Education

With time running short for legislators and Gov. Dannel Malloy to reach a deal on an education reform bill, the governor isn’t ruling out having to call them back to the state Capitol for a special session. “We could absolutely have a special session,” he said Friday. “It ain’t over until it’s over.” Asked about […]

A new report has found that Achievement First’s New York charter schools spend $660 more per pupil than nearby traditional city public schools that serve similiar populations. Officials of Achievement First, which has several Connecticut charter schools and makes up almost half of the state’s charter seats, has been complaining for years that they are […]

As legislators consider a bill that would require school officials to report and justify every time they physically restrain a student or place a child in seclusion, the U.S. Department of Education has some interesting data on the prevalence of these practices district-by-district and school-by-school. With 904 incidents in 2009, Waterbury puts more students into […]

During Gov. Dannel Malloy’s education reform town hall meeting in New Haven on March 13, one student braved to ask, before a hostile crowd, “Who will speak for me?” Now, almost two months later, we still don’t have an answer to that question. With just over one week remaining in the legislative component of “The […]

Some students in public schools enter the classroom not completely understanding the importance of being there. I can relate. I attended Batchelder Elementary School in Hartford, where I was not challenged academically. Expectations were low, and so was my motivation. Teachers have a huge responsibility; it is a profession that affects the lives of others, […]

If a meeting takes place, but the public wasn’t invited, did it really happen? The panel charged by state law with creating a teacher evaluation system by July 1 has not met publicly since Feb. 6, but the Malloy administration has said subgroups of the public panel are meeting. Repeated requests by The Mirror for […]

Did the state’s largest teachers’ union backtrack on what changes it says must be made to how a teacher earns tenure? Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Wednesday the Connecticut Education Association has. “I will remind you that it was the CEA that in its presentation on reform actually called for ending tenure. I never did […]

Legislative leaders spent the afternoon behind closed doors negotiating which education reforms will move forward, while state legislators and lobbyists outside continued to speculate that the session will draw to a close in three weeks with no agreement. “We are making progress,” Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said as he headed into a […]

Barbara Jo Warner has no problem finding parents eager to enroll their children in her Hartford preschool. But some of these parents do have a hard time figuring out where they are going to find $13,000 a year to send their child to the school. U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy with Mary Rose Duberek with her […]

First, the good news. Enrollment in the state’s publicly funded preschools has slightly increased since 2010 and funding has remained steady. Most other states weren’t as fortunate, as they gutted funding and shrank enrollment. Now, the bad news. Only 10 percent of the state’s 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled in the state’s School Readiness or […]