Playing The Race Card
For the past year, the Connecticut Education Association (CEA) teacher’s union and many in what we have come to see as the educational establishment, have been on a full onslaught against charter schools and standardized testing. In Connecticut, charter schools have performed very well for students, and are financed nearly entirely by the state’s taxpayers.
To be clear, we’ve [ Business New Haven newspaper] supported, promoted, and advocated for education generally and charter schools and school choice since 1996, when we first began to look closely at the achievement of urban school districts.
Our business readers had been complaining from our earliest issues in ‘93-’94 that the region’s schools, and particularly urban schools, were not providing their companies with potential employees they could hire and train.
The first reactions to those reports were disappointing as some began to claim this call to a better education system had racist undertones, which served for a time to muffle the criticism.
Eventually, we learned that Connecticut performed worse than any other state in the gap between black and white students.
Almost immediately politicians, the educational establishment, teacher’s unions even the Connecticut Department of Education, looked elsewhere for the cause. Their first response was blaming minority parents and family structure, society’s income disparities, under funding of urban schools.
The schools and the classroom experience was rarely touched with criticism and frankly, many of us accepted the premise – we would have to fix society before we could fix educational outcomes.
For a while, we were sold the idea that Connecticut’s white students simply performed better than whites in other states. That wasn’t true then and is not true now, Connecticut students in all demographics under perform compared to neighboring Massachusetts for example – at a much higher cost, we might add.
The first really successful effort to deflate those excuses was the success of Connecticut’s fledgling charter schools. In New Haven, Achievement First’s Amistad Academy quickly demonstrated that students from poor families and struggling neighborhoods could achieve great success as recognized on the state’s standardized tests.
Charter school broad success on standardized tests created a real dilemma for Connecticut’s education establishment and teacher unions. Connecticut educators had long prided themselves on early adoption of standardized tests to evaluate student achievement. Connecticut was a leader, beginning its effort in 1986, after the Reagan administration released the report “A Nation at Risk.” The report was a broad indictment of America’s student performance.
Unfortunately, Connecticut’s educational establishment took the attitude “not here”, never acknowledging the state’s achievement gap between minority and white students.
Another Republican President, George Bush changed all that with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. Liberals, in spite of the fact that “No Child” was supported by then Senator Ted Kennedy, Connecticut educators immediately attacked their own premise of standardized testing, but the damage to their real cause was done.
All students, including minority students, now had to perform or the under performing schools would be potentially closed. The goal posts were moved and minority families came to understand that Connecticut’s educators did, in fact, need to perform for their children too.
Today, we mostly all know better, Achievement First’s Amistad High School in New Haven has 99% minority students, 82% are low income, and the school has a college acceptance rate of 100% for its 2015 graduating class.
That example and the success of other Charter Schools did not stop the predominantly white teacher’s unions and a couple of powerful West Hartford politicians from stopping minority families in one of the wealthiest counties in America from getting access to more choices with new charter schools in Bridgeport and Stamford. Governor Dannel Malloy’s administration is supporting the charter schools, but that may not be enough.
Perhaps another fact will further illustrate the picture of Connecticut’s education establishment, 39% of all students in Connecticut are minorities, and 8% of teachers are non-white. Progressives have a name for the cause of this outcome, “white privilege”. Why not here?
While the teacher’s unions and their supporters are now full bore against standardized testing, recruitment professionals have quietly told us that “obsolete tests and inflexible rules” have kept well-educated minorities from becoming teachers
in Connecticut.
Education in CT can best be described if we borrow a phrase from Connecticut's Governor: “if it is not racist in intent, it is racist in its outcome.”
For the past year, the Connecticut Education Association (CEA) teacher’s union and many in what we have come to see as the educational establishment, have been on a full onslaught against charter schools and standardized testing. In Connecticut, charter schools have performed very well for students, and are financed nearly entirely by the state’s taxpayers.
To be clear, we’ve [ Business New Haven newspaper] supported, promoted, and advocated for education generally and charter schools and school choice since 1996, when we first began to look closely at the achievement of urban school districts.
Our business readers had been complaining from our earliest issues in ‘93-’94 that the region’s schools, and particularly urban schools, were not providing their companies with potential employees they could hire and train.
The first reactions to those reports were disappointing as some began to claim this call to a better education system had racist undertones, which served for a time to muffle the criticism.
Eventually, we learned that Connecticut performed worse than any other state in the gap between black and white students.
Almost immediately politicians, the educational establishment, teacher’s unions even the Connecticut Department of Education, looked elsewhere for the cause. Their first response was blaming minority parents and family structure, society’s income disparities, under funding of urban schools.
The schools and the classroom experience was rarely touched with criticism and frankly, many of us accepted the premise – we would have to fix society before we could fix educational outcomes.
For a while, we were sold the idea that Connecticut’s white students simply performed better than whites in other states. That wasn’t true then and is not true now, Connecticut students in all demographics under perform compared to neighboring Massachusetts for example – at a much higher cost, we might add.
The first really successful effort to deflate those excuses was the success of Connecticut’s fledgling charter schools. In New Haven, Achievement First’s Amistad Academy quickly demonstrated that students from poor families and struggling neighborhoods could achieve great success as recognized on the state’s standardized tests.
Charter school broad success on standardized tests created a real dilemma for Connecticut’s education establishment and teacher unions. Connecticut educators had long prided themselves on early adoption of standardized tests to evaluate student achievement. Connecticut was a leader, beginning its effort in 1986, after the Reagan administration released the report “A Nation at Risk.” The report was a broad indictment of America’s student performance.
Unfortunately, Connecticut’s educational establishment took the attitude “not here”, never acknowledging the state’s achievement gap between minority and white students.
Another Republican President, George Bush changed all that with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. Liberals, in spite of the fact that “No Child” was supported by then Senator Ted Kennedy, Connecticut educators immediately attacked their own premise of standardized testing, but the damage to their real cause was done.
All students, including minority students, now had to perform or the under performing schools would be potentially closed. The goal posts were moved and minority families came to understand that Connecticut’s educators did, in fact, need to perform for their children too.
Today, we mostly all know better, Achievement First’s Amistad High School in New Haven has 99% minority students, 82% are low income, and the school has a college acceptance rate of 100% for its 2015 graduating class.
That example and the success of other Charter Schools did not stop the predominantly white teacher’s unions and a couple of powerful West Hartford politicians from stopping minority families in one of the wealthiest counties in America from getting access to more choices with new charter schools in Bridgeport and Stamford. Governor Dannel Malloy’s administration is supporting the charter schools, but that may not be enough.
Perhaps another fact will further illustrate the picture of Connecticut’s education establishment, 39% of all students in Connecticut are minorities, and 8% of teachers are non-white. Progressives have a name for the cause of this outcome, “white privilege”. Why not here?
While the teacher’s unions and their supporters are now full bore against standardized testing, recruitment professionals have quietly told us that “obsolete tests and inflexible rules” have kept well-educated minorities from becoming teachers
in Connecticut.
Education in CT can best be described if we borrow a phrase from Connecticut's Governor: “if it is not racist in intent, it is racist in its outcome.”
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