I hope that state legislators will see that public charter school leaders want only to be a part of the solution for communities that we care deeply about. We have proven through our results that we are able to help students overcome the bigotry of low expectations. But in order for our schools to truly thrive, we need our leaders fund our students fairly, and allow more success stories like ours to lift up Connecticut’s children.
K-12
Posted inEducation
A windfall of federal aid for child care for needy families
New federal funding will help Connecticut’s Care4Kids child care subsidy program, in which enrollment has been down sharply because of budget constraints.
Posted inEducation
Towns told to make up for state education cuts
Shortly after the governor imposed $58 million in midyear cuts to state education aid for 130 communities last November, the state informed superintendents their districts would lose even more state funding if they coped by cutting their own budgets by more than the administration has determined the law allows.
Posted inEducation
CT schools chief takes aim at Trump safety proposals
WASHINGTON — Connecticut Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell on Tuesday helped congressional Democrats push back against President Donald Trump’s school safety initiatives, including proposals to arm teachers and review Obama-era policies that encouraged educators to consider alternatives to detention and expulsion.
Posted inEducation
How safe are CT students at school?
While much of the focus – and funding – has been directed at protecting students from another active shooter, data on Connecticut’s public schools show no decline in a number of much more common safety issues schools face, such as fights and other physical confrontations. That lack of progress has fueled a debate over whether the state’s push to reduce student suspensions and expulsions – and instead provide students with supports so they can stay in school – actually is working to make schools safer.
Posted inEducation, Health, Justice
A debate over how government should identify our ethnicity
Using more detailed ethnic categories in student and health data could allow policymakers to better serve small populations, but some people in those small populations are anxious about extra scrutiny, the possibility of discrimination and being labeled as other than American.
Posted inEducation
Charters try ‘expeditions’ to help students reinvent themselves
New Haven’s Elm City College Prep and two other schools in its charter network are adding learning experiences called “expeditions” to encourage curiosity and passion in kids. These are not field trips. They are two-week intensive courses that take children outside the classroom and beyond traditional subjects.
Posted inEducation
Hartford region school choice lottery: Your odds of getting in
See how many applicants from Hartford and surrounding suburban areas chose each school as a first choice and how many seats were offered for the 2017-18 school year.
Posted inEducation
School choice lottery a mystery for parents as desegregation efforts stall
The confusion surrounding who wins the lottery – or doesn’t – has fueled displeasure and distrust among many Hartford residents concerned that the vast network of magnet schools has created a two-tiered education system where thousands of struggling city students are stuck in underperforming neighborhood schools.
Posted inEducation
Board rejects legislature’s budget for more charter school funding
Frustration over the state’s funding of charter schools boiled over Wednesday when the State Board of Education rejected on principle the state budget’s allocation of the additional $613,500 to three charter schools so they could enroll an additional 57 students.
Posted inEducation
See how the state graded your school and district
The grading system is based on more than a dozen measures. However standardized test scores still account for 80 percent of the grade.
Posted inEducation
State grades every school district and three-quarters see a drop
The large majority of public schools and school districts in the state earned worse grades this year than last on the state’s annual assessment of school performance, according to data released Friday by the State Department of Education.
Posted inEducation
Malloy budget would allow state tax break for private K-12 tuition
The governor’s proposed budget allows a new state tax break to help parents cover some of their children’s private K-12 tuition – an extension of a break created for college-savings accounts that was widened to include the early grades by the federal tax overhaul.
Posted inEducation, Money
See how your town fares in the governor’s budget
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed budget for 2018-19 aims to redistribute education funding more aggressively to the state’s lowest-performing school districts than is currently budgeted. Overall state municipal aid would be cut by about $97 million, or 4 percent.
Posted inEducation
Denied: Supreme Court will not reconsider school-funding ruling
The state Supreme Court has denied a last-ditch effort by a coalition of parents, teachers and local officials to reconsider the court’s recent decision saying state spending on education meets constitutional standards.