Why Education Reform Matters To Business Leaders
Maintaining the status quo in today’s education system has moral and economic consequences, which impact all of Connecticut’s residents - including business leaders. These issues don’t only matter to those who work inside the education system, and no voice in this discussion should be dismissed as irrelevant, or maligned as being selfishly motivated. Sadly, the tone of today’s public discourse has made it easy for some stakeholders to misinterpret the goals and messages of business organizations like the Connecticut Council for Education Reform. We are committed to education reform because we care about the future wellbeing of Connecticut’s students, communities and economy.
“Committed to Closing Achievement Gap”
-Stamford Advocate
On April 11, 2012, Rae Ann Knopf, executive director of the Connecticut Council for Education Reform (CCER), wrote the letter below in response to a column in The Stamford Advocate that misrepresented CCER's work.
To the editor:
A column in The Advocate Sunday misrepresented the work of our organization, the CT Council for Education Reform (CCER).
Poverty is Not to Blame: CT’s Low-income Students Rank 48th in the Nation, while MA’s Rank 2nd
Today, we are taking a look at an argument frequently made in opposition to education reform: namely, that Connecticut’s achievement gap - which is the largest in the nation - is due to poverty, and therefore, the education system, and the adults within it, cannot be held responsible for providing a high-quality education to all students. While poverty and a lack of parenting are used as convenient scapegoats to explain the achievement gap in Connecticut, Massachusetts has skipped the blame game, and worked on addressing the issue instead. In 2010, Massachusetts and Connecticut had almost exactly the same percentages of students who were low-income (34.2% in Massachusetts vs. 34.4% in Connecticut). Nonetheless, on national math assessments in 2011, Massachusetts’ low-income 4th graders scored 2nd in the nation – while Connecticut’s low-income students scored 48th. This difference in performance between Massachusetts’ low-income students and Connecticut’s equates to about 1.5 grade levels.
In fact, the low-income students in all of our neighboring states outperform Connecticut’s low-income students. For instance, New Jersey’s low-income students, who make up 33% of their student population, ranked 14th on 4th grade national math assessments - again, as compared to Connecticut’s rank of 48th in the nation, and Massachusetts’s rank of 2nd. Connecticut’s low-income students not only score below all of our neighboring states, but also score below states like Mississippi and Tennessee.