Coalition targets education gap—Six-year, $1.3 billion plan unveiled with a goal to achieve academic equality
By Amanda Falcone, Record-Journal, January 25, 2007

HARTFORD - There is an achievement gap between rich and poor students enrolled in the state's public schools, and a nonprofit organization is calling on lawmakers to solve the problem. With the support of the speaker of the state House of Representatives and organizations such as the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now unveiled a six-year, $1.3 billion plan Wednesday that it
believes will create more academic equality. "This is a starting point," Executive Director Alex Johnston said at a press conference.

ConnCAN is asking Connecticut legislators to expand access to high-quality preschool, create innovative new public schools and encourage the active recruiting of skilled teachers and principals for city schools. It also wants school districts to use school improvement models and improve data collection. "Our problem is not the children," said Rep. Douglas McCrory, D-Hartford, a vice principal at Hartford's Lewis Fox Middle School. "Our children can learn."

The achievement gap is particularly prominent in urban school districts where there are often less affluent people and more minorities, Johnston said. ConnCAN's plan would increase funding for preschool slots, ensuring that three- and four-year-old students in families living well below the federal poverty line have access to preschool by 2012. It would also expand public charter schools in urban districts.

Calling the idea that urban Coalition proposes six-year, $1.3 billion plan to lessen education gap children cannot compete academically with suburban children a myth, Speaker of the House James A. Amann, D-Milford, said success in school is about opportunity. ConnCAN's plan deserves consideration, he said. Rep. Andrew M. Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, cochairman of the General Assembly's Education
Committee, said to close the achievement gap in Connecticut, there must be urgency, results and teamwork. "We need to get it right," he said. "Even the top schools in the state are not doing what needs to be done in this day and age…I don't need to see more data on the achievement gap. This achievement gap is unacceptable."

Thomas Bruenn, president of the Meriden Federation of Teachers, said in a phone interview Wednesday that ConnCAN offers several suggestions that he could support, but said he would have to look at the details. The idea that the number of charter and magnet schools in the state should be increased and that those schools be used as a model worries him, he said. Bruenn said he has not seen any evidence that charter and magnet schools are doing better than local schools.

Missing from Wednesday's press conference was Sen. Thomas P. Gaffey, D-Meriden, co-chairman of the Education Committee. Gaffey said he chose not to attend because he believes it is his job to play the role of mediator between local school districts and magnet and charter schools. ConnCAN is a known supporter of magnet schools, he said, adding that the two educational systems should work together more.

While Bruenn said no one in education will oppose trying to close the achievement gap, Jeffrey A. Villar, associate superintendent for instruction in Meriden, said actually doing so is more complicated than it sounds. Meriden has found an achievement gap between the rich and the poor and between minority and white students, he said. It has also found, however, that some poor children have performed well on state standardized tests despite socioeconomic factors. The problem must be addressed on a case-by-case basis, Villar said, adding that he believes it will take significant changes in public school funding to start to close the gap.

Sen. Sam Caligiuri, R-Waterbury, agreed. Before spending money on other initiatives, he said, legislators should make changes to the way schools are funded by revamping the Education Cost Sharing grant formula.