Issues: Education

PHOTOS!   

THE PROBLEMS

There is nothing more important to our City than Public Education. Unfortunately, despite the sincere efforts of many, and a huge school budget, New Haven's school system faces serious challenges at the Federal, State and local levels.

No Child Left Behind: This program has caused more problems than it has solved. Now, apparently, it is being promoted by the state of Connecticut, which had originally challenged it in court.

The problem at the core of this program was eloquently described in a recent letter to the Register (July 29, 2007):

"It is time to stand up and say to our legislators, state and federal, that we want this nation's children to be successful lifetime learners rather than mediocre test takers."

Magnet Schools: The State has promoted magnet schools as a method for furthering school integration. Integration is a worthy goal, but the magnet school concept has failed to achieve it.

Moreover, at the primary K-8 level, there is much evidence that small neighborhood schools are superior to magnet schools.

School Building Program: The School Building program has been too extravagant for our taxpayers' budgets, driving up our debt service, and missing the real needs of our children.

Mismanagement and Political Patronage: The New Haven Board of Education is a source of mismanagement and political patronage. While Public Education deserves out utmost support, we as citizens and residents need to know that our tax money is being well spent.

MY PROPOSALS TO ADDRESS THESE ISSUES.

1. Amend the New Haven City Charter to provide for an elected Board of Education.

Of 169 Connecticut municipalities, only three have an unelected Board of Education appointed by the Mayor. New Haven is one of these three. The appointed board is accountable only to the Mayor, and serves at his discretion. It is unlikely to raise serious challenges on the issues of patronage, mismanagement and budget transparency. An elected board will be more responsive to citizens' demands for oversight and transparency.

2. Hire enough teachers to reduce classroom size for grades K-3.

Landmark research in Tennessee has shown that reducing classroom size has dramatic effects in all three types of school districts: urban, suburban, and rural.

Reducing class size in the early years greatly improves student preparedness for rigorous High School programs later on.

To accomplish this we need more classroom teachers. We can afford to do this if we change the ratio of administrators to support teachers to regular classroom teachers.

At present 20% of the professional staff are administrative; another 20% are support teachers who pull students out of regular classes in order to give individual help in reading, math, and speech, etc.; and only 60% are classroom teachers.

We need to convert many of the highly paid, but often underutilized, administrative positions into classroom teaching positions. Ideal percentages would be 10% administrative, 10% support teachers, and 80% classroom teachers.

More classroom teachers allows for smaller class size, which in turn results in less need for special support teachers and less need for disciplinary administrative personnel.

Much of the cost of the new teachers would be made up by the savings in the salaries of the administrators. For example, assistant principals often make three times more that a starting classroom teacher.

3. Make all K-8 schools neighborhood schools. Leave the large magnet schools for High School.

Magnet schools, in both Hartford and New Haven, have been a failure as a remedy for the landmark Sheff vs. O'Neill school integration lawsuit. Hartford's schools remain as segregated as they were in 1996, when the magnet remedy was first initiated. (New Haven Register, July 22, 2007.)

There is no social or educational rationale to support the continuation of magnet schools at the K-8 level.

On the other hand I do support the magnet concept at the secondary (9-12) grade levels, where children are old enough to gain from a variety of programs. Schools such as Hill Regional Career High School, Sound Aquaculture/Agriculture School, High School in the Community, Common Ground Charter School, and Cooperative Arts and Humanities do a good job in providing an array of exciting educational opportunities.

Unfortunately most of New Haven's children have not been adequately prepared to take advantage of these programs.

Small neighborhood schools at the primary level would be better suited to provide that preparation. The educational advantages of neighborhood schools include:

• being better able to address neighborhood needs,
• providing parents more access to teachers, and
• reducing the time children spend in busses.

Other advantages of small neighborhood schools include:

• being easier to site,
• having a greater role in building community, and
• cutting down on pollution from bussing.

Magnet schools do the opposite of these points.

4. Initiate a program to help new inner-city parents understand the importance of verbal communication with their children, starting from day one.

Matt Borenstein, founder of the High School in the Community, and long time New Haven teacher, proposed this program. The concept is based on research demonstrating that the greatest predictor of academic success was the amount of active, verbal, parental communication during the formative years (1-5). Most middle and upper income parents practice this reflexively, but lower income parents, for a variety of reasons, often do not. On the whole, lower income parents talk to their children only one quarter as much as middle and upper income parents.

According to the study, the level of sophistication (i.e. the academic level) and the language of the parents are not important factors. It is the amount of interactive parent/child communication that makes the difference. Watching TV, even educational TV, is not a substitute.

Teaching parents the importance of frequent parental communication can have enormous benefits. This is a low cost, doable program that will yield great returns over time.

5. Lobby the federal government and our congressmen to scrap the No Child Left Behind program and to replace it with funded programs that support traditional teaching methods.

THESE FIVE STEPS CAN GREATLY IMPROVE THE EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES FOR NEW HAVEN'S STUDENTS.