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We can’t remake our public schools without you.
We can’t remake our public schools without you.
ConnCAN needs your support right now to make sure that every child in Connecticut, regardless of race, ethnicity, or class, has access to a great public school.
With new federal data showing continued, middle-of-the-pack performance by Connecticut schools, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy found the middle ground among competing interests for a landmark education law.
For once, teachers were not front and center in the debate.
HARTFORD—In a sweeping education deal with lawmakers and teacher unions here, Gov. Dannel Malloy gave ground on some of his farthest-reaching proposals but contended the compromise was still a historic overhaul of public-school policy in a state that has proved resistant to change.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Monday night that his administration and lawmakers had reached an agreement on "meaningful education reform" — an agreement that he said adds nearly $100 million in new education spending and will help the state regain its competitive edge.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Democratic legislative leaders celebrated what they called an “historic” agreement on a sweeping education reform proposal that believe will help Connecticut erase its largest-in-the-nation achievement gap.
At a 10 p.m. press conference, Malloy told a packed room of reformers and leaders of at least one of the state’s teacher unions that the bill the Senate is expected to take up later this evening is just a beginning.
Say this for Gov. Dannel Malloy, love his policies or hate them, he has largely gotten what he wants in his first year and a half in office. He pushed through the largest tax increase in state history after inheriting a $3 billion-plus disaster of a state budget; he was able to wring desperately needed concessions out of the state employee unions (after first failing); he instituted the “First Five” job-creation program; and won hard-fought approval for the Jackson Labs economic development project..
For the past five years, ConnCAN has analyzed the state’s graduation rates; this Issue Brief provides a more detailed examination of the latest data. In addition to relatively flat graduation rates across the board in Connecticut, the data reveal dramatic, persistent gaps by race. These numbers point to an urgent need for policy change to reverse these trends. By 2020, nearly one-third of Connecticut’s population and nearly half of the youngest workers (25–29 year olds) will be non-white. If we fail to increase graduation rates significantly, especially for students of color, we risk seeing a continued increase in the proportion of children who are not prepared for success in our state—and we put our state’s economic future in peril.
As with previous years, our analysis also reveals that Connecticut State Department of Education graduation rates are significantly higher than the rates reported in Education Week’s Diplomas Count report. Education Week uses a more accurate cohort method to calculate these rates. Connecticut plans to use this method beginning with the class of 2009. The analyses in this report draw on data for the Class of 2008, which is the most recent data available from both the Connecticut State Department of Education and from Education Week’s Diplomas Count report.