By Christiane Cordero

It’s just after noon in Cay Freeman’s math mastery class. As her students habitually file in, she greets them with today’s lesson.

“What do you know about area?”

Freeman has taught at Windsor’s Sage Park Middle School for 29 years, but today she’s taking a different approach – one that helps her students reach the Common Core state standards.

“I’m not teaching just a series of steps to get an answer,” said Freeman. “I’m teaching for an understanding.”

By Skyler Inman

Following Gov. Dannel Malloy’s reelection last week, Connecticut’s education experts are urging the governor to ramp up efforts on education reform — particularly in regard to the state’s most obsolete school finance laws.

The Education Cost Share grant, a formula used to determine the allocation of state education funds across Connecticut’s cities, is one initiative under scrutiny. Although the ECS, enacted in 1988, aims to calculate a city’s need based on the number of students in its districts and gives more weight to students below the poverty line, critics say that, in practice, the policy’s monetary allocations are not directed toward schools’ actual needs.

In a Nov. 5 release, New Haven-based education reform group Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now urged Malloy to address the state’s outdated policies, which are trapping nearly 40,000 students in failing schools across the state, they said. Although the release did not point to any outdated policy in particular, ConnCAN CEO Jennifer Alexander touched upon education finance in general as a topic of concern going forward.

“We would like to see a school finance system that gives money more equitably across schools,” Alexander said. “What we’re seeing in Connecticut is a deepening of poverty in the cities and an expansion of child poverty into the suburbs.”

Despite Connecticut’s changing demographics, the essential inner-workings of the ECS grant have remained effectively the same over recent decades, according to education experts. Specifically, about half of the money that Connecticut districts receive currently comes from the state’s budget allocation. The municipal government is responsible for covering most of the remaining 50 percent of its education funding, with federal funds and special grants making up the difference.

By Jeffrey Villar

Lively debate on issues of importance to Connecticut citizens is essential to a strong democracy. Unfortunately, the debate around Common Core has been rife with misinformation, and the majority of criticisms from detractors are not based on fact. While I understand that the opposition has a point of view, I believe it is important to refute arguments that are simply not true, especially in defense of standards intended to make our children’s education more rigorous and competitive.

Take, for instance, an Op-Ed published in the CT Mirror on Oct. 6 titled “Common Core takes the joy out of teaching.” The Op-Ed argues that classroom teachers were “deliberately excluded” from the process of developing the standards. This is blatantly untrue.

In the development of the Common Core, teachers served on theWork Groups and Feedback Groups for the standards; then, feedback from teachers was collected by organizations such as theNational Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and theNational Council of Teachers of English; then, state teams—including teachers—provided further feedback on the draft of the standards. Finally, teachers participated in two public comment periods, which had over 10,000 comments.

By Michael Puffer

HARTFORD — Last week, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy touted success in narrowing the state’s academic achievement gap between white and minority students, citing student performance on the SAT college entry exams and Advanced Placement exams.

On average, black students improved their performance on all segments of the SAT tests — though they still lag behind both Hispanic and white students, according to figures from the state Department of Education.

Hispanics lost a little ground in all three subjects. Whites, on average, held steady in reading and lost a little ground in math and writing.

White students in general continue to score well above their minority peers on the SAT. In math, for example, the average white test taker scored 531 points, compared to 430 points for Hispanics and 403 for black students.

“While we still have a long way to go to ensure that all students are achieving at high levels, these results demonstrate that we are making significant progress in reducing the achievement gap for a significant percentage of our minority students,” Malloy said, according to a release issued by his office.

Malloy claimed that minorities are making “significant strides” passing the AP tests. Certainly, the numbers of AP tests taken by minority students has climbed significantly.

The number black students taking AP tests climbed to 1,640 last academic year, up 36 percent from the 2011-12 school year, according to analysis of state figures. A total of 2,437 Hispanic students took AP tests, up 27.4 percent. The number white students taking AP tests also saw a significant bump over the past three years, up 9 percent to 18,335.

SAT participation has also consistently climbed in each of the past three years. Last year, 3,532 black students, 3,955 Hispanic students and 18,335 white students took the test. The number of white students taking the SAT climbed last year, but is still down 474 students from 2012.

Two of Connecticut’s leading education reform groups sounded notes of caution about the numbers released by the College Board this week.

“Fewer than 43 percent of Connecticut kids who took the test were ready for college-level work, according to SAT results,” said Jennifer Alexander, head of the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN. “That’s more than 50 percent of kids who graduated without the tools they need to succeed. We clearly need to do better, for all our kids, in every school.”

Connecticut Council for Education Reform Executive Director Jeffrey Villar said his group is pleased to see more minority students taking SAT and AP exams, and some improvement on the pervasive achievement gap. But Villar also warned against reading too much into a single year’s improvement.

“We won’t really know whether Connecticut’s achievement gap is narrowing until we can track a longitudinal trend,” Villar said.

Family income appears to play a big factor, according to figures in the College Board report on Connecticut’s performance on the SAT in 2014. Scores rose consistently with level of family income across all subjects.

In Connecticut, 2,039 members of the Class of 2014 who took SATs came from families earning between $20,000 to $40,000 yearly. This group achieved an average reading score of 467. The next tier up, families earning $40,000 to $60,000, had an average of 488 in reading. Students from families in the top income tier — greater than $200,000 — scored an average of 576.

Read it here.

Dear Reader,

As you’ve probably heard, Connecticut has been struggling with the implementation phase of a statewide education reform movement. Critics have voiced concerns about Commissioner Pryor’s leadership, based upon the frustrations of educators facing the difficult implementation process. Change is really hard. But I keep wondering why we attack the leaders who put forward bold agendas for improvement in Connecticut. Can the system really get better if we keep putting districts and the state through these interruptions in leadership?

“This too shall pass” is a phrase I heard often during my six years as a district superintendent. I learned early into my tenure that most employees-teachers and administrators alike-had grown accustomed to the revolving door of leadership, and with it, the associated change in district initiatives. The strategy for dealing with change was very simple: if any particular initiative isn’t going well, simply hunker down and wait for the leadership to change. Why become invested in a reform strategy that is going to be abandoned when leadership shifts?

I’m noticing echoes of that approach throughout Connecticut’s education landscape these days. Although most

New Haven, Connecticut – Jeffrey Villar, executive director of the Connecticut Council for Education Reform (CCER) today released the following statement in response to Governor Malloy’s State of the State address:

“We applaud Governor Malloy for his dedication to improving early childhood education in Connecticut, and we urge the Legislature to adopt his proposal. In addition to sustaining the reform efforts from 2012 and 2013, CCER’s top priority for the 2014 legislative session is to increase preschool opportunities for low-income children.”

“Simply put, we are failing about 6,500 low-income preschool-aged students who lack access to a high-quality preschool experience. Oftentimes, these low-income children start out at a disadvantage and are more likely to enter kindergarten significantly behind their more affluent peers. But education has the potential to be a great equalizer. We need to provide these low-income children with early experiences and remediation before they fall too far behind.”

“We urge all stakeholders to take seriously the Governor’s plan to codify an Office of Early Childhood (OEC) into statute. By integrating various related programs under one roof, the OEC provides an opportunity to better coordinate the services being offered in Connecticut and systematically address necessary changes.”

“In addition, CCER would encourage the legislature to provide additional high-quality preschool slots to low-income children in 2014, as well as begin building a Quality Rating and Improvement System that will monitor early childhood programming across the state to ensure that children are being provided with high-quality experiences. This morning’s budget briefing, which proposes a $14 million increase in preschool spending for FY 2015, makes clear that Gov. Malloy agrees this should be a priority. As Gov. Malloy observed in his State of the State Address, ‘education is the civil rights issue of our time,’ so we need to join together to make sure every child has access to a preschool experience.”

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It was a busy day today at the Capitol for those of us in Connecticut who are interested in education. This morning, the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC) voted unanimously to separate the rollout of the Smarter Balanced Assessments and the new teacher evaluation and support system (also known as SEED). Later on, the GOP held a press conference to call for a public hearing on the implementation of Common Core. It seems that before the 2014 legislative session has even begun, we’ve been bombarded by pushback against these critical reform efforts that have been passed and implemented over the past few years.

While we support PEAC’s decision to separate test results from teacher evaluations this year, we are strongly opposed to any defunding or delay of Common Core implementation. Here’s why:

Yesterday, the Connecticut State Department of Education released annual scorecards for Connecticut’s schools and districts. These scorecards are part of a new accountability system that is being fully implemented for the first time this year. (It was developed as part of our waiver from No Child Left Behind, and it works in concert with the accountability components of Connecticut’s 2012 landmark education reform bill.)

The School Performance Index (SPI) and District Performance Index (DPI) are numbers that give us a snapshot of the performance of each school and district. Previously, there was no system of monitoring the overall progress of a school or district.

For example, in the past, if you had wanted to find out about the achievement level of a district, you would have had to look at CMT/CAPT results for grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10. And each of those grade-level results was then broken down into tiers of performance (Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, Goal, Advanced). As a result, you had specific information in each of those areas, so you were able to say, “X percent of 3rd graders scored at goal in this district.” But you lacked any whole-district assessment to tell you whether the district was performing well or not.

We need a quality, statewide data system in Connecticut. Last month, when we released our 2013 Policy Progress Report, one of its critical findings was that without one, Connecticut is going to have a hard time effectively implementing reforms and knowing if they’ve truly been successful. A meaningful statewide system would allow us to track the achievement of every student in Connecticut from pre-K through college, compile a variety of types of information (not just CMT/CAPT scores), tease out trends based on comparable information, and set state policies accordingly.

That’s why the Data Quality Campaign has identified 10 “State Actions” as a roadmap for states to develop quality longitudinal data systems. Every year, they publish a report on the progress being made in this area across the nation. Their 2012 report reveals that, although no state has completed all 10 “actions” yet, some are well on their way! With many actions completed so far, Connecticut is making solid progress, but there’s still a lot of work to do.