If you haven’t had enough already, read my column, which was written last night before the senate voted on a compromise education reform plan. Gov. Dannel Malloy and the unions finally agreed on some tentative steps toward figuring out how to close Connecticut’s worst-in-the-nation achievement gap. Malloy still deserves a lot of credit. I’m not sure anyone realized how hard it would be for a Democratic governor to convince his own people that the system doesn’t work. My overall view:
… it is sadly revealing that so much of the “reform” debate over the past few months about improving schools that serve our poorest students revolved around how well-compensated adults would be affected. Third-graders who can’t read have always been too easy for Connecticut to ignore. This year was no different.
The bill can be found here. A comparison showing what the bill would do, prepared by the governor’s office, is here. There are good explanations of it all in the Courant and in the Mirror.
Union leaders, Gov. Malloy and legislative leaders generally praised the compromise deal, which would add $100 million to education spending, allow for more charter schools, expand preschool and reading instruction and test controversial ideas such as linking teacher evaluation to student performance and give more power to the commissioner of education.
Newly minted unionist Joe Markley, a Tea Partyin’ senator from Southington, had this view of the bill that passed in the dead of night, as reported by the Junkie:
This is vampire legislation … A bill emerges out of a backroom after midnight and it passes through the Senate before dawn and the debate never sees the light of day.
Poor Jonathan Pelto, he too can’t resist declaring victory over the charter school vampires and Count von Malloy. Interestingly, the blogger found a silver lining in legislation that permits some of the very reforms that he and the Connecticut Education Association have so vigorously opposed:
… the people who worked so hard to protect Connecticut’s children, schools and educational system from the national privatization effort, should be very proud of themselves and Connecticut’s Democratic legislators.
The legislation moves to the House of Representatives today.
Yes, Pelto is gloating over Minnesota too: Governor Dayton vetoed a bill last year with the following: MN will see this bill again either next year or in 2014.
?Grading schools on an A-F scale, based on student test scores
?Eliminates tenure in favor of five-year renewable contracts
?Grading teachers and principals on effectiveness
?A no-strikes rule for teachers
?Vouchers for parochial and private schools
?$7,500 scholarships for kids completing HS a year early
I love Joe Markely!
What was Joe thinking? Voting against legislation because he didn’t have time to read it? What are you man? Literate?
Democrats handle this stuff so much better with the red and green flashcards on the floor telling the rank and file how to vote. No reading necessary in the peanut gallery.
Why distrust the Democratic leadership?
Let’s add it up:
CT Race to the Top Federal Funding? Zero dollars after 3 rounds. A Knock Out.
CT No Child Left Behind standards? Non-compliant.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The waiver will be denied as this legislation is a bad faith attempt to address previous shortfalls.
The Donovan/Williams proposal? Lacks good faith as an honest attempt to become compliant.
Projected outcome: AG Jepsen is asked to resurrect the NCLB lawsuit in the Unions last ditch attempt to avoid accountability
http://tinyurl.com/ct3on83
Then there’s the next phase of Sheff non-compliance in 2013.
Will the Courts and Federal Government take over CT schools to resolve the achievement gap?
I worked in the schools 70-81 in North Carolina and before that , in Connecticut. I was part of early Learning Disabled reading programs.
When I left Connecticut, the madness of the baby boom had not hit the main. In the 90, back in Connecticut again, I very very briefly helped in the schools again. I knew I’d aged out of it, though only in my 40s. THEY’D LOST IT.
Classrooms are lively and full of all the best energy, but that energy must be the right stuff, and I always believed it was. IT’S NOT.
The schools are not exempt from the human equation – they factor in to the rest of it when we suffer.
Whatever the politics, it’s nice to see that something is being done. It won’t hold if we do not get it in line. We cannot expect ANYTHING to hold when the classroom climate goes so way over the line from healthy aggression and creative expression to failure, panic, and self-destruction.
Connecticut is the best there is. And now maybe we can show it again.
Thanks “dot gov” for an improvement.
e.
Thank you Rick Green, for this fine article and the sneaky way you got me to sidetrack from work to read it. I dislike the Vampire thing so much for our children, unless it’s Halloween, that RAN to read it from that awful vampire photo, wondering what on earth, and how can I help? :-\
“I’m not sure anyone realized how hard it would be for a Democratic governor to convince his own people that the system doesn’t work.”
And therein lies why it was so difficult…the system does work in the overwhelming majority if cities and towns. If Malloy had focused only on putting reforms in place to help failing schools and students, there would have been much less objection. Instead he also focused on statewide reform of things like tenure and evaluation that are simply not needed, and ended up being the biggest impediments to the bill’s passing.
Dom you are wrong here. I wish you weren’t.
Other states trying to introduce Charter Schools or voucher or a parental triggers in only the worst performing schools ran into an equal amount of trouble.
To understand the latest ‘win’ for the unions, districts must negotiate with the teachers of failing schools first. The blame is now shifted on to the school administration. That may seem harmless but consider this: teachers teach in these schools and never utter a peep until it is officialy declared a ‘failing’ school. Thank God someone told them!
Only then do the teachers decide to listen at their leisure to state proposals. The parental trigger is gone. What’s left is a teacher’s trigger. If they decide to move on from a school where they are getting enough community grief then a few will–at their own discretion and due leisure–and commit a meaningless administrative transfer to another school.
OTOH, there are some holes in the agreement that will lat Malloy do quite a bit to set things in motion before the 2013 NCLB non-waiver and Sheff decisions force the Democrats to concede control to the courts.
I expect a Romney win will mean Charters and Vouchers as part of the NCLB compliance.
Mr. Pelto is probably sad this is over. All this hubbub and clamor led to tons of traffic to his website, allowing him to make lots of money! What I find very funny is how he railed on the “reformers” for the money they were trying to make on these reforms (nevermind how he never exactly explained how they’d make the money–”but if I tell you there are hedge fund people making donations, that’ll do the trick”). Malloy and the reforms Pelto claimed to hate are the best that happened to Pelto’s bank account! Too bad the gravy train has arrived at the station.
What money has Pelto made Beth? Back up your assertion with facts.
You do not know what you are talking about and you are ignorant.
I’d take Pelto over Green any day.
There is no comparison. One writes and researches and one cuts and pastes.