ConnCAN's Education News Roundup

November 12, 2007

News Articles

State seeking school reform: Proposal urges higher standards
By Eileen FitzGerald, The News Times, November 11, 2007

The state Department of Education unveiled a far-reaching redesign meant to increase rigor -- and the state's reported 75-percent high school graduation rate.

The plan, unveiled during a state Board of Education meeting Wednesday, is called a "work in progress." Officials will seek comments and recommendations during visits across Connecticut before it is adopted.

The proposal calls for the state to write a model curriculum it will offer to schools for voluntary use. Students would have to take and pass more courses to graduate, and the state would create end-of-year exams for five subjects. Students would have performance tests, like labs or research presentations, for other subjects.

The plan also adds a senior project -- such as an internships outside of school -- to the high school graduation requirement. It would test skills beyond academics and provide ways for students to accelerate at a faster pace than they can now.

Day 4 In Sheff Case Reveals Rift
By Rachel Gottlieb Frank, The Hartford Courant, November 10, 2007

Testimony by the state's education commissioner on the fourth day of a hearing on the Sheff vs. O'Neill desegregation lawsuit revealed a testy relationship between Hartford's superintendent of schools and the state Department of Education over state efforts to quicken the pace of desegregation.

State Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan on Friday summarized an exchange of letters that began last summer between him and Superintendent Steven Adamowski in which McQuillan asked Hartford to submit documents showing why several of the city's magnet schools didn't have enough white students and how the district intended to remedy the problem.

Spotty Sheff Enforcement
By Rachel Gottlieb Frank and Magdalene Perez, The Hartford Courant, November 9, 2007

Over the years the state has helped develop a comprehensive plan to desegregate Hartford's schools, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the efforts, appealed to suburban districts to open their schools to city students and offered training to suburban districts to help city students succeed, state witnesses testified Thursday in the Sheff vs. O'Neill desegregation case.

But cross-examination of those witnesses in Superior Court in Hartford revealed that shifts in management have resulted in spotty results and murky accountability since 2003, when the plaintiffs in the Sheff lawsuit reached a compromise agreement with the state on integration goals.

New Lebanon: A Magnet School in Progress
By Anne W. Semmes, The Greenwich Citizen, November 9, 2007

Now that the Board of Education has unanimously voted on New Lebanon School as the district's fourth magnet school, the focus has shifted to how best to strengthen this elementary Byram school identified by Dr. Betty Sternberg, superintendent of schools, as racially unbalanced.

"New Leb has issues of an achievement gap with its mix of minority and white students," said Colleen Giambo, board chairman. "We will try to address closing this gap."

"There will be a committee of administrators and teachers," she said, to consider the different strategies for closing the gap. "They will go though a similar process of development as happened with other magnet schools in town. Each school is different, with different parental interests. Julian Curtiss has international language instruction and Hamilton Avenue has small classes and a pre-school."

Bard President to Meet With City Over C Grade
By Elissa Gootman, The New York Times, November 9, 2007

One of New York’s most prominent educators, Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, has joined the chorus of criticism over the City Department of Education’s blunt new A through F rating system for public schools, saying in an interview yesterday that it was “reductive” and “depressing.”

But while most city schools received grades this week, Bard High School Early College, associated with Mr. Botstein’s college, did not. Its grade and those of 22 other schools were reported as “under review” by the department. In fact, Mr. Botstein said, he learned last week that the school had earned a tentative grade of C on a draft copy of the report card — even though its graduates earn not just a high school diploma, but two years’ worth of college credits. And he is holding out hope that the grade will be changed.

Online Newsletters

Reporter Robert Frahm Leaves The Hartford Courant
By Alexander Russo, This Week in Education, November 9, 2007

The list of veteran education reporters who are leaving the newsroom just keeps getting longer. After over 20 years at the Hartford Courant, Robert Frahm recently took a buyout. He follows Dale Mezzecappa, Bob Sipchen, Richard Lee Colvin, Mike Bowler, and others who have left the education beat, most of them due to downsizing.

With an education team that once numbered four, the Hartford Courant (bought in 2001 by the Tribune Company) had cut and lost education reporters until Frahm was all but the last man standing, he said when I met him recently.