NEW HAVEN — As a foster child, Tyla Narcisse wanted the world to understand what she goes through — so she made a board game about it. Narcisse, 15, has been jumping from home to home since the age of 4. She decided to tackle the larger issues facing foster children like herself and study the system as part of a social justice project at High School in The Community.
K-12
Posted inMoney
Wealthier students benefit from art, music over summer while poor kids miss out
More affluent kids are about twice as likely to visit a museum, art gallery, or historical site or see a play or concert over the summer, as compared with their peers from low-income families. That’s according to a new analysis released this month by the federal government, illustrating disparities in out-of-school experiences, which may be exacerbated by rising income inequality.
Posted inMoney
Among Connecticut cities and towns, the wealthiest are the big spenders
While Connecticut’s distressed cities often are perceived as having bloated budgets, the wealthy suburbs easily outspend their urban neighbors on a per capita basis, sometimes by margins nearing two-to-one. Second in a series.
Posted inPolitics
Can Ms. Hayes go to Washington?
Jahana Hayes thinks what Washington, D.C. needs is a schoolteacher — one of the nation’s top teachers, in fact. And though the 2016 national hadn’t expected to get into politics, here she is, running for Congress.
Posted inMoney
Already deep in debt, Connecticut struggles with extremes of wealth and income
The growing gap between Connecticut’s richest and poorest citizens, which already outstrips that in most other states, has widened dramatically since the last recession. First in a series.
Posted inEducation, Politics
Courtney slams DeVos for failing to respond to East Hartford high letters
WASHINGTON – Rep. Joe Courtney on Tuesday lashed out at Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for her failure to respond to letters from Connecticut officials and students who were offended by her disparaging remarks about East Hartford High School a year ago.
Posted inEducation
Access to AP courses often elusive for low-income students
Statewide, one in 10 students from low-income families will take an Advanced Placement course, compared to one in four students from middle- or high-income homes. And increases in AP enrollment have done little to close these large disparities.
Posted inEducation, Politics
Holocaust bill gets a vote, and CT House gets a blessing
It was a unique ending to a legislative debate: Rabbi Philip Lazowski, a Holocaust survivor who has watched the rise of a neo-Nazi movement that denies history, blessed the House of Representatives on Monday after it unanimously passed a bill requiring schools to teach a lesson about the Holocaust and other genocides.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Danbury, Norwalk need these two new proposed charter schools
Nationwide we are celebrating National Charter Schools Week, and noting how far the charter movement has come since the passage of the first charter law in 1991. But locally we are on the cusp of celebrating something equally as important, with the potential to change lives right here in our proverbial backyard. For the first time in four years, two new, high-quality charter options are being proposed to serve kids in our state: Danbury Prospect Charter School and Norwalk Charter School for Excellence. These would be the first new charter schools to open in Connecticut since 2014.
Posted inMoney
Parties sharply divided over higher ed, labor costs, transportation
Democrats and Republicans offered sharply contrasting spending plans for the next fiscal year. While they shared some common ground involving municipal aid and health care for the elderly and disabled, major disagreements involving labor costs, higher education and revenue stand in the way of another bipartisan budget agreement.
Posted inMoney
Competing CT budget plans rely on April tax bonanza
Democratic and Republican legislators offered competing visions for the next state budget Friday, but both effectively dipped into this spring’s unexpectedly high income-tax revenues to salvage key programs for towns and social services, drawing a sharp rebuke from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Posted inEducation
CT’s performance on ‘Nation’s Report Card’ doesn’t budge
Connecticut’s performance this year on the so-called ‘Nation’s Report Card,’ the country’s most comprehensive assessment of what students know, was remarkably the same as it was the last time the test was given two years ago. The average student’s performance and the gaping gaps in achievement between different groups of students were largely unchanged.
Posted inMoney
Lawmakers still haven’t decided how to tackle CT’s red ink
Neither of the state legislature’s budget-writing panels put forth plans last week that help to eliminate significant deficits in the current fiscal year, or for the budget that begins July 1.
Posted inEducation
Obama’s education chief blasts CT retreat on desegregation efforts
NEW HAVEN — A lack of political will is preventing spending money on approaches that research shows work to improve outcomes for students, particularly desegregating schools, former education Secretary John B. King said in New Haven Friday.
Posted inEducation, News
How one school district tackled assaults on teachers
Statewide, there has been little progress in stemming aggressive student behavior as student suspension and expulsion rates steadily decline. For this Sunday Conversation, we sat down with Tod Couture, a special education teacher from Enfield, to talk about school safety in a district that is focusing its resources on another safety issue: student assaults on teachers.