2006-07 Annual Report

Raising Awareness, Empowering Parents, and Building Consensus for Change to Close America’s Largest Achievement Gap

 Download the complete annual report

A Message from the Chair  A Message from the Executive Director  I. Raising Awareness  II. Empowering Parents  III. Building Consensus for Change

I. Raising awareness of Connecticut’s achievement gap and its consequences and highlighting the success stories of great public schools across the state.

CONNCAN.ORG

Launched a cutting-edge interactive website in February 2006 that has emerged as the homepage for Connecticut’s education reform movement with over 60,000 visitors, 300,000 page views, and 2,100 people registered to view exclusive website content.

ConnCAN.org has helped put parents, policymakers and the public at the center of the effort to close Connecticut’s achievement gap. Anchored by its first-in-the-state ratings of Connecticut’s 1,000 public schools, in its first 16-months ConnCAN’s website has grown to include over 150 webpages across four core areas: school report cards, issues, action center and success stories.

STATE OF CONNECTICUT PUBLIC EDUCATION

Released Connecticut’s first independent report on the state of its public schools in September 2006, entitled "The State of Connecticut Public Education." Over 2,000 print copies have been distributed, 800 PDF copies have been downloaded, and the report has been cited in over 20 news reports.

This 24-page original research report, drawing upon the school and district report cards, provided a unique overview of school performance across Connecticut as well as analysis of the top 10 public schools and public school districts across five key performance categories: performance gains, most improved, low-income student scores, African American scores, and Hispanic scores.

GRADUATION RATES STUDY

Released a first-of-its-kind analysis of the gaps between official State Department of Education high school graduation rates and independent rates calculated by Education Week’s Project Graduation in June 2007.

ConnCAN’s analysis not only resulted in over 250 downloads in its first month, a story on NPR and articles in the New Haven Register, Stamford Advocate, Republican-American and Record-Journal, but it also jump-started a public policy discussion on how to improve the accuracy of Connecticut’s graduation statistics.

SUCCESS STORIES

Published alongside "The State of Connecticut Public Education" report in September 2006, the Success Stories profiled high-performing schools composed of at least 75 percent minority and/or low-income students. Over 3,000 visitors have helped ensure that these lessons learned reached a wide audience across Connecticut and beyond.

In each of the eight Success Stories, innovative and committed administrators and educators were found to have brought a relentless focus on getting results for students. Common elements include individualized student learning plans, data-driven decision making, Saturday sessions, direct instruction techniques, and an overriding focus on recruiting passionate and talented teachers.

COMPASS, E-NEWSLETTER AND ROUNDUP

Launched in the first half of 2007, ConnCAN’s suite of communication vehicles have provided its members with three new windows on the world of Connecticut education: the Compass print newsletter, the ConnCAN E-Newsletter, and the Education News Roundup blog.

The twice-weekly Education News Roundup provides hundreds of readers a fast and easy way to stay in touch with education news from around the state. The monthly E-Newsletter provides more than 4,000 members with a concise review of the key education events from the past 30 days. Finally, the full-color Compass print newsletter provides over 7,000 readers with a quarterly review of the effort to close Connecticut’s achievement gap.

MEDIA OUTREACH

Used timely news releases and outreach to media outlets across Connecticut to generate an unprecedented wave of stories about Connecticut’s achievement gap and the breakthrough schools that are demonstrating how it can be closed.

ConnCAN’s media outreach efforts have helped secure nearly 100 newspaper pieces (reaching a cumulative total of 8 million potential impressions with readers), 14 radio stories and 12 television stories since January 2006.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

• "ConnCAN is trying to identify a reasonable way of assessing the performance of schools and the improvement that takes place in the context of No Child Left Behind." –Norwalk superintendent Salvatore Corda, January 6, 2007
• "We were just pleased to see an independent research study would recognize what we are seeing every day. And that is teaching and learning is improving dramatically in our schools." –Colchester superintendent of schools Karen Loiselle, January 11, 2007
• "Results of a recently released study show that two Norwalk schools that were reprimanded last year under the No Child Left Behind Act are also among those doing the best job of bringing minority and disadvantaged kids up to speed. So says the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, a New Haven-based organization that works to help close the achievement gap." –The Advocate, January 12, 2007
• "…the researchers at ConnCAN, a private nonprofit dedicated to improving student achievement, have taken a look at how students improve year after year. The data are worth considering." – Norwich Bulletin, March 25, 2007
• "Connecticut's high school graduation rates overstate the percentage of students who get diplomas, a new report says. …ConnCAN, which released the report to bring new focus to graduation rates, said finishing high school is a key indicator of a student's success in life." – The Advocate, June 16, 2007

next section>