ConnCAN's Education News Roundup

News Articles

City's schools enter top 5 for Broad prize
By Peter Urban, The Connecticut Post, September 19, 2007

Bridgeport was one of five finalists for the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education, a national competition to reward urban school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement.

As a finalist, the city's schools will receive $125,000 from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation that will go to high school seniors for college scholarships. Bridgeport was also a finalist last year and divided the $125,000 prize among 14 deserving students, Ramos said.

The city's schools also narrowed the achievement gap between Hispanic students and the state average for white students in reading and math at all grade levels. Bridgeport was also recognized for engaging the local business community in the education process.

Magnet schools rank as top option
By Andrew Shaw, The Greenwich Time, September 19, 2007

The Board of Education's task force ranked adding two magnet programs as the most viable solution to fixing racial imbalance, space use and declining enrollment, according to an unofficial poll of members yesterday.

In the unofficial hand count, 19 members voted that adding two magnet programs -- likely at New Lebanon and Glenville Schools -- would be the best option. Ten other members voted it the second best option.

The board will make a decision on what action they want to take on Oct. 25 at their regular meeting, held at 7 p.m. at Parkway School. The first phase of any plan would not begin to be implemented until the next budget cycle.

Support Grows for Teacher Bonuses: More Schools Offer Performance Pay as House Debates Issue
By Michael Alison Chandler, Washington Post, September 18, 2007

A movement gaining momentum in Congress and some school systems in the Washington region and beyond would boost pay for exceptional teachers in high-poverty schools, a departure from salary schedules based on seniority and professional degrees that have kept pay in lockstep for decades.

In the District, a five-year, $14 million federal grant is fueling a pilot program to reward teachers and principals in a dozen high-poverty public schools each year that achieve the strongest gains in test scores and share successful strategies with others. Details are being worked out by the city school system, the local teachers union and a partner organization, New Leaders for New Schools.

Alabama Plan Brings Out Cry of Resegregation
By Sam Dillon, The New York Times, September 17, 2007

After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools.

Black parents have been battling the rezoning for weeks, calling it resegregation. And in a new twist for an integration fight, they are wielding an unusual weapon: the federal No Child Left Behind law, which gives students in schools deemed failing the right to move to better ones.

The schools superintendent and board president, both white, said in an interview that the rezoning, which redrew boundaries of school attendance zones, was a color-blind effort to reorganize the 10,000-student district around community schools and relieve overcrowding. By optimizing use of the city’s 19 school buildings, the district saved taxpayers millions, officials said. They also acknowledged another goal: to draw more whites back into Tuscaloosa’s schools by making them attractive to parents of 1,500 children attending private academies founded after court-ordered desegregation began.

Tuscaloosa’s rezoning dispute, civil rights lawyers say, is one of the first in which the No Child Left Behind law has become central, sending the district into uncharted territory over whether a reassignment plan can trump the law’s prohibition on moving students into low-performing schools. A spokesman, Chad Colby, said the federal Education Department would not comment.