|
|
|
Talking with Mr. Ed
State schools chief Sergi discusses narrowing the ‘performance gap,'
charter schools and more
|
Business New Haven
11/26/2001
By:
BNH
|
Theodore S. Sergi of West Hartford is commissioner of the state's Department of Education. BNH spoke with him on November 16.
In terms of student performance, how does public education in Connecticut measure up against states with similar demographic characteristics, and are there ways to measure that beyond SAT scores?
We do very well against states with similar demographics. In the National Assessments of Educational Progress, which is a test that's given to samples of students across the nation, we ranked first, second, third - always in the top five. And we believe that our [Connecticut] Mastery Test scores tell us that we continue to do better every year. Things like the SATs tell us that we're achieving at an all-time high in math. And yet we have an unacceptable gap between our poor students and rich students - African-American, Hispanic and white students. I think it's these achievement gaps that should cause us to work harder at closing those gaps in our cities, in our poorest communities. Compared to other states we do well, but we shouldn't feel that that's enough.
How about CAP scores? They just came out, and you know what they are, even though they haven't yet been released to the public. How did our tenth-graders do?
This is the first year of a new generation of CAP. We usually use a test for about five to seven years and then we go to a new generation. This is the first year [for a new test]. I think what we'll see is we did a little better than last year's group. Certainly, the trend has been up, but we have a ways to go to improve our mathematical problem-solving and our writing skills at the high-school level.
When a new generation of Connecticut Academic Performance Tests [CAPT] tests is introduced, does that present difficulties in comparisons with previous scores?
Well, you usually do a bridge from the last generation to this one, which allows communities to say, 'How is this group of students doing compared to the last, and how are our students achieving in general?' But then, after you establish a new benchmark, you move on from there.
Why has it been so difficult to achieve meaningful integration even years after the Sheff v. O'Neill decision?
I think we are a state that segregates itself by the economics of housing and jobs. And that does make it more difficult. But we've had some success in magnet schools, in our Open Choice program, in our after-school and summer-school programs, in bringing kids from different communities together. Only the court will ever be able to say whether they think that's sufficient to meet the constitutional requirements.
How does the Open Choice program work, and how is it working?
The Open Choice program allows students in Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven to enroll in a suburban community and allows suburban students to go into the city. There are close to 900 or 1,000 students from suburban communities going into New Haven public-school magnets. And there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 students in 'Choice' programs going out of New Haven. So the Open Choice program tries to complement the magnet program and work to have students going both ways.
But suburban schools can simply say, 'We don't have any room,' right?
Interestingly enough, there haven't been a lot [of districts that] have said that. Year after year we've been able to grow the program; in the New Haven area we've grown from zero to 300 and something in three years - and each year [suburban] schools have put more seats on the table, in spite of enrollment and capacity problems.
When a suburban district such as Woodbridge says, 'We don't have any capacity,' does your office have any muscle to compel compliance?
Every community has to meet the broader challenge of the legislators' response to Sheff, which says that [those communities] must present evidence of what [they] have done to help reduce isolation. So yes, we do have muscle. But when any [district] has said, 'I'm out of seats,' certainly [it must present] evidence to that effect, or else we can go in and say, 'Can you please show us how?' But we haven't seen a lot of that around the state. The biggest problem is the time and cost of transportation [of students inter-district], which starts to get to the point where urban students and their families say, 'You know what? It's not worth it.' The real answer to reducing isolation is to bring kids back into the cities from suburban communities to urban schools that are offering something they can't offer out in the suburbs. That's the long-term vision here.
Magnet schools - are they performing better? Should we as a state be looking for ways to create more of them?
I think they're doing well. The ones in New Haven have really been the trailblazers, and I praise the New Haven public schools for taking the lead in converting a lot of their existing schools into magnets - with the assistance of state construction grants - and designing such unique programs that 25 to 30 percent of the students now come from suburban communities.
How about student performance in the magnet schools?
In terms of achievement, the magnet schools often reflect the mixture of urban and suburban kids. Some have done better than others. I think it's wrong to think that magnet schools should have the best achievement in the state, but it's right to expect the students who [attend them] to achieve better than they would had they stayed at their own school.
I'll ask the same questions about charter schools.
The charter-school movement is a little different. It started as a reform [initiative], not as a response to Sheff. The idea was [that] smaller schools growing out of the community, whether founded by teachers or parents, would be more responsive to the needs of kids. I think we've had a good experience - while it's been very small; we re-authorized six [charter] schools [of the original ten] last year for a second five-year period. A couple of them have closed down. What we have learned from charter schools is that there's a real thirst out there for smaller, more personal school programs - and that it's very difficult to run a school. The charter schools that have struggled have all had problems with their boards of trustees, their executive directors or their faculty. It's not easy to run a small school well.
How satisfied are you with the progress being made by urban school districts on their CMT scores?
They have made visible progress. But I'm the type of educator who would never be satisfied with that until we've completely close the achievement gap. The progress that [urban schools have] made has been small, but in the right direction. I'm hopeful that the state and local communities working together can close that gap faster over the next five to ten years.
New Haven remains the only community in the state with an non-elected school board. Are you prepared to acknowledge a connection between that fact and the New Haven schools' poor CMT performance?
New Haven's appointed school board, from my distance, has operated very effectively. And New Haven has seen [better performance] over the last five years. It's not what anyone would like in terms of reaching the state average. But they've done a number of things in New Haven that are striking in their success - magnet-school programs, the school-reconstruction program and their attempt in the earliest grades to affect literacy and writing skills. And I'm hopeful we're going to see some signs of that in this next generation of the Mastery Tests. I don't think this business of electing or appointing a school board really impacts that.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
