Business leaders outline 'essential' reforms to close
education
achievement gap
October 19, 2010
A group of state business
leaders released a set of recommendations today that they say will help
narrow the state's education achievement gap--proposals that are likely to
prove both costly and controversial.
The list includes reorganizing
how schools are funded, having teacher pay and tenure decisions based on
student performance, having longer school days and school years, requiring
students pass a set of tests to receive a diploma and providing preschool to
more students from low-income families.
"We have to find the
political will to get these reforms done," said Steven Simmons, chairman
of the commission appointed earlier this year by Gov. M.
Jodi Rell.
Business leaders from around
the state celebrate releasing their recommendations to close the education
achievement gap.
Connecticut has the largest achievement gap in the U.S.
Minority students and those from low-income families routinely score below
their white and more affluent classmates on U.S. Department of Education
reading and mathematics tests.
This education reform platform
-- endorsed by past and present business leaders from People's Bank, New
Alliance Bank, The Hartford, Connecticut Business and Industry Association and
GE Asset Management Group -- contains recommendations that have been
controversial in the past, including linking teacher pay and tenure decisions
to student performance.
Teacher unions have long been
leery of such initiatives.
"We are not opposed
entirely to [teacher] evaluations as long as it is fair to teachers, but we are
worried the devil will be in the details as it plays out in becoming law,"
said Sharon Palmer, head of the American Federation of Teachers-Connecticut
teachers' union.
But a survey released this week
by ConnCAN, a New Haven-based school reform group,
says the public is on the side of the business leaders: Almost 90 percent of
voters think that salary and tenure decisions should reflect teachers'
performance, including their students' progress.
"Excellence in teaching is
the most important thing to closing that achievement gap," said Ramani Ayer, retired chief executive officer of The Hartford and member of
the commission.
Whether teacher pay will be
linked to student progress could come down to who is elected the state's next
governor.
Democratic gubernatorial
candidate Dan Malloy has said he supports measuring teacher
performance, but has stopped short of endorsing the idea that teachers be
compensated based on the grade they receive. Meanwhile, Republican
gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley has been vocal in
his support of performance pay.
The cost of change
Even with the state facing a
projected $3.3 billion deficit in the next fiscal year, commission members said
reforms can and should be implemented soon.
"Both candidates have
stated they are not satisfied with the status quo," said Simmons, noting
that Foley and Malloy met with the commission as it developed the
recommendations. "A lot of our recommendations won't cost money. Some of
our recommendations will actually save money and in other areas it's just
essential that we do invest more."
The areas the commission is
recommending more be invested for students from low-income families include:
·
Full-day kindergarten
·
More remediation for 40,000
students
·
Longer school days and an
extended school year
·
More subsidies for preschool
for low-income students
·
Programs to attract highly
qualified teachers in defined shortage areas
Rell said in a statement she anticipates some of the recommendations
"would require steep funding. ...There may be approaches recommended that
could be implemented as a pilot program on a small scale to gauge their
effectiveness."
Thomas Murphy, spokesman for
the State Department of Education, said many of these ideas have long been
supported by the school board and commissioner, but "We only have so many
resources. We can't expand pre-Kindergarten programs because the money just
isn't there to do it."
The SDE has estimated it would
cost $100 million to expand pre-K programs to 9,000 more low-income students.
Simmons estimates it will cost $40 million to provide remediation programs to
40,000 students.
And while several of the
commission's ideas are laudable, James Finley, executive director of the Connecticut Conference
of Municipalities, worries that the costs will have to be carried by the towns
if the legislature mandates them without adequate funding.
"Towns are already
dramatically underfunded by the state," he said,
noting the state last school year covered just 38 percent of education costs,
well short of the 50-50 goal of cost sharing with local school districts.
But Simmons, founder of
Simmons/Patriot Media and Communications in Greenwich, said readjusting and
more fairly dispersing the $1.9 billion in cost-sharing grants will help pay
for some of these initiatives. Also, the report recommends reevaluating the
estimated $600 million spent each year by the state for other education
programs and possibly reallocating it towards these initiatives.
"In this time of fiscal
constraint it is critical that we allocate the funds we have to best meet
student needs," he said. "The amount of funding received by districts
was intended to take into account students' needs and wealth of the city or
town. But the years of caps and other adjustments has made it little to do with
the actual costs."
The commission also recommends
students be given the opportunity to leave failing schools, "rather than
being trapped in schools that may not be serving them well."
The commission also recommends
that when a student leaves a school, state funding follows-- a proposal Finley
said CCM's 144 member towns strongly oppose.
"Both schools deserve the
money. Money follows the child is like advocating robbing one school to pay for
another. It doesn't make it right," he said. "These schools are
already underfunded and this could have devastating
affects. Schools like New Haven or Bridgeport would loose a
lot of money."
The state's teachers unions
have also spoken out against the idea.
Foley's education plan emphasizes school choice and links
school funding directly to each student, sending state aid and local tax
support to whatever school the student attends -- a magnet, a charter, a
technical school or the local neighborhood school.
ConnCAN reports that 76 percent of those surveyed believe money should follow the
student, to whatever school they attend.
Malloy has not supported money
following the student in his education
policy plan, but does recommend revamping how the state finances
public education. He wants to reform school districts' number one source of
income - property tax - and have the state be a bigger player in funding
education by reaching the 50-50 cost sharing goal with towns for education.
But with a $3.3 billion deficit
projected for the coming year, and $700 million more needed to be pitched in
from the state for them to reach the 50 percent goal, Finley is not too
optimistic.
"Now where exactly is that
money going to come from?" he asked.
School reform has been a major
issue in Connecticut
this year. The legislature last spring passed a sweeping education bill as part
of an effort to win millions of federal dollars, but the state was eliminated
from the competition.
Even with the new law, both
gubernatorial candidates have said the state still has a ways to go and they
plan to study the commission's report closely.
"We need a governor who is
going to lead this drive. ... I want to be your education governor,"
Malloy said during a debate at Fairfield
University Tuesday.
Foley said the commission's
recommendations are the same ones he has endorsed.
"I agree completely with
the findings of this commission," he said.
Whether Foley or Malloy is
elected the state's next governor, Simmons hopes the commission's 65
recommendations will be their "blueprint for reform."
http://ctmirror.org/story/8092/business-leaders-outline-essential-reforms-needed-close-education-achievement-gap