|
|
|
A Tale of Two Systems
Sheff decision notwithstanding, efforts to close public education gap
remain just a drop in the bucket
|
Business New Haven
7/13/1998
By: Susan Banfield
|
Sheff v. O'Neill is the leitmotif that has run through all discussions about education in this state for the last few years. It has repeatedly returned people's focus - administrators, teachers and parents alike - on to the key issue facing our state's several scores of school systems.
Although sometimes clouded by secondary concerns about social integration and multi-cultural opportunities, as one local superintendent, Bruce Storm of Branford, puts it, “The major concern is to make things just as good in inner cities as they are in the suburbs.”
There's the rub. The gap between urban and suburban education in Connecticut is staggering. In New Haven and Bridgeport only five percent of sixth-graders met the state's mastery goals in the three basic subjects of reading, writing and mathematics. Only one percent of New Haven tenth-graders and two percent of those in Bridgeport received certificates of mastery in the four basic subjects in which they were tested.
And those are just the pupils who stick around long enough to fail - or, more accurately, be failed. Twenty-five percent of the class of 1996 in New Haven dropped out before completing high school. Thirty percent of Bridgeport's same class never graduated.
By contrast, more than half the sixth-graders in Orange public schools met state mastery goals in all three subjects, and 22 percent of tenth-graders in that system met them in all four tested subjects. The drop-out rate in Orange for the class of 1996 was 5.9 percent.
Some of the reasons for the disparity are obvious: Primary among these is the huge gap in income between urban and suburban students. In Bridgeport and New Haven, more than two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. In Orange, less than three percent of pupils require such assistance.
The question of the decade - in fact that of the past several decades - is: Can the gap in performance between urban and suburban students be closed? And if so, how?
One of the principal approaches being tried in the aftermath of Sheff is that of magnet and charter schools.
Magnet schools are schools operated by an individual school system around a particular theme or educational approach and which are open to students from more than one district or system. The theory is that the magnets' special curricula will attract interested students from a wide variety of backgrounds and so create a naturally integrated learning environment.
By contrast, charter schools are not run by any established school system. Instead they are supervised directly by the state. Like magnet schools, they offer special educational approaches and curricula, and are open to students from many different districts.
A number of charter schools have been founded as a direct response to Sheff v. O'Neill and have as a principal goal attracting students from widely different backgrounds. The new Highville Charter School, for example, scheduled to open in the fall of 1998 on Jones Road in Hamden, was situated and designed to attract elementary students from both Hamden's Highwood community and New Haven's Newhallville neighborhood.
New Haven is one of the state's most advanced systems when it comes to magnet and charter schools, boasting more than any other system in the state: 15 magnet schools (ten interdistrict and five regional) and three charter schools.
They are a diverse lot, ranging from High School in the Community, which provides students numerous opportunities for interaction with the broader New Haven community and offers a variety of non-traditional educational approaches, to Strong Traditional Magnet Academy, where students wear uniforms and pursue a back-to-basics curriculum in a highly structured environment.
The purpose of the magnets, according to Ed Linehan, coordinator of New Haven's magnet schools program, is twofold: one, to provide the best quality education possible; and two, to provide racial and ethnic diversity.
New Haven's magnet-school program has been widely publicized, and highly praised. For many of those who attend, the goals articulated by Linehan may indeed be achievable. Yet only about a third of New Haven public school students are enrolled in magnet and charter schools. What happens to the two-thirds of the student population who don't participate in the magnet program?
Also, while keeping in mind that test scores are not necessarily the best measure of a student's academic achievements, it still must be noted that the CAP test scores of students in New Haven's three magnet high schools are not much different from those of students system-wide.
At Cooperative High School, one percent of students received certification of mastery in the four basic subjects tested. While the figure was three percent at High School in the Community, at Hyde Leadership School zero percent could claim this accomplishment.
So while magnets and charters may yield benefits for some, they cannot help the majority of students who attend regular neighborhood schools. And while the social, emotional and even educational benefits may be considerable for students attending magnets and charters, these schools' less-than-impressive test results seem to indicate that they are still not closing the gap between city and suburban education when it comes to basic academic skills.
Another initiative begun as a direct response to the mandate of Sheff is Project Choice, a new statewide, state-funded effort designed to work in a manner similar to magnet and charter schools: creating greater racial, ethnic and economic integration in the state's public schools by allowing some students to attend school in another system - and thereby, it is hoped, improve education for all involved.
In the New Haven region, Project Choice is being administered by Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES). All superintendents in the region were asked to report how many openings they could make available in their system for outside students. Some 440 openings were made available to New Haven students at surrounding suburban schools, while approximately 90 openings in New Haven schools were made available to suburban kids.
ACES is handling the application and placement process and will be providing transportation for those students enrolled (although it must be noted that the organization will receive state funds to cover the costs of only 210 students).
About 380 applications had been turned in by the program's June 5 deadline. Of these, approximately 50 were requests by suburban students to enroll in New Haven schools.
Although participation on the part of any given school or student is not mandated, and although only a small number of students are involved, Project Choice has already proven controversial. While some administrators are enthusiastic about the program, several area schools showed scarcely veiled reluctance to participate.
Bethany was one of the districts that had serious reservations. Administrators reported slots open in the fifth and sixth grades only; lower grades were full, they said.
Amity Junior and Senior High Schools, into which Bethany's elementary system feed, could not commit to take on Project Choice students when they finished up in Bethany. “Were we doing anything for these kids for one to two years?” asks David Berg, co-chair of the Bethany Board of Education. “Were we merely participating in a political sham?”
The Bethany board engaged in extensive discussions, says Berg, about whether to make seats available to New Haven students. “Saying 'no' would be interpreted as saying we didn't want to participate in solving the problem,” Berg explains, but “the troubles which Project Choice is designed to address are deeper and broader troubles than where a child goes to school.”
Berg adds that his board was in addition concerned that many of the details of the program had not been worked out, particularly who would pay for what. When push came to shove, at first the Bethany board deadlocked in a 4-4 vote about whether to participate. It was not until a week later, after “significant conversation in the community,” that the issue was reopened and a decision was reached to take students in the fifth and sixth grades.
Branford Superintendent Bruce Storm experienced similar reservations. “I fear for the children who come [from New Haven to Branford],” he says. “They are taken out of their community. It's difficult to be a visitor. It's easy for kids to become very much outsiders. The benefits are on the receiving side.”
Storm also notes that “Project Choice is a nice gesture, but there are a goodly number who aren't going to be leaving the inner cities.”
Besides trying to commingle urban and suburban kids, whether it be through magnet schools or by busing small numbers to schools in other communities, are there other methods that can help improve the academic opportunities and performance of inner city students?
A few city schools are finding that a dedicated effort by administration and faculty can pay off. One of these is Franklin School in Stratford. More than half the students at Franklin elementary school receive a free or reduced-price lunch. Nearly half come from single-parent families, and close to 40 percent are minorities.
Franklin is clearly the “poor stepchild” of the Stratford system. Yet Franklin School students have shown improvement in their Mastery Test scores equaled by only one other school in the system.
“We had an increase across the board in every single area,” reports principal Garrett Stack. In one year, for example, the sixth grade went from 38 students scoring at a remedial level in writing, to just three percent scoring at that level.
What accounts for Franklin's success? Not an influx of more affluent pupils. Rather it can be attributed to a combination of focus on academic basics, numerous special programs in reading and writing, a concerted effort to align the school's curriculum with what the Mastery Tests measure and, not least importantly, strict maintenance of clear and high standards of student behavior in areas such as respect for adults, honesty and considerate treatment of fellow students.
In fact, the New Haven system as a whole appears to be moving in a similar direction in its efforts to provide for the needs of its students. “There is a big push to improve teaching and learning,” says associate superintendent Verdell Roberts.
There will be specially trained “literary mentors” placed in classrooms in the early grades to help teachers. In other schools parents are trained to serve as mentors. A comprehensive “literacy plan” has been presented to the education department that spans grades K-12. It is too soon to predict what results the new programs will yield.
Of course, one traditional solution to the educational problems of many inner-city students has been to move them into the state's vocational-technical system. By some measures, the voc-tech system, which operates 18 regional high schools, performs well. “We have among the best drop-out rates in the state of Connecticut [between three and four percent],” boasts Dominic Spera, the state's superintendent of vocational-technical education.
Enrollments are up six percent. Platt Tech in Milford is at 100-percent capacity, and Bullard-Havens in Bridgeport is at 99 percent. The system was recently allotted $75 million to spend over the next five years on new, up-to-date technical equipment.
New programs such as the plastics program at Emmitt O'Brien in Ansonia, a collaboration between business, industry and government, are providing students with more - and more up-to-date - career paths.
Currently 60 to 65 percent of voc-tech graduates are placed in jobs at the time of their graduation, another 30 percent continue on to college, and a mere four to five percent are unemployed at graduation - many of whom find jobs soon after.
“I think people are taking another look at tech ed,” says Spera. While voc-tech schools are certainly not the solution for all students, they do well by many.
Given the sad reality that many students either fail or are failed so badly by the present system that they wind up dropping out, another important element in the educational equation is that of providing quality education for adults.
New Haven currently enrolls about 6,000 students each year in its adult programs, a number that has remained fairly constant over the years. Courses are offered both day and evening at some 30 sites around greater New Haven.
Some of the most popular offerings are those in computer use, ESL, and the high school credit diploma program. The latter allows adult students to get a regular high school diploma (as opposed to a General Equivalency Diploma) by taking 20 credits in traditional high school courses.
Despite signs of hope, the bottom line is still that schools in our region are still far from rectifying the situation that led to the Sheff v. O'Neill decision in the first place.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
