Research and Policy Reports

The State of Connecticut Public Education: A 2007 Report Card for Elementary and Middle Schools

The single most pressing issue facing public education in Connecticut is the achievement gap. This report is designed to provide a concise overview of what state and national student achievement data can tell us about the challenge of raising the achievement levels of all Connecticut students.

This report builds on ConnCAN’s school and district report card database to provide analysis and key findings for Connecticut, its districts, and its schools.

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Great Schools for All: A Plan Big Enough to Close America's Largest Achievement Gap

Drawing on the lessons learned from great public schools across Connecticut, the insights and experiences of parents and community leaders tackling this challenge, and the latest research on proven policies for raising student achievement from around the country, ConnCAN presents five big ideas for closing the nation’s largest achievement gap in this report:

1. Expanding access to high-quality preschool.
2. Creating innovative new public schools.
3. Recruiting teacher and principal all-stars into our urban districts.
4. Helping districts implement proven school improvement models.
5. Ensuring transparency and public accountability for results.
   

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The State of Connecticut Public Education:
A 2006 Report Card for Elementary and Middle Schools
Preface by Alex Johnston, Ph.D.
Introduction by Marc Porter Magee, Ph.D.

Are Connecticut's schools making the grade? It is easy to get lost in the data when trying to answer that question. Yet, hidden in the stream of figures from Connecticut's annual assessments are concrete answers to some of the most basic questions asked by policymakers, parents and the public-at-large about our public schools: Where are we succeeding? Where are we falling short? Are we heading in the right direction?

The goal of this report – and the accompanying online report cards on more than 160 public school districts and 1,000 public schools – is to help parents, policymakers and the public make sense of student testing results by organizing them into key indicators of performance, applying an easy-to-understand grade scale, and providing insight and analysis about what the data tell us about the challenge of raising the achievement levels of all students.

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Evaluating the Performance of Charter Schools in Connecticut
By Gary Miron, The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University, 2005

This report examines the performance gains of Connecticut charter schools on standardized tests relative to gains made by traditional public schools. The report also looks at the extent to which charter schools have met their self-specified goals and objectives. When compared to similar Evaluation Center studies of charters schools in six other states, the results show that Connecticut's charter schools have the most positive and promising record of performance to date.

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