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The Non-Issue Issue
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Business New Haven
8/6/2001
By: BNH
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Of all the issues that incumbent Mayor John DeStefano Jr., Democratic challenger Martin Looney and Republican Joel Schiavone have been flogging, education is barely on the radar screen.
While they're busy debating the right retail "mix" for the city center, the future of the Macy's and Malley's blocks and a baseball park for downtown, one issue - more critical by far than the other three combined - has failed to take center-stage.
Sure, the trio have made some pronouncements on education. Protecting his flank, DeStefano earlier this year did an about-face, calling for stricter performance standards and testing as well as an end to social promotion. He also entertained the possibility of transforming "underperforming" schools into magnet or charter schools.
Looney has floated ideas including depoliticizing the lottery for popular magnet-school slots by hiring a private vendor to conduct the drawing, and calling on Yale to help build neighborhood schools.
Arguing that it is school size - even more than classroom size - that most closely correlates with academic achievement, Schiavone argues for more decentralized neighborhood schools and a housecleaning of the top-heavy administration.
Interesting ideas, all, and deserving of public debate. But many in the business community - whose long-term future in New Haven is dependent on improved public education - have scratched their heads and wondering why education isn't the issue of the 2001 campaign in a city with some of the state's worst schools.
Part of the reason, at least for Looney and DeStefano, is a reluctance to wave a red flag in front of powerful teachers' unions by proposing anything that threatens job security - school choice, for one.
But voters and business people mustn't allow the pipers to call the tune exclusively. And those of us who continue, stubbornly, to do business here must hold candidates' feet to the fire on the one issue that will determine more about the city's future than all the malls, baseball greenswards and parking garages combined: schools.
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