News

As magnet schools sprouted across the state following the court order to desegregate schools in Hartford, so did a patchwork of financial formulas designed to pay for them. The state also has developed formulas to pay for charter schools and suburban school choice programs, two other strategies for promoting school integration. Here are the latest […]

A national survey released today found that nearly 15 percent of households in Connecticut struggled to buy food in 2009. The report by the Food Research and Action Center says that 18.7 percent of households with children said they did not have enough money to adequately feed their families. The findings are consistent with statistics […]

Two state Senate leaders want Connecticut to become the third state in the country to set standards for how high schools handle athletes with concussions. With the support of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the senators today proposed legislation requiring that athletes with suspected concussions be benched until getting medical clearance. “The mantra has become, […]

Connecticut’s Sheff vs. O’Neill desegregation court ruling led to a spurt in education funding, a $2 billion expansion of magnet schools and renewed attention to the state’s troubled urban districts. But did it help children learn? Yes, says University of Connecticut researcher Casey Cobb-and not just for inner city students, but for their suburban classmates […]

State ethics laws provide only limited transparency into the financial dealings of Connecticut’s part-time legislators. To whom do they owe money? Disclosure is voluntary. How much stock do they own? Impossible to say. By contrast, Congress and a dozen states require lawmakers to disclose within ranges the amount of outside income they receive and the […]

U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman today endorsed the re-confirmation of the suddenly embattled Federal Reserve chairman, Benjamin Bernanke. On this score, the independent from Connecticut is standing with the Obama administration. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is running to succeed the retiring U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, is among the Democrats distancing themselves from Bernanke. […]

Who has a state legislator on the payroll? Three public employee unions have one. So do Northeast Utilities, the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce, Tweed-New Haven Airport, municipalities and non-profits that rely on state funding, and single-issue advocates like the Marijuana Policy Project. About 70 percent of legislators hold jobs outside the General Assembly, bringing both […]

On the left, there were gay-rights activists like Anne Stanback. On the right, there were Democratic soldiers like James Wade, who ran William A. O’Neill’s campaign in 1986, the last time Connecticut elected a Democratic governor. The same things brought them Sunday to Elizabeth Park in West Hartford: a thirst for a candidate who can […]

The Connecticut General Assembly began its regular annual session on Feb. 3, when Gov. M. Jodi Rell delivered her budget address to a joint session of the legislature. Its constitutional adjournment deadline is midnight May 5. Balancing the state’s budget is sure to be the most contentious issue of the session, and the task will […]

The Sheff vs. O’Neill school desegregation lawsuit ranks as one of the most influential legal cases in the history of Connecticut’s public schools. Civil rights groups filed the case on behalf of 17 schoolchildren in 1989, alleging that the richest state in the nation had allowed Hartford, its capital city, to run an impoverished, racially […]

Hoping to transform America’s public schools, the U.S. Department of Education is challenging states to design winning school reform plans in a competition for more than $4.3 billion in economic stimulus grants.The competition, known as Race to the Top, is designed to promote innovative strategies, raise academic standards and encourage aggressive reforms, including the shakeup […]

The General Assembly begins 2010 with the Democratic majority and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in a stalemate over how to close an estimated $500 million gap in this year’s budget. Sound familiar? That’s how they ended 2009. The price of their inability to put the state’s finances on solid footing last year is that […]

A major question hanging over the races for governor and other state offices in 2010 is the status of Connecticut’s new voluntary system of publicly financing campaigns, the Citizens’ Election Program. U.S. District Court Judge Stefan R. Underhill struck down the program as unconstitutional in August 2009, calling it a well-intentioned effort to combat corruption […]

The most tangible of Connecticut’s dismal economic indicators may be the new computer server and automated phone lines recently ordered for a beleaguered corner of the state bureaucracy – the unemployment office. “It is simply overextended and overwhelmed by the load,” Gov. M. Jodi Rell said in January, answering complaints that the system has been […]

While the national health care reform debate rages in Washington, Connecticut is proceeding with its own plan to provide coverage for thousands of uninsured state residents. The work is the result of action by the state legislature last year creating a panel to devise a public health insurance plan, called SustiNet, that will be available […]