegation to the Representative Town Meeting began holding meetings there at no cost, after seeking access from the town clerk.

The Chickahominy Neighborhood Association continues to hold its meetings in the basement of St. Roch's Church, just across the street from the rebuilt school.

Thomas Conelias, the neighborhood association's other co-chairman and a member of the local RTM delegation, bemoaned the district's decision to charge some groups for access to the community room.

"It's a shame that we cannot use our own building without paying for it," said Conelias, who serves on the District 3 RTM delegation.

Terry Moore, a mother of two Hamilton Avenue School students and a member of both the PTA and the neighborhood association, feels likewise.

"I think the administration should be working with the community to make sure that there are not too many hoops to go through, given the understanding that there was a commitment," Moore said.

Superintendent of Schools Sidney Freund on Friday said that he would be willing to reconsider the practice of charging groups to use the space.

"I do understand their perspective and why they are upset," he said. "I'm not making any promises, but I am certainly willing to take a look and see what can be done."

Wallerstein, who retired at the end of last year, could not be reached for comment.

Page last updated at 12:18 GMT, Friday, 19 February 2010
boy on laptop
The school district says the laptops had a "security device" - US reaction by education establishment to counter effects of fine film at right above?
US school accused of web spying
By Angela Harrison, BBC News education reporter

Parents in the US have accused a school of spying on children by remotely activating webcams on laptops.

A couple from Pennsylvania have filed a lawsuit against a school district which gave laptops to its high school pupils.

They say their son was told off by teachers for "engaging in improper behaviour in his home" and that the evidence was an image from his webcam.

Lower Merion School District says it has now deactivated a tracking device installed on the laptops.

It says the security feature was only used to track lost, stolen and missing laptops.

But it was deactivated on Thursday and would not be re-instated without informing students and families, the district said.

'Stages of undress'

The Lower Merion School District gave the laptops to all 1,800 students at its two high schools with the aim of giving them access to school resources around the clock, according to its website.

Michael and Holly Robbins are suing the district on behalf of their child and all the children in the district issued with the laptops.

They allege the school district invaded their privacy and are guilty of "wiretapping" by putting children under covert surveillance.

Images captured may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including in various stages of dress or undress
Lawsuit claims

In their lawsuit, they claim the webcams were activated remotely and images were taken which could have included anything going on in a room where the laptop was placed.

The legal papers say: "As the laptops were routinely used by students and family members at home, it is believed that many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including in various stages of dress or undress".

On Thursday, the Lower Merion School District posted a letter to parents on its website saying it had always "gone to great lengths" to protect the privacy of its students.

In it, the Schools Superintendent Christopher McGinley gives details of the security feature, which he said was activated only if a laptop was reported lost, stolen or missing.

"The security feature's capabilities were limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen," he wrote.

"This feature was only used for the narrow purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District never activated the security feature for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever."

However, the district had carried out a preliminary review of security procedures and had disabled the security-tracking program, he added.

The district would now conduct a thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use and look at any other "technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play".

"We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families, " he said.


Connecticut part of project to reinvent high school
Robert A. Frahm, CT MIRROR
February 18, 2010

Just 16, and off to college?

That could become an option for high school sophomores in Connecticut, one of eight states named Wednesday to pilot test a rigorous new system, including board examinations, that would mark a dramatic shift in the traditional notion of high school education.

By fall of 2011, those states will begin testing a system of coursework and tests that has been widely used in other nations to bolster academic standards and prepare students for college, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) announced.

The Board Examination system has been used in places such as Australia, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Scotland, Singapore, and parts of Canada and Germany but has been missing from U.S. schools, the NCEE said.

"This is about implementing the best the world has to offer," said Marc Tucker, president of NCEE, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that has pushed for higher academic standards.

Under the proposed system, students who volunteer to take the exam and pass it at the end of 10th grade would be eligible to enroll at any open admissions two-year or four-year college in their state. In Connecticut, that would be the two-year Community College System.

"It would be a significant change. As a culture, we're geared toward thinking of four years of high school," said Everett Lyons, principal of Bristol Eastern High School and one of several educators who attended a recent briefing on the proposal. He said some students are ready for college or employment early while others are tempted to slack off, especially during their senior year.

If they are ready, he said, "Why hold them for two more years in this holding pattern? I think it has a great deal of merit."

Those who do not pass the lower division high school exams will be offered a customized program designed to help them succeed on their next attempt.  Students who pass the exams also could choose to remain in school and take an advanced upper division program preparing them for admission to selective colleges.

Tucker said NCEE hopes to sharply increase the number of students ready to succeed in college without having to take remedial courses. Nationwide, many high school graduates are unprepared for college work. In Connecticut, officials at the state's two-year community colleges estimate 60 to 70 percent of students signing up for degree programs are in need of remedial work.

At the Connecticut State University System, more than half of new students are enrolled in developmental or remedial math courses, according to the State Department of Higher Education.

The NCEE first proposed the Board Examination system in 2006, as part of a package of school reforms aimed at improving workforce competitiveness. The reform package has since been endorsed by the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, and by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.

The proposed Board Examination system includes a core program of courses, teaching materials matched to a well-designed syllabus, high-quality exams and professional training for teachers.

The system most likely would require states to pass legislation allowing a new path to a diploma, Tucker said. It is designed to encourage students to take tougher courses and work harder in order to be ready for college or the workforce, he said.

"For the first time in the United States, kids will know what they have to do, whether they want to be a carpenter, a plumber or a brain surgeon," he said.

Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont will work with NCEE through a $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pilot test the new curriculum, teacher training and exams.

Each state will select between 10 and 20 schools to pilot test the system beginning with the 2011-12 school year.

The board exams and curriculum will be aligned with a series of new voluntary national standards under development by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Participating states will approve up to five Board Examination programs and invite high schools to pilot one or more of those programs for freshmen and sophomores and one or more for juniors and seniors.

The performance-based approach marks a shift from the traditional system requiring students to put in their time and accumulate credits.

"It is consistent with what we've wanted to do with secondary school reform," said Connecticut Education Commissioner Mark McQullan. For some students, the new tests could be an alternative to the Connecticut Academic Performance Test now required of all 10th-graders, he said.

McQuillan has been an advocate for high school reform and has proposed plans that include performance exams for key subjects and provisions allowing early admission to college. "We wanted to get kids through faster and hook them up to college faster," he said. If the proposed system proves to be successful, "it could be quite transformative," he said.

Calvin Brown, 17, a junior at Bristol Eastern High School, said such an approach would  appeal to "students who are willing and ready to get out there and take hold of their future and not waste time. There are a lot of kids who definitely could go off to college now, a lot of people better off out there working. It's good to have those options open."

The idea "sounds great to me," said 17-year-old Hunter Kodama, a senior at Norwich Free Academy.  "Not every student is bound for college, but some students are ready for college before others."

Kodama, a student representative on the State Board of Education, said the idea of testing for college readiness as a sophomore "sounds intriguing. . . . I'm sure I would have attempted it at least."

Wednesday's announcement also drew praise from David Carter, chancellor of the Connecticut State University System. "There are a number of students who right now are capable of completing high school [early]," he said. "If you're capable, why not go ahead and challenge yourself?

"I'm excited by it," he said. "I think it could end up motivating other students who might not be thinking of college."

However, state Higher Education Commissioner Michael Meotti said he's not convinced of the value of the program. Even if they pass the exams as sophomores, most high-performing students will opt to remain in high school to prepare for selective colleges, he said, and he questioned whether the system would help low-performing students.

The Board Examination system uses a series of existing tests and provides a faster, cheaper and surer way to catch the United States up to the best performing countries than by developing new tests and teaching systems, according to the NCEE.

"Students who pass these exams will meet international standards, not just national standards," the NCEE said. "The examinations these programs use are much better at measuring the kinds of analytical skills that will make America competitive than the kinds of tests most states now use."


State Educators Hail Obama's Budget Proposals
Hartford Courant
By GRACE E. MERRITT
February 4, 2010

State education leaders say they're pleased that President Barack Obama's proposed education budget would overhaul the Bush administration's test-based No Child Left Behind law with a more competitive approach that rewards reforms designed to raise student achievement, improve teaching and inspire students to excel in math and science.

Connecticut is set to receive $455 million under Obama's proposed budget to help develop better schools, improve student achievement and make high school graduates ready for college and a career.

Many of the proposals in the education budget, released Monday, expand Obama's Race to the Top national school reform competition, which encourages expansion of charter schools and linking teacher pay to student performance, among other reforms.

The budget would add $1.35 billion more to Race to the Top and offer millions in competitive grants for state and local efforts to improve literacy instruction and develop effective strategies for teaching and learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

"It more clearly defines what's most important to invest in," said George Sugai, a professor at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut.

He said he liked the fact that the budget increases funding for education overall, focuses on improving student performance "by looking at how you teach" and pays attention to special education to make sure the needs of all children are addressed.

"We see a refocused shift from No Child Left Behind, which was based on year-to-year test scores and consequences, to a new calculus of focusing on instruction, using data and putting more emphasis on student performance from year to year," said State Board of Education spokesman Thomas Murphy.

State Rep. Andrew M. Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislature's education committee, called the new approach a "vast improvement" from the "one-size-fits-all" approach of the Bush administration.

He said the new approach is more logical and attempts to improve the nation's global competitiveness.

"It sounds to me like the right direction," Fleischmann said. "We know the United States is falling behind our competitors when it comes to math and science."

State Sen. Thomas P. Gaffey, D-Meriden, the other education committee chairman, was more reserved, saying he'd like to know more specifics.

"It remains unclear as to actually how they are going to define these terms as having children college-ready and career-ready," Gaffey said. "That's going to be left to the Department of Education to write those terms. I get very nervous when there is stuff proposed in legislation, but it is left up to the bureaucrats to write the terms."

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant


School choice: 'The most efficient way' to desegregate
CT MIRROR
Robert A. Frahm
February 2, 2010

As Connecticut spends millions of dollars a year to meet a court desegregation order by building and running racially-integrated magnet schools, parents like Iraida Sanchez of Hartford would be happy with a far less expensive alternative.

Year after year, Sanchez has put her son Nathaniel's name in a lottery. She is not aiming for one of the region's state-of-the-art magnet schools but hoping instead for a desk in a regular elementary school in any of the city's neighboring suburbs.

No luck so far. "Ever since first grade or kindergarten he's always on the waiting list," she said. Nathaniel's now in fourth grade.

Despite what state officials insist is an ample supply of open seats under a decades-old school choice program, suburban schools have accepted only a trickle of children while Sanchez and thousands of other Hartford parents continue to wait.

Moving some of Hartford's largely minority student population to integrated or mostly white suburban schools was to have been a key element in the effort to comply with a 1996 state Supreme Court order [3] in the Sheff vs. O'Neill desegregation case. However, the state put its emphasis - and its money - mainly into building magnet schools with popular specialty themes such as science, performing arts and international studies. The suburban choice program languished.

But today, as magnet schools and the state's fiscal crisis push education budgets to the breaking point, some educators believe this civil rights-era program, now known as Open Choice, could be a more budget-friendly, long-term answer to school desegregation in the Hartford region.

"The future of Sheff rests on the back of Open Choice, not magnet schools," said Bruce Douglas, executive director of the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC), an agency that runs both the choice program and several magnet schools in the Hartford region.

Leaders of the state Department of Education and the legislature's Education Committee agree that the choice program should be expanded, and the potentially volatile issue of requiring suburban towns to accept city students may come up in the General Assembly session that starts Wednesday.

Urban-suburban transfer programs have been used to desegregate schools in cities such as Boston, St. Louis and Milwaukee, and plaintiffs in the Sheff lawsuit agree that Hartford's suburban choice program can play a larger role.

"We've always believed that [suburban] choice was a far more effective means to offer quality and integrated education for the bang for the buck," said John Brittain, a civil rights lawyer who was part of the team that filed the Sheff lawsuit in 1989.

Among those hoping to bolster the Open Choice program is state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan, who is troubled by the focus on magnets as the central strategy to meet the Sheff goals.

"Relative to Sheff, it has not been a good strategy," McQuillan said. Magnet schools sprouted across Connecticut following a 1996 law that promised the state would pay the entire cost (later reduced to 95 percent) of building new magnets.

The state has spent nearly half a billion dollars to build more than a dozen magnets in the Hartford region with several others under construction or in planning. Nevertheless, the effort to place enough Hartford children in integrated schools has been a struggle.

About one quarter of Hartford's 21,730 minority schoolchildren now attend integrated magnet schools, charter schools, regional technical and agricultural high schools, or suburban schools. However, under terms of a court-approved agreement with the Sheff plaintiffs, the state must increase that number to 41 percent by the 2012-2013 school year.

As many as 14,000 names remain on waiting lists for magnet schools and the Open Choice program, officials estimate. Most are Hartford students.

Although the legislature increased support for operating magnet schools in the Sheff region this year, it did not increase the subsidy to suburban schools for enrolling Hartford students in the choice program. That subsidy remains at $2,500 per student despite McQuillan's request for a substantial increase.

Bolstering that subsidy would be far more efficient than building another magnet school for, say, $60 million, said former Avon Superintendent of Schools Richard Kisiel, now representing the Sheff plaintiffs under the court-approved settlement.

"You take that $60 million and translate that into [Open Choice] incentive money - absolutely it's the most efficient way, but we can't seem to convince the legislature," he said. "If they had increased the incentive as the commissioner proposed, I'm convinced that would have opened up seats. . . . I think it could solve the problem completely."

McQuillan still hopes to get more incentive money but also plans to ask the legislature to give him authority to order suburban schools to accept additional Open Choice applicants.

"Choice is the preferred strategy," McQuillan said, "but you can't execute a strategy like that if you don't have any power and, secondly, no money."

State Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, co-chairman of the legislature's Education Committee, supports the idea of allowing the commissioner to order schools to increase participation in the Open Choice program. "I don't see how you reach the [Sheff] goal . . . unless he does have that authority," he said.

Nevertheless, forcing schools to accept students in what has always been a voluntary program undoubtedly would be met with resistance. "In my community, the fact it's voluntary has an extremely positive effect. Mandating things is very corrosive," said Cal Heminway, chairman of the Granby Board of Education and past president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.

Granby is among the most active school systems in the Open Choice program, taking more than 3 percent of its student body from Hartford.

But is the expansion of Open Choice the best strategy for pursuing the Sheff goals?

The magnet school approach has led to major school construction projects in places such as New Haven and Hartford, helping those cities replace or renovate crumbling schools. Magnets also have renewed interest in city schools from thousands of applicants, including suburban families who have put their names on long waiting lists for the popular specialized schools. Four Hartford magnet schools recently were cited in U.S. News & World Report's survey of America's best high schools.

"As long as there is a demand, then we haven't reached the limit" for magnets, said Norma Neumann-Johnson, principal of Hartford's Breakthrough Magnet School. "Just building magnets may not be the only solution. Choice should be part of it, but I think we need to keep going."

Edward Linehan, who formerly ran magnet programs in both Hartford and New Haven, said state officials should not ignore the benefits of magnets.

"If Open Choice were seen as the only future expansion [of desegregation programs], you lose the potential impact on urban school districts that magnets represent," he said. "The cost of voluntarily desegregating our schools is going to be substantial, and the least expensive alternative may not be the most effective."

The choice program was known as Project Concern when it began in 1966 with 266 Hartford children bused to schools in Farmington, Manchester, Simsbury, South Windsor and West Hartford. It drew national attention and was once considered a showcase for racial integration, but after reaching a peak of about 1,200 students in the 1970s it fell on hard times and nearly closed.

Today, enrollment hovers near 1,200 again but growth has been slow. A state study last year reported that suburbs have the capacity to enroll three times that number. Still, of more than 4,000 applicants this year, just 236 children were selected in a lottery for new seats, according to CREC.

Suburban officials have been reluctant to open more spaces. Some question the accuracy of the state study on school capacity. Others cite factors such as cost and limited class sizes. Many accept only the youngest students, those in kindergarten or the primary grades, saying older students have more difficulty adjusting or are sometimes lagging academically.

In Granby, for example, schools accept new Open Choice applicants only up to second grade so that they can stay in the Granby system throughout elementary, middle and high school, said Heminway.

"You send us a ninth-grader with $2,500, and there is no way we can service that kid," he said.

To run a choice program successfully, schools should have support to pay for services such as extra training for teachers or after-school buses allowing city children to take part in sports or extracurricular activities, Heminway said.

In Plainville, about 50 students from Hartford attend school under the choice program. "We keep trying to take more, but we don't have the space," said Kathy Binkowski, superintendent of schools. Some classrooms already exceed school board guidelines on class size limits, she said.

An early study of the choice program, then known as Project Concern, said it produced long-term benefits. The study, published in 1992 by Teachers College at Columbia University, found that graduates of the program had lower dropout rates, more social contact with whites, better success in college and fewer problems with police.

"I learned how to deal with different cultures," said Angela Minto, of Hartford, a former Open Choice student and one of nine black graduates in a class of 192 seniors at Plainville High School in 2004.  "In the real world when you grow up, you're going to have to deal with different kinds of people," said Minto, who later attended Howard University, where she graduated in 2008.

Minto's mother enrolled three daughters in the choice program in Plainville, looking for "a diverse education," Minto said, and "a better education than what Hartford schools were giving at the time."

That is the same goal that prompts parents such as Iraida Sanchez, Nathaniel's mother, to put their children's names in the lottery again and again.

"I'm still keeping my fingers crossed," Sanchez said.


Charter Schools - not a popular idea in most states, as of now...

Obama to seek $1.35 billion more for education
YAHOO
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer
January 19, 2010

FAIRFAX, Va. – President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he'll ask Congress for $1.35 billion to extend an education grant program for states, saying that getting schools right "will shape our future as a nation."

Obama outlined the proposal that will be part of his budget request for this year at an elementary school here, where he also held a short discussion with sixth-grade students.

The $787 billion economic stimulus program that Obama signed into law soon after taking office included $4.3 billion in competitive grants for states, nicknamed the "Race to the Top" fund. States must amend education laws and policies to compete for a share of the money.

The deadline to apply for the program is Tuesday, and officials expect more than 30 states to apply. The Education Department is expected to announce its first of two rounds of awards in April — with Obama saying that not all who enter will get a grant.

The president said that extending the program would allow more states to win grants. He also wants to use some of the $1.35 billion for a similarly competitive grant program for local school districts.

"Offering our children an outstanding education is one of our most fundamental — perhaps our most fundamental — obligations as a country," Obama said in brief remarks. "Countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, and I refuse to let that happen on my watch."

With the grant programs, Obama is trying to make federal education spending more of a competitive endeavor to encourage states and school districts to do better, rather than a solely formula-driven effort in which states and districts look forward to receiving a certain amount of money each school year, regardless of how good a job they do educating students.

To that end, Obama sees the use of student test scores to judge teacher performance and the creation of charter schools, which are funded with public money but operate independently of local school boards, as solutions to the problems that plague public education.

National teachers' unions disagree. They argue that student achievement amounts to much more than a score on a standardized test and that it would be a mistake to rely heavily on charter schools.

The "Race to the Top" fund — and the opportunity to compete for the billions of dollars it holds — was designed to encourage states to rework their education systems and bring them more in line with Obama's vision. Education is largely a state and local responsibility.

So far, more than a dozen states have changed laws or policies to link data on student achievement to the performance of teachers and principals, or pave the way for opening more charter schools.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, called the administration's plans "exciting."

Obama is expected to send Congress his 2011 budget proposal sometime next month.

State Stands To Win Up To $175M For School Reform
Department of Education Racing To Finish Race To The Top Application
The Hartford Courant
By GRACE E. MERRITT
January 18, 2010

HARTFORD —

The state Department of Education has been racing to finish its application to the federal Race to the Top competition that's designed to stimulate broad-based school reform.

With $4.35 billion on the table — a tantalizing chunk of change in a time of tight budgets — states are fiercely competing to file the most compelling proposal.

"We're in an era of fiscal crisis. This is the only game in town," said Tom Murphy, spokesman for the state Department of Education.

The grant program, part of the federal economic stimulus package, is designed to reward states that promote innovative reforms to improve teaching, do a better job tracking student performance and shore up failing schools.

Connecticut stands to win up to $175 million in Race to the Top money and is working overtime to get towns to sign on, write proposed legislation and iron out hundreds of other details by Tuesday's deadline.

Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan has been working late and on weekends and held numerous meetings with superintendents, teacher organizations and school boards to encourage schools systems across the state to support the application by signing a memorandum of understanding to participate.

So far, 120 out of 187 school districts — including charter schools and regional education centers — have signed up. To promote cooperation, the application encourages each district's superintendent, school board chairman and teacher union representative to sign the agreement.

Some school boards have been hesitant to sign, worried about whether they will be able to withdraw from the project at any time and whether local taxpayers will be saddled with extra costs to keep programs running after the federal money dries up, said Robert Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, which has been advising local boards.

"What we're doing is just telling them they should review details of the state plan, figure how much they are eligible to receive and think about whether the district will be able to support the work when the funding ends in four years," Rader said.

Suffield's board of education, for example, opted not to sign the memorandum of agreement last week, arguing that its estimated $33,000 allocation spread out over four years would not come close to helping the board pay for changes it wants to make.

Connecticut is eligible to receive a maximum of $175 million spread over four years, a small number compared to the $8.5 billion the state spends on pre-kindergarten through Grade 12 public education each year.

Half the Race to the Top money would go directly to local participating towns based on need. Hartford, for example, would get $14.8 million. West Hartford would get a relatively small lump sum of $170,000 in each of the four years.

"Big cities are in for millions of dollars and we're in for diddly-squat. That's not the issue," said Terry Schmitt, vice chairman of the West Hartford school board. The school board voted recently to be a "good citizen" and respond to the commissioner's appeal to sign up but also to take advantage of cutting-edge teacher training and professional development.

The other half of the grant money would pay for state-run activities, such as professional development for teachers, running a regional teacher exchange, building data systems to track students from kindergarten through the public university system, expanding advanced placement courses and hiring more Department of Education employees to run everything.

Along with getting towns to sign on, the board of education is developing proposed legislation to allow for secondary school reform, lift enrollment caps on charter schools and increase state per-pupil grants to charter schools from $9,300 to $10,300.

•Staff writer Shawn Beals contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant

State Board Of Education Discourages So-Called Tracking In Schools
Hartford Courant
By GRACE E. MERRITT
January 7, 2010

HARTFORD —

The State Board of Education voted Wednesday to oppose the longtime practice of tracking students by academic ability, saying it funnels a disproportionate number of low-income and minority students to less challenging classes that hurt their chances to succeed.

The resolution is not binding on school systems, but is designed to discourage the practice.

The board's resolution calls for schools that do track students to inform parents if their child is on a low track and tell them that the level of course work would not be rigorous enough to allow the child to attend the state university system.

In addition, schools must file annual reports explaining their tracking systems, describing the research that supports them and mapping out the demographic characteristics of students assigned to each track level.

"The intent is not to take issue with instructional-level classes or groups," board member Theresa Hopkins-Staten said. "It's to take issue with the disproportionate number of students of color and low-income students in low-track classes.

"This is something we, as a board, need to monitor ... to ensure high quality education is available to all in this state."

The measure is not aimed at advanced placement courses or honors courses or even just splitting up a classroom into different reading groups, said Tom Murphy, spokesman for the state Department of Education.

"That's not tracking," he said. "Tracking is when you have an A-team and a B-team and maybe even a C-team and you never leave those teams. You have a different curriculum, a different pace and a different set of expectations."

Assistant Education Commissioner George Coleman said the resolution approved unanimously Wednesday is designed to make sure parents realize that their child has been placed in a non-college preparatory track and give them an opportunity to see the data supporting that placement and redress the decision.

Hopkins-Staten said she proposed the resolution after learning that some school systems in Connecticut still adhere to rigid tracking. The Department of Education doesn't know exactly how many school systems still have tracking because schools systems are run and controlled by local school boards.

For instance, the board learned that Danbury and Stamford still have tracking systems — though they're dismantling them — when school leaders presented the board with their school improvement plans recently.

Tracking, which was popular in American schools in the 1970s, has fallen out of favor in some education circles, Murphy said.

"We are trying to get away from it," Murphy said.

Instead, state school officials prefer a more heterogeneous approach in which a wide range of students learn together in one classroom.

"Research says if you are in a heterogeneous classroom where you have students of all levels and experiences, students, particularly students who are struggling, can do better," Murphy said.

Critics, however, say that approach does a disservice to high-achieving students who might become bored as extra time is spent with other students. A group called Stamford Residents for Excellence in Education, for example, has said that Stamford's plan to dismantle tracking would "dumb down" instruction.

There is conflicting research on both sides of the issue.

A study by the Fordham Institute released last month on tracking in Massachusetts middle schools found that more students at schools with two or three levels of math scored near the top of state math tests than those at schools with only one math track.

But Stamford Superintendent of Schools Joshua P. Starr firmly believes in the benefits of "eradicating" the tracking system, which he says serves only high-performing students.

"The kids at bottom stay at bottom and it hurts kids that are traditionally lower performers," he said. "They are not being challenged. They are not being asked to work at a higher level. The evidence is overwhelming. It all leads to the same conclusion: Tracking does not work for those kids."

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant

Kan. Delays Aid Payments to Schools for 3rd Month
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 5, 2010 Filed at 1:52 p.m. ET

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Kansas is delaying $200 million in aid payments to public schools this month so it can meet state government's payroll and pay other bills on time, its top budget official confirmed Tuesday.

It will be the third consecutive month that an ongoing cash crunch has led the state to postpone payments to its 295 school districts. State officials expect nearly 100 districts will be forced to violate cash management laws to pay their own bills.

The payments to schools, representing part of general aid to school districts, were due Friday, the first day of the new year.

State Budget Director Duane Goossen said the state hopes to make half the payments by the end of the week. But he said it doesn't expect to pay the rest until the end of January because it won't collect enough tax revenues in its main bank account until then.

''It depends on how fast money comes in,'' Goossen told The Associated Press. ''These bills will be paid. It's just that we don't have the cash right now to do it.''

The state's financial juggling comes as legislators, Gov. Mark Parkinson and other officials wrestle with the state's ongoing budget problems. Legislators are scheduled to open their 90-day annual session Monday, and their biggest task will be heading off a projected budget shortfall.

The state delayed general aid payments to schools in November, with half the funds not arriving until early December. It also postponed general aid payments and special education funding in December.

Deputy Education Commissioner Dale Dennis said a third of school districts probably will be forced to violate state laws that govern how they're supposed to manage various accounts.

''The state really needs to step up and honor its commitments,'' said Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the Kansas National Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. ''This is shameful.''

But Goossen said delaying payments to public schools will allow state government to cover $25 million in payroll expenses this week. Also, he said, the state will make $35 million in aid payments to community colleges on time and pay health care providers $24 million for services to needy Kansans in the Medicaid program.

Meanwhile, state Sens. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat, and John Vratil, a Leawood Republican, planned to outline a bipartisan budget initiative. Both are members of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which handles budget legislation.
Kansas Governor Cuts Education Budget; Parkinson Reduces Spending By $259 Million
KMBC-TV
POSTED: 4:39 pm CST November 23, 2009
UPDATED: 7:52 pm CST November 23, 2009

TOPEKA, Kan. -- Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson announced $259 million worth of spending cuts Monday, reducing funds for highway maintenance and education to shore up a troubled state budget.

The cuts are the fifth such reduction for the state budget year, which ends June 30. Parkinson said Kansas was in historic times, never before seeing two consecutive years of revenue declines, let alone the four-year trough it faces now.

"This has been particularly challenging for the 2010 budget, which has been absolutely decimated by this decline in state revenue," Parkinson said. "There are no longer any easy answers."

The Democrat's plan also calls for drawing down an additional $85.9 million in federal stimulus dollars given to states to prop up budgets. That leaves $189.6 million remaining from Kansas's allocation.

Republicans said Parkinson was helpful in making the cuts, but thought he could have gone deeper in cutting spending without borrowing from transportation funds or federal funds that will be needed next year.

"I applaud the governor's effort to make what are some very difficult decisions," said Rep. Kevin Yoder, chairman of the House budget committee. "What we didn't see and hoped to see were real, significant reductions in government spending."

Legislative budget analysts said Monday that even with the governor's cuts, Kansas already is looking at a 2011 budget hole of as much as $400 million.

Parkinson made the cuts in response to a Nov. 5 revenue estimate that foretold a gap of $260 million between state revenues and approved expenditures. Parkinson said he could not promise there wouldn't be further cuts next spring when the next revenue forecast is given.

Policy-makers use the revenue forecast as the basis for setting the state budget. Estimates are made twice a year, taking into account trends in the economy.

Parkinson said every agency took a hit and will have to adjust accordingly.

"I am genuinely sorry," he said. "There is no way to sugar coat this. This will have negative affects across the state."

The governor promised legislative leaders earlier in the year that he would balance the budget through cuts before the 2010 session begins in January. He said Monday that work on the 2011 budget year begins immediately, but wouldn't commit to pushing to raise taxes to cover future revenue shortfalls.

Legislative action will be required to make permanent Parkinson's cuts, which include a $50 million reduction to the Kansas Department of Transportation for maintenance, $36 million for K-12 schools and $2 million for higher education. Medicaid reimbursements paid to providers, such as doctors, nursing homes and services for the disabled, were reduced 10 percent, or $22 million.

Parkinson said state agencies would have flexibility in responding to the cuts, which may include layoffs or furloughing employees.

Yoder, an Overland Park Republican, said cutting wage costs was the way the state could reduce spending, much like the private sector has been forced to do when the economy slumped.

House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat, said state budget cuts could have been avoided over the past decade if not for tax cuts enacted by Republicans while spending increased.

"This goes far beyond 'trimming the fat' from state agencies," Davis said. "These cuts are now doing severe harm to our public schools, community colleges and universities and the most vulnerable Kansans who are relying on state services to survive this economic downturn."

Derrick Sontag, state director of Americans for Prosperity, which favors smaller government and opposes tax increases, said Parkinson should continue to look for ways to cut inefficiencies and for long-term solutions to end the budget crisis.

Parkinson cautioned school districts not to consider suing the state for additional funding, as they did in 1999. That suit resulted in a 2005 Kansas Supreme Court ruling and a spending increase of nearly $1 billion over the past four years.

The governor said districts should wait to see what state revenues do once the economy rebounds. If education cuts are not restored, then a lawsuit may be necessary, Parkinson said.

Budget Adjustments
An overview of the Governor’s budget reductions and adjustments:

Budget Adjustments: $258.9 Million

    * Targeted, strategic budget reductions in individual agencies as outlined on the attached list.
    * Reduce highway maintenance funds by $50 million. This is achieved by transferring $50 million from the State Highway Fund to the State General Fund.
    * Reduce the amount transferred from the State General Fund to the Bioscience Authority by $5 million. This will still allow $35 million to be transferred from the General Fund to the Bioscience Authority.
    * Reduce funding for K-12 by $36 million and Regents by $2 million, leaving both at 2006 spending levels. Do not fund recommended $155.8 million K-12 increase based on revised estimates of property tax revenue and student enrollment.
    * Move unspent funds from prior years from individual agency budgets to the State General Fund. This includes the Governor’s Office and the Legislature.
    * Reduce Medicaid reimbursement rates by 10%. This cannot be implemented immediately, so it is estimated it will result in savings of $22 million during the last three months of the fiscal year.

Offset Budget Adjustments With Recovery Act Funds: $85.9 Million

    * Reduce K-12 Supplemental General State Aid by $85.9 million, but offset that reduction with $85.9 million of federal Recovery Act funds that had been budgeted for the 2011 fiscal year. This leaves the state with $189.6 million of Recovery Act funds (State Fiscal Stabilization and Special Education funds) for use in the 2011 budget.

    * States have discretion over when to draw down these Recovery Act funds. At least 10 states plan to use all of their Fiscal Stabilization Recovery Act funding by the end of FY 2010. A large majority of states plan to use a greater portion of the funding in FY 2010 and a smaller portion in FY 2011.

In neighboring Westport...
Consultant Projects Drop Off in Elementary Enrollment
WestportNow
Monday, Dec. 7, 2009

An education consultant told the Westport Board of Education tonight that the town’s elementary enrollment could drop off sharply over the next few years.

However, Donald G. Kennedy of the New England School Development Council, known as NESDEC, said the pattern could reverse itself quickly depending on a number of factors, especially the economy.

“Will you lose?’” he asked. “Maybe, maybe not…these are strange economic times.”

Kennedy said based on his analysis, Westport’s middle school population will likely remain the same while the high school population will continue to increase.

The NESDEC official cautioned that because Westport was so different from other towns, it “may not have drop off like other communities.”

“Westport usually recovers more quickly than other communities,” Kennedy said referring to the economy.

He said given the pattern in place, Westport will probably “level off and grow again in student population in a shorter amount of time” than some other communities.

Kennedy said one result of the difficult economy is that Westport has experienced a growth in school enrollment as parents have moved their youngsters from private schools to public schools.

He said this pattern could be reversed quickly if there is an improvement in the economy.

Donald O’Day, chairman of the board, said while the projections were useful he noted that many assumptions used 2000 census numbers and that these numbers were nine years old and likely very outdated.


Layoffs likely after Shelton schools find themselves $700,000 short; Layoffs possible after teachers reject furloughs
CTPOST
By Kate Ramunni, STAFF WRITER
Updated: 12/07/2009 10:43:51 PM EST

SHELTON -- Layoffs are likely as school officials grapple to close a $700,000 gap in the current year's school budget as teachers reportedly have turned back a request to take two furlough days.

The teachers met Monday afternoon with union representatives to vote on a proposal to take two unpaid days -- the last school day of the year and a teacher's development day -- in order to avoid layoffs, but unconfirmed reports say they rejected that request.

Union representative Deb Keller couldn't be reached for comment after the meeting but multiple sources reported that the teachers rejected the furlough proposal. Now school officials say that the result will likely be layoffs, as well as other measures to close the gap.  A combination of an increase in the number of students needing special education services and a decrease in the amount of state special education funds has led to the shortfall, Board of Education chairman Tim Walsh said.

"The state didn't fund what they said they were going to fund," he said. "They're only coming through with about 70 percent of what they did last year."

Add to that a dramatic increase in need and you have a problem, he said.

"Our special education costs are getting away from us -- they're astronomical," he said. There's been an increase of about 50 students requiring special education services this year, he said, and a total of about 200 over the last several years.

There has been more demand for tutors, which is hurting the district's finances, he said, but the district is mandated to provide them. "The mandates are killing us -- it has put quite a strain on us," he said. There are some children who are placed outside the district, and their costs can top $100,000 each, he said.

The problem has consumed school officials' time, he said. "We have been meeting morning, noon and night," he said. And Tuesday night the board will address the problem in open session at 7:15 p.m. in the Shelton Intermediate School auditorium.

"Hopefully (administrators) are going to present plans for mitigation for this year's budget," Walsh said.

Exactly how much is needed to close the gap hasn't been determined yet, Walsh said. "Hopefully we will find out (Tuesday) night," he said.

On Wednesday, Superintendent of Schools Freeman Burr will present his 2010-11 proposed budget at another special meeting at 7:15 p.m. at the Central Office on Long Hill Avenue.

Former board chairman Win Oppel, who still sits on the board, said the figure is about $700,000, which school officials had hoped could be filled in part with a two-day furlough that the teachers' union voted on Monday afternoon.

"Originally it was just under $2 million, but we were able to cover all but $700,000 in our existing budget," Oppel said.

Even if the union had agreed to the two furlough days, there would still have been about a $290,000 gap, Oppel said.

"The furlough days are the least impactful as far as students and classrooms are concerned," Oppel said. "Even with furlough days, the potential for a reduction in staffing is probable, and without it, it would become pretty much a certainty."

Approving the furlough days would have meant that certified staff would likely have been immune from layoffs, Oppel said, which would have fallen on uncertified staff. But rejecting the furlough days means certified staff will likely be included in any layoffs, he said.

When the board approved its budget, it used the 2008-09 budget figures regarding state special education funding, but when state legislators got around to passing a budget months later, that number was considerably less than that, Walsh said.

"Part of it is we assumed we would get from the state at least what we got last year, but that didn't happen," he said. In addition, the board received a zero increase from City Hall, he said.

The school board may return to the Board of Aldermen for help, Walsh said. "Hopefully they will let us come back and appeal for help," he said, "but I don't have great hope that is going to happen."

Aldermanic president John Anglace couldn't be reached Monday afternoon, but Mayor Mark A. Lauretti said he doesn't see the city bailing out the school board.

"Our budget is set and I'm not interested in any new appropriations," he said. "This is something they are going to have to work out for themselves."

The mayor said he doesn't have much sympathy for the school board.

"It's the same old story -- more raises, hire more people, they never have enough money, and meanwhile the test scores are the same," he said. "They are going to have to do whatever they have to do."

When formulating the current school budget, the board's goal was to allow everyone to keep their jobs, Walsh said.

"We did everything we could to avoid layoffs," he said.


E L E C T I O N   I N F O R M A T I O N

At the request of the FORUM, we are including a link to the CT Statutes. This section explains why Board of Education candidates always seem to get fewer votes and thus appear to be less popular that other candidates for seats on other Boards and Commissions:  http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/pub/chap146.htm#Sec9-204.htm

EDUCATION: Board Discusses Application For Funds; Teacher Evaluation Requirement Raises Concerns
The Hartford Courant
By GRACE E. MERRITT
October 8, 2009

HARTFORD —

Holding its breath and jumping right in, the State Board of Education broached the controversial subject of connecting teacher evaluations to student performance Wednesday as members discussed the state's application for funding under a new federal competition.

To be eligible for the U.S. Department of Education's $5 billion Race to the Top reform-driven competition, applicants must prove that performance assessments for teachers and school administrators are linked to student and school achievement.

The state Department of Education wants to revise legislation to allow that linkage in order to meet a Dec. 30 application deadline.

>> 2009 CMT & CAPT Test Scores Search

The state is developing an ambitious proposal for Race to the Top money that calls for dramatically improving 20 school districts, mostly urban, through secondary school reform and other initiatives.

During Wednesday's meeting, the board discussed various approaches to the teacher evaluation issue, such as linking teacher merit pay to student achievement. The issue proved immediately divisive as board Vice Chairwoman Janet Finneran and others said they could not support merit pay.  Teacher unions, which negotiate pay for members as a group, are generally skeptical of merit pay.

"I just don't want to see us sell our soul as we are racing to the top and not making philosophical decisions along the way," Finneran said.

She also raised concerns about the possibility of setting different salary levels for teachers based on market demand in their fields.

"How can you decide whether a high school math teacher gets more pay than a kindergarten teacher? Teaching kindergarten is a more difficult job," she said.

Board member Lynne Farrell said teachers go into the profession knowing that they won't get rich, but will get satisfaction from the job.  Chairman Allan Taylor said the issue of whether some teachers get paid more than others is separate from the merit pay issue.  Taylor noted that there are various other teacher evaluation models the board can consider.The board eventually agreed to explore models developed by other states and agreed to discuss the issue more fully at a future meeting.

Also during the meeting, state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan gave a presentation of the state's Race to the Top application, which he is still refining.

Currently, the plan would target 20 districts: Hartford, East Hartford, Manchester, Bloomfield, New Britain, Bristol, Middletown, Meriden, Ansonia, Bridgeport, Danbury, Hamden, Naugatuck, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, Waterbury, West Haven and Windham, as well as the state-run Connecticut Technical High School System.  The goal is to make the Class of 2016 ready for college or work, lower the number of students requiring remedial course work in college and lower high school drop-out rates, among other measures.

Also during the meeting, McQuillan told board members he strongly disagreed with recent criticism by the U.S. inspector general's office that Connecticut used economic stimulus money to plug budget holes rather than on education spending.

The inspector general's office said last week that Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania may not get Race to the Top money because they misappropriated stimulus money set aside for education.But Connecticut education officials said they used the money to shore up education cost-sharing money funneled to towns. State Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy said the U.S. Department of Education even complimented the state for its excellent application. Murphy said the state is preparing an official response to "clarify and correct misconceptions."

"We believe we will be treated fairly once he sees the response and notes the compliance," he said.

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant

Charter School Battle Shifts to Affluent Suburbs
NYTIMES
By WINNIE HU
July 16, 2011

MILLBURN, N.J. — Matthew Stewart believes there is a place for charter schools. Just not in his schoolyard.

Mr. Stewart, a stay-at-home father of three boys, moved to this wealthy township, about 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan, three years ago, filling his life with class activities and soccer practices. But in recent months, he has traded play dates for protests, enlisting more than 200 families in a campaign to block two Mandarin-immersion charter schools from opening in the area.

The group, Millburn Parents Against Charter Schools, argues that the schools would siphon money from its children’s education for unnecessarily specialized programs. The schools, to be based in nearby Maplewood and Livingston, would draw students and resources from Millburn and other area districts.

“I’m in favor of a quality education for everyone,” Mr. Stewart said. “In suburban areas like Millburn, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the local school district is not doing its job. So what’s the rationale for a charter school?”

Suburbs like Millburn, renowned for educational excellence, have become hotbeds in the nation’s charter school battles, raising fundamental questions about the goals of a movement that began 20 years ago in Minnesota.

Charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently operated, have mostly been promoted as a way to give poor children an alternative to underperforming urban schools — to provide options akin to what those who can afford them have in the suburbs or in private schools.

Now, educators and entrepreneurs are trying to bring the same principles of choice to places where schools generally succeed, typically by creating programs, called “boutique charters” by detractors like Mr. Stewart, with intensive instruction in a particular area.

In Montgomery County, Md., north of Washington, the school board is moving toward its first charter, a Montessori elementary school, after initially rejecting it and two others with global and environmental themes because, as one official said, “we have a very high bar in terms of performance.”

Imagine Schools, a large charter school operator, has held meetings in Loudoun County, Va., west of Washington, to gauge parental interest in charters marketed partly as an alternative to overcrowded schools.

In Illinois, where 103 of the current 116 charter schools are in Chicago, an Evanston school board committee is considering opening the district’s first charter school.

More than half of Americans live in suburbs, and about 1 in 5 of the 4,951 existing charter schools were located there in 2010, federal statistics show. Advocates say many proposed suburban charters have struggled because of a double standard that suggests charters are fine for poor urban areas, but are not needed in well-off neighborhoods.

“I think it has to do with comfort level and assumptions based on real estate and not reality,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, which studies and supports charter schools. “The houses are nice, people have money, and therefore the schools must be good.”

Ashley Del Sole, a founding member of one of the rejected charters in Montgomery County, said that regardless of how well a district performed, children benefited from choice because not everyone learned the same way. She added that competitive pressure would invigorate schools that had grown complacent.

“There’s sort of this notion that if it’s not broken, why fix it,” Ms. Del Sole said. “But there are people who are not being served.”

With high test scores and graduation rates to flash around, suburban school officials have had an easier time than their urban counterparts arguing that charters are an unnecessary drain on their budgets. In some states, including Virginia, where only local school boards authorize charters, suburban boards have all but kept them out.

“It’s like you’re Burger King and you have to go to McDonald’s to get a license — in most cases you won’t get a friendly reception,” said Roy Gamse, executive vice president of Imagine Schools.

District school boards in Georgia have rejected so many charters that lawmakers created a commission that approved 16 schools over local objections. But after several boards sued, the law was overturned in May, leaving in question the fate of some of those schools.

In New Jersey, where the State Education Department approves charters, school boards and parents have been fighting a proposed school in another suburb, Montclair, north of Millburn, and another Mandarin-immersion school in the Princeton area that was approved last year but has yet to open. Statewide, 15 of 73 charter schools are in the suburbs.

The latest battle, over Hua Mei and Hanyu International — which would start in 2012 with 200 kindergarten through second-grade students drawn from Millburn, Maplewood, Livingston, South Orange, West Orange and Union — has divided neighbors and has spurred calls for legislation to require voter approval to open charters.

Jutta Gassner-Snyder, Hua Mei’s lead applicant, said some of the school’s 12 founders had received threatening e-mails.

“This is not just about the education of my child,” said Ms. Gassner-Snyder, who sends her daughter, Kayla, 4, to a private Mandarin-immersion preschool. “If we just sit back and let school districts decide what they want to do without taking into account global economic trends, as a nation, we all lose.”

Millburn’s superintendent, James Crisfield, said he was caught off guard by the plan for charters because “most of us thought of it as another idea to help students in districts where achievement is not what it should be.” He said the district could lose $270,000 — or $13,500 for each of 20 charter students — and that would most likely increase as the schools added a grade each year.

“We don’t have enough money to run the schools as it is,” Mr. Crisfield said, adding that the district eliminated 18 positions and reduced bus services this year.

Millburn offers Mandarin only in high school, fueling the arguments of those seeking the new charters. “Kids are like sponges,” said Yanbin Ma, a Hanyu founder. “There are so many things they can absorb and become good at, and I feel that our public schools haven’t done enough to take advantage of that.”

But to Mr. Stewart, a leader in a growing opposition that includes Livingston mothers who have helped collect more than 800 petition signatures, this sounds “selfish.”

“Public education is basically a social contract — we all pool our money, so I don’t think I should be able to custom-design it to my needs,” he said, noting that he pays $15,000 a year in property taxes. “With these charter schools, people are trying to say, ‘I want a custom-tailored education for my children, and I want you, as my neighbor, to pay for it.’ ”

Behind the unions' shift on charters

By THOMAS W. CARROLL
Last Updated: 11:20 AM, October 9, 2009
Posted: 1:14 AM, October 9, 2009

NEW York's teachers unions have recently abandoned their open hostility to charter schools. To see whether the shift is real or merely rhetorical, it helps to look at the reasons behind the change in tone.

Shifting politics: By far the biggest factor has been the enthusiastic embrace of charters by President Obama, who was elected with strong union support.

Dick Iannuzzi, president of the state teachers union (New York State United Teachers, or NYSUT) admitted as much to The Albany Times Union this week, when asked if Obama had forced a change in the union's position. Although still unenthusiastic, he said: "I'll be the first to admit I was one of the staunchest opponents [of charters] and waged a real battle in my own school district in Central Islip. The world has changed since then. Charter schools are established."

Mounting evidence: A recent independent evaluation by Stanford Professor Caroline Hoxby has much undercut the union's historic anti-charter position.

The study's most important finding: "A student who attended a New York City charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English." Students attending for shorter periods would see "commensurately smaller" gains. The study also showed that charter students were more likely to post higher results on state Regents exams.

In response to the study, Jonathan Gyurko, the point man on charters for the city teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, grudgingly conceded on the union's blog that "Hoxby's findings are encouraging."

Blowback from union members in charter schools: Teachers at most charters have opted to remain nonunion, but some have unionized. And these union members aren't happy to see their schools facing layoffs this year because their own union got the Legislature to freeze charter funding.

The freeze prompted union members at the Charter School for Applied Technology in Tonawanda to demonstrate outside NYSUT headquarters.

Here in the city, the UFT has had to compromise even at "union" charter schools. For example, it agreed to a more flexible contract with the Green Dot charter that does away with tenure and limits on the length of the school day and permits faster removal of bad teachers than the UFT's master contract with the city.

The union is well aware that Green Dot was the chief organizer of a 2,000-plus parent rally earlier this year at a Los Angeles Board of Education meeting. The rally led the school board to defy the LA teachers union and turn over up to 250 schools to new management by nonprofit charter operators or others.

Green Dot's charismatic leader, Steve Barr, has long argued for collective bargaining in a charter-school context -- a rarity among charter leaders. But, at the same time, Barr is perhaps the fiercest foe of union attempts to block charters or broader education reforms.

Losing the prestige press: Reporters and editors no longer automatically buy the union line on charters. The New York Times has called a national teachers union "aggressively hidebound." The Washington Post recently ran an editorial with the blistering headline: "Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased."

The coming year will show whether the shift in union rhetoric is just cosmetic. Watch three key charter-related issues:

* Will NYSUT again call for a freeze on charter funding?

* Will the unions oppose lifting the cap on the number of charters? The current cap of 200 schools will likely be exhausted early next year.

* Will the unions support preserving SUNY's authority as one of the two state authorizers of charter schools -- or instead push to reserve this power exclusively to the state Board of Regents, which is widely viewed as not especially charter-friendly?

Whether the teachers unions are sincerely shifting is one test that will be easy to grade in the year ahead.

Thomas W. Carroll is president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability.
Charter-school clincher
New York Post
Last Updated: 10:15 AM, September 28, 2009
Posted: 5:07 AM, September 28, 2009

A new study has just blown away any remaining doubts about the remark able success of charter schools.

Maybe now Albany will stand up to the teachers union and finally give more New York students access to these better schools -- by lifting the state cap on them.

Already, charter schools (public schools that operate largely free of union rules) have mounted much evidence, especially in the city, that they out-perform their union-run, public-school counterparts.

Last year, for example, 87 percent of city charter students met math standards, while only 68 percent did at regular schools. In English, 82 percent made the grade at the charters, but only 58 percent did so at traditional schools.

But critics -- like those in the teachers union -- have pooh-poohed such data, claiming that charter schools score better only because they admit better students.

Families that apply to charters, they claim, are likely more interested in education -- so their kids are more likely to do better, no matter where they go to school.

But Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby's new study shatters that argument.

She compared the scores of applicants who were accepted to New York charter schools with those of students who were not. Turns out, the ones who got in to the charters did better -- by about six percentage points in math and five in English.

But the key here is that New York charters don't get to cherry-pick students; kids are accepted strictly by lottery. So Hoxby's study strongly suggests that it is the schools, not the students or their families, that make the difference.

Only one question left: Will Albany let more of these better schools open?

Two years ago, the Legislature raised the cap on charters to 200 statewide and 100 in the city. But why have a cap at all, except to please the teachers union (which doesn't particularly like the competition)?

Albany needs to do what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants every state to do: Ditch the cap completely.

Lawmakers no longer have any honest excuse.

Regional Shift Seen in Education Gap
NYTIMES
By SAM DILLON
July 15, 2009

Historically, the achievement gap between America’s black and white students was widest in Southern states, where the legacies of slavery and segregation were reflected in extremely low math and reading scores among poor African-American children.

But black students have made important gains in several Southern states over two decades, while in some Northern states, black achievement has improved more slowly than white achievement, or has even declined, according to a study of the black-white achievement gap released by the Department of Education this morning.

As a result, the nation’s most dramatic black-white gaps are no longer seen in Southern states like Alabama or Mississippi, but rather in Northern and Midwestern states like Wisconsin, Nebraska, Connecticut and Illinois, according to the federal data.

The study plotted the evolution of average scores of black and white students on the series of federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, that were administered every two to four years in both math and reading from 1992 through 2007.

Nationwide, the average math score in 1992 for fourth grade white students on a 500-point scale was 227, compared to an average score of 192 for black students that year. Those scores resulted in a black-white gap of 35 points.

By 2007, the most recent year included in the new study, average fourth grade white math scores had risen to 248, but average black scores had risen faster, to 222, thus narrowing the black-white gap to 26 points, about the equivalent of two and a half years of schooling.

By 2007, the widest black-white gap in the nation on the fourth-grade math test, (not counting the District of Columbia, which is not a state) showed up not in the deep South but in Wisconsin.

White students in Wisconsin scored 250, slightly above the national average, but blacks scored 212, producing a 38 point achievement gap. That average black score in Wisconsin was lower than for blacks in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or in any other Southern state, and 10 points below the national average for black students, the study indicates.

Wisconsin was the only state in which the black-white achievement gap in 2007 was larger than the national average in both the fourth and eighth grade tests of both math and reading, according the study.

“I was just in Wisconsin meeting with principals, and I showed them the scores, and that they had the largest achievement gaps, and they were just stunned,” said Kati Haycock, president of Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit that works to close achievement gaps. “Black kids in Wisconsin do worse than in all these Southern states and the reason is that they haven’t been focusing on doing what’s necessary to close these gaps.”

Nebraska is another Midwestern state where black student achievement is lower than anywhere in the old South. In eighth-grade math, for instance, the average score among Nebraska’s black students in 2007 was 240 on a 500-point scale, compared to the national average for blacks of 259, according to the federal data. The average score for black eighth-graders was 246 in Alabama, 251 in Mississippi, 258 in Louisiana, and 261 in Georgia.

The average white eighth grade score in Nebraska in math was 291, almost exactly the national average, resulting in a black-white gap there of 51 points, far larger than in any other state.

Connecticut is another Northern state where achievement gaps are larger than in states across the South, the federal study shows. That is partly because white students in Connecticut score above the national average, but also because blacks there, on average, score lower than blacks elsewhere.

Stimulus Funds Are Wildcard In Local Budgets 
DAY
By Karin Crompton 
Published on 5/25/2009

As legislators wrangle and bicker in Hartford over state budget details, local towns and school districts are embarking upon their annual ritual of drafting proposed municipal budgets without knowing exactly how much state funding they will receive.  This year's guessing game is more complex than in most years, however, as municipalities also factor in federal economic stimulus funds and try to sift through the regulations attached to the federal funds headed their way.

A large chunk of stimulus money that will directly influence local budgets comes in the form of education funds. And while the federal government released the money and sent out instructions for its use on April 1, local and state officials are still maneuvering through the details.

”I'm right in the middle of it right now,” Groton superintendent Paul Kadri said during a phone interview on Friday. “It's so complicated I don't even know where to begin.”

And that comes from someone who said he felt he had a good grasp of the subject.

”I feel we're on top of it,” Kadri said, “but make no bones about it, my desk is a mess.”

The stimulus funds for education are split into three categories: Title I (typically for low-income districts); IDEA (special education); and “fiscal stabilization” funds.

The first two pots of money are being doled out according to existing formulas districts are already familiar with. With a few exceptions about how the money can be used - qualifying districts can use up to half of their special education funds for other purposes, for example - these two categories are largely seen as the most straightforward of the stimulus funds.  Then there is the stabilization money.

A one-time appropriation of $48.6 billion nationally, the stabilization funding, as the name indicates, is meant to “minimize and avoid reductions in education and other essential services,” according to the federal education department's Web site.  Each state has to apply for its share, demonstrating in its application to the federal government that it will use the funds according to the guidelines laid out.

Twenty-two states and Puerto Rico have already applied for the stabilization funds, according to the federal education department's Web site, with 13 already having received money.  But Connecticut has not yet applied for its $541 million in stabilization funds.

Tom Murphy, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the department and the governor's budget office each has a role in putting together the application. Murphy said Connecticut ran into some minor technical issues regarding how the state funds its education grant program and how that jibes with federal guidelines for the stimulus funds.  The spokesman in Gov. M. Jodi Rell's office who fields stimulus questions was off on Friday and unavailable to explain Connecticut's delay in applying.

Meanwhile, local officials grapple with the unknowns in how the funds can be used, some saying they're awaiting guidance from the state, some pointing to the federal government.

”We have no idea yet what strings are going to be attached to another 2, 3, 4 million, whatever it's going to be, that the city's going to get from ARRA (the stimulus package) and whether that is supplantable or supplementable or what at this point in time,” said Donald Goodrich, New London's interim director of finance.

Goodrich was referring to a key component of the stabilization funds: the distinction between the terms “supplement” and “supplant.” Federal guidelines indicate that the stabilization funds can only be used to supplement a school district's budget, not be used in place of, or supplant, other funds.

In other words, a municipality - and, apparently, the state - is not supposed to “take” from education budgets and use stabilization funds to fill in the gap.  That point is still fuzzy to many, however. Goodrich suggested the federal government re-examine the point “because everyone is really getting hammered.”

”I think there's a lot of public misperception in how you can use the money,” said Christine Carver, New London's assistant superintendent of schools. “People think you can offset the local budget through the stimulus money and you absolutely can't.”

However, Goodrich asked, what if the school district doesn't have a perfect match for the funds?

”What if you cannot expend that (money) wisely; isn't it better to then supplant and not just supplement to be spending money?” he asked. “Or can we use it to, as we saw with the Board of Education adopting its budget, (avoid) reductions in staff? Can we use it to bring some of the staff back? Is that supplanting local dollars or supplementing it?”

It appears the state is considering the same issues. Connecticut is currently considering cutting its state education grant money, known as ECS funding, by 14 percent, then filling in the gap with stimulus funds. 
Murphy, the Department of Education spokesman, said one of the state's technical issues was whether its pledge to flat-fund the state education grant money would affect Connecticut's eligibility for the stimulus funds.  According to Murphy, the U.S. Department of Education “keeps saying in their guidance that dollars would be used to restore” funding.

But the prospect of a 14 percent cut to a crucial piece of state funding has many towns worried, local officials said.

A 14 percent cut in ECS funding means $4.5 million to Norwich, said Joseph Ruffo, the city comptroller. Ruffo said officials who attended a meeting of the Connecticut Council of Municipalities last week were concerned that school districts could find themselves 14 percent over budget already, and some went so far as to say the cut could bankrupt their communities.

Ruffo was more measured, saying Norwich hasn't yet passed a budget and still has a couple of weeks to receive clarification. Still, even if the state intends to fill the gap with stimulus funds, it will pose complications, he said.

”What we hear is (the state is) finding more information about how this process will go forward, but this $4.5 million will be treated separately, and there will be all sorts of requirements and stipulations on how that money will be spent,” he said.  
Conn. considers 'green cleaning' in schools 
DAY
Posted on May 5, 12:52 PM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- A coalition of lawmakers and health advocacy groups are asking Connecticut's General Assembly to require all public schools to use environmentally friendly cleaning products.

They gathered Tuesday to support a proposal that would bar school districts from using products that contain various toxic substances and are not certified as environmentally friendly.

Connecticut already requires crews to use certified green cleaning products in all state-owned buildings, including its universities and vocational-technical schools.

The legislation expanding the rules to public school buildings awaits House action, and would give districts two years to start meeting the new standards.
Op-Ed Columnist: ‘No Picnic for Me Either’
NYTIMES
By DAVID BROOKS
March 13, 2009

In his education speech this week, Barack Obama retold a by-now familiar story. When he was a boy, his mother would wake him up at 4:30 to tutor him for a few hours before he went off to school. When young Barry complained about getting up so early, his mother responded: “This is no picnic for me either, Buster.”

That experience was the perfect preparation for reforming American education because it underlines the two traits necessary for academic success: relationships and rigor. The young Obama had a loving relationship with an adult passionate about his future. He also had at least one teacher, his mom, disinclined to put up with any crap.

The reform vision Obama sketched out in his speech flows from that experience. The Obama approach would make it more likely that young Americans grow up in relationships with teaching adults. It would expand nurse visits to disorganized homes. It would improve early education. It would extend the school year. Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).

We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience.

In his speech, Obama actually put more emphasis on the other side of the equation: rigor. In this context, that means testing and accountability.

Thanks in part to No Child Left Behind, we’re a lot better at measuring each student’s progress. Today, tests can tell you which students are on track and which aren’t. They can tell you which teachers are bringing their students’ achievement up by two grades in a single year and which are bringing their students’ levels up by only half a grade. They can tell you which education schools produce good teachers and which do not.
New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has data showing that progress on tests between the third and eighth grades powerfully predicts high school graduation rates years later — a clear demonstration of the importance of these assessments.

The problem is that as our ability to get data has improved, the education establishment’s ability to evade the consequences of data has improved, too. Most districts don’t use