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PC Poison for Public Schools
Political correctness is killing public schools in Connecticut's cities.
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Business New Haven
2/7/2000
By: BNH
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On February 1, state education commissioner Theodore S. Sergi announced that his department would no longer calculate a single “index” score measuring school-district performance on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT). The tests measure reading, writing and mathematical proficiency on the part of fourth-, sixth- and eighth-graders.
The education department indeed released results of the 1999 CMT on the first day of the month. What was missing was a district-by-district ranking, which the department had made available the year before. That ranking placed Hartford 164th of 164 school districts statewide, and New Haven 163rd.
Sergi dropped the rankings this time around following complaints from some officials, such as New Haven Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo, because the index made their districts' performance look like, frankly, what it is: woeful. New Haven State Rep. Cameron Staples (D-96), who co-chairs the General Assembly's education committee, went so far as to threaten legislative action if the index wasn't scrapped.
By contrast, Hartford schools chief Anthony Amato said of the 1998 results that his schools would “never be last again.” And, as the new results confirm, Amato's schools aren't last any more.
New Haven's schools are.
You wouldn't know this important piece of information from reading the New Haven Register, which time and again has proven it either can't be bothered or doesn't know how to cover public education with a detached, critical eye. “Students Improve on Mastery Test” is the message Register readers got February 2, above a story on how six of New Haven's nine test scores (reading, writing and math in each of the three grades) showed modest improvement from last year.
Not so the state's largest newspaper, the Hartford Courant, which did its readers the service the education department should have by creating a ranking using calculations similar to those used by the education department in previous years. On a 0-100 scale, the top-ranked district was the tiny Litchfield County hamlet of Cornwall, with a 92.89. New Haven was at the bottom, with a 47.34.
In New Haven, the average score across all nine tests was two points higher in 1999 compared to '98. This is trumpeted as an achievement on the order of splitting the atom by apologists who claim that the CMT really measures privilege, not academic performance, and that dramatic year-to-year gains are impossible in large, low-income districts.
If that is so, then it must be quite a privilege to attend Hartford schools, which between 1998 and '99 improved an average of almost ten points across all tests. The difference is clear: In Hartford, they said “no more.” In New Haven, the message was, “How dare you make us feel bad?”
Starved for entry-level workers with adequate English and quantitative skills, New Haven-area businesses are fed up with the emphasis on spin control in place of competent teaching in city schools. They should no longer countenance the awarding of raises - raises! - to city educrats responsible for such non-performance.
By the same token, business people should ponder carefully whether to continue to reward the local daily for its obfuscation on city-school performance with their eyeballs and ad dollars.
Former New York Jets coach Bill Parcells likes to say that even if a 2-14 team has lost four close games, it's still 2-14 - not 6-10. “You really are what you are,” he says.
New Haven schools really are 164th out of 164. Really.
We might be better off taking a cue from Lyndon Pitter, executive director of the Highville Charter School in Hamden, whose improved scores (over last year), included gains in 6th grade writing that surpassed the state average. Overall these inner city students scores nevertheless were in the bottom half of the region's districts. Pitter however, says he won't be satisfied until Highville students perform at the state average or above in all categories and classes.
With an attitude like that, his kids may just get there.
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