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At the Head of the Class
Education commissioner Sergi presides over a public-education system
that's toiling to ‘raise expectations'
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Business New Haven
9/7/1998
By: BNH
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In October 1995, Theodore S. Sergi was named Connecticut's 12th commissioner
of education, overseeing a state education department with a $1.6 billion annual budget, 166 public school districts
and more than half a million students.
How did you get this job and what did you do before you had it?
I grew up in New York City. I attended Hobart College and got my degree in economics. I taught high school in Bristol at St. Paul High School. My first year teaching I taught math, and then economics and political science as well. Then I went to UConn to get my Ph.D. in education administration; I got my masters at Trinity College in education and psychology. I came to work at the state Department of Education in 1976 doing things mainly with state testing programs, school finance, planning, vocational and technical education. I've had just about every job there is here and was appointed acting commissioner in 1994 and appointed commissioner in 1995. The job is appointed by the state Board of Education, which is appointed by the governor.
What are the responsibilities of
the commissioner?
The general supervision and leadership of education in the state. We provide a great deal of money to the school districts on behalf of the governor and the legislature; we provide the Connecticut Mastery Tests and other measures of public accountability for education, including the reporting on dropouts, graduate follow-up data and special education data; we prepare curriculum material for the consideration for local school boards and operate the state vocational school system.
What portion of total education funding comes from the state?
The estimate for the 1998-99 school year is 42 percent. That includes everything from school construction to teachers retirement, voc-tech systems and money given directly to local communities.
What is your opinion of parental involvement, or lack thereof, in urban schools?
There is a strong correlation between parent interest, involvement and contact with the teacher, and the child's actual achievement. The legislature had a new statute in 1997 that required local school boards to do more around the regular continuous contact between classroom teachers and parents. It is hard to overestimate what it means to have a young person not stimulated by music, language, discussion and books from birth to age three or four. Community groups and schools, Head Start and others, should be doing a lot more around three- and four-year-olds. We have gone from zero state money to $20 million last year and $40 million this year to provide three- and four-year-olds education.
Do you think that the appointed school board and the lack of parental involvement in New Haven are connected?
There is nothing inherently wrong with the mayor appointing the school board members if they represent the community, if they operate in a productive way, and if they demand accountability from the superintendent and the staff. In Chicago, Mayor [Richard] Daley asked the legislature for the authority to appoint the board and the superintendent and said [to constituents], 'And then you won't have to blame anybody but me.' So there is something there that is nice about accountability. I think it depends on the community.
Can you give us a good idea of the history of the Mastery Test, the CAP Test and where we are with those?
We started in 1978-79 with a statewide proficiency test in ninth grade, but then moved to the Connecticut Mastery Test in grades four, six and eight. That test was designed to assess reading, writing and mathematics abilities. In 1993, we revamped it to what we call our second generation, adding more difficult content. I know there is a great deal of concern about it being high stakes. Connecticut students were No. 1 on the latest national assessment of educational progress in fourth-grade math. We are always up in the top handful of states. The tests were designed to have a state goal that is at a pretty high level. You can't just talk about high expectations, you have to drive those expectations. But there is a lower level for this test that we have established as a remedial level. I think it is important to look at the whole distribution of students. The CAPT is a tenth-grade test that began in 1995. We added a science component, two mathematics, language-arts skills, response to literature. The students must read something from a newspaper and then write a letter to their congressman about it. We are asking teachers across the state to give students more opportunities to write in good, whole sentences and paragraphs. There will not be as much year-to-year validity as there is with the multiple-choice tests, but statewide educators have said they think it is the right thing to do.
Do the tests measure privilege
or performance?
We think they measure the essential reading, writing and math skills that everyone would want for their children. Is there truth to the statement that this assessment - or any assessment of any level of reading, writing and math - measures the privilege of a home that has books and computers? The answer is yes. But we want all children to achieve those skills.
Why do some people say
that the CAPT are better than
the Mastery Tests?
Well, it depends on who you talk to. Some will say it's better, and some will say it's worse. The CAPT is more challenging content, I would say. On the math end, there are more open-ended items, less multiple choice; the reading comprehension involves response to literature. They have to show their work on both math and science sections. There are some people in education that say this is too difficult. I think we are trying to find balance here. I think this is a difficult but reasonable exam at this point.
Over the 12 years the tests have been given, are you happy with the improvement in performance?
Happy is not a word I use. I have never been satisfied in this business, but we've seen real progress. Our cities are still far too low, and every community could do better. What we find from the national assessments of educational progress, in reading and math and science we have been doing very well compared to other states.
What kind of testing of teachers, or would-be teachers, do we have in the state?
Sometime after the Education Enhancement Act of 1986 we began testing all teachers coming into the profession in reading, writing and math and their subject matter. Now you cannot be a teacher without passing both a teacher-preparation program at a college or university and two exams administered by the Education Testing Service. Then teaching is monitored in the first two or three years. We have invested quite a bit into getting a higher and more capable quality teacher into the classroom. Many states look to Connecticut in terms of how we prepare our teachers and induct them into the teaching process.
There is strong demand from
parents for magnet and charter schools. Why?
When you are in the public domain trying to serve all, there will always be some who are looking for something different. I have become a big supporter of charter and magnet schools. They are smaller schools with more personal attention. The public school enterprise is strong enough to deal with that amount of experimentation and creative work that may improve the whole system.
What forces encourage
education innovation, and what forces discourage it?
The forces for innovation are many. They start with teachers and people in the education system who have realized that we are not meeting the needs for all these children. Then it moves on to parents who were dissatisfied with the education that their children were receiving. The greatest thing holding us back is innate comfort with what we know best. Like in any enterprise, people get comfortable with what they know. You get parents who say, 'If only my kids could get what I got.' And I have been telling teachers and parents that in today's world, that's not good enough. Certainly organizations have a tendency to keep to the status quo. Unions are part of that; institutions such as school boards and superintendents are part of that, too.
What is the obstacle to a
dress code?
It is the kids, in some ways. They see dress as their right to free expression. But we have a couple of districts in the state that have a expected dress code without absolutely mandating it, and they've found 95 percent of students have complied and are happier with it. I think it should definitely be a local decision.
Recently there has been greater attention paid to vocational
schools. Why?
The governor proposed that the voc-tech schools receive $75 million over the next five years to upgrade facilities, equipment and technology. At the end of that five-year period, we see ourselves as being really state-of-the-art in all of those capacities. There are 17 schools. $75 million is more than twice what we were receiving. Voc-tech schools have gone through cycles since the beginning. These schools really reflect the economy at the time. No we are going to see higher funding and higher enrollment because the economy is good.
Are we ever going to see vouchers
in this state?
In 30 years in this industry, I haven't seen any one proposed solution - a 'silver bullet' - really ever pan out as the cure. Some people see vouchers as a fix-it. But does that mean you fix everything that is broken, or do you mean the city school systems? I am more eager for change than I am for the status quo.
Are you happy with how the
charter schools are doing?
We established 12 schools last year, and not all of them had a wonderful year. But I am glad that we did them and I am glad we have added more. I expect through our monitoring and their own self-adjustment that they will get healthier. The community support seems to be there in that there hasn't been a lot of negative reaction from parents and educators. These schools are an important beginning, and there is no reason to think that they will not keep growing.
Anything else?
From my experience, the single greatest challenge in public education is to raise our expectations about what young people can achieve. Everyone, not just teachers and parents, but everyone in the business community should be continually demanding advanced-placement courses. We need to keep focusing on the achievements of students and to continue to reduce isolation. We have a lot more to do and we want to keep changing and getting better.
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