Area lawmakers universally agree the state’s education system and the way it’s funded are in need of improvement, and are hoping the Department of Education is developing a plan to revamp the Education Cost Sharing grant formula prior to the next legislative session.
In his ruling in the 11-year-old school funding lawsuit last week, Judge Thomas Moukawsher gave the General Assembly 180 days to develop a new way to distribute education funds to municipalities, making the distribution of money more fair.
Attorney General George Jepsen said today the state will appeal the court ruling. The appeal doesn’t prevent lawmakers, however, from addressing the judge’s comments “and I urge them to do so without delay.”
While Moukawsher said it’s up to the General Assembly to finance the state’s public schools, he added that last year’s budget crisis “left rich schools robbing millions of dollars from poor schools.”
“This paralysis has left rich school districts to flourish and poor school districts to flounder,” he said.
Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, said that in recent years some poorer school systems have been short-changed financially because decisions were politically influenced “when it was jury rigged.”
He said there’s been “loads of disagreement” about how education funds are distributed, saying that certain school systems, such as West Hartford, are provided money because of who their representatives are, rather than the needs of the schools.
Sen. Timothy D. Larson, D-East Hartford, called Moukawsher’s ruling “very, very encouraging.” But, he said, “unfortunately, we needed a court decision to get us to stand on our own two feet.”
Larson said he’s never been comfortable with the Education Cost Sharing grant formula.
“When we start to look at the way we fund education, we have a lot of significant needs that other communities don’t have,” he said of his hometown, “and a lot of those needs, frankly, are not factored into the formula.”
For example, he said East Hartford has a “very significant transient population” in which people move from Hartford and enroll their children in East Hartford schools, quickly moving out of town and skewing various data points that are used to calculate state funding.
“The way the formula is calculated needs to be re-thought out and re-addressed,” he said, criticizing the federal government for under funding promised special education costs.
With that in mind, he’s willing to be a part of the solution.
“I’d love to be part of the answer; get ready to roll up our sleeves and take a long look at how we do this in Connecticut,” Larson said.
Rep. Christopher Davis, R-Ellington, said the Education Cost Sharing grant tends to shift funds to “special pockets,” such as West Hartford, which he said has received an extra $500,000 that wasn’t due to a formula change but rather an appropriation.
“That’s the kind of situation that has created some of this inequity that the judge might have found,” he said. “It wasn’t done in any kind of way that hit benchmarks or anything like that. It was appropriated to certain towns based on however the Democratic majority wanted to appropriate the money that year.”
“I don’t think it ever reached its full funding levels,” Rep. Timothy Ackert, R-Coventry, said of the Education Cost Sharing money in the budget.
And while the cost per student throughout the state is “not that far off,” he said, cities pay more to educate their students at the expense of towns such as Coventry.
Rep. Samuel Belsito, R-Tolland said that an inequitable distribution of money contributes to performance disparities.
“The system is broken now,” he said. “It has to change.”
Promoting without progressing
In addition to funding discrepancies, Moukawsher said in his ruling that due to the state’s loose graduation and advancement standards, the neediest schools often produce students “with diplomas but without the education we promise them.”
Guglielmo said he doesn’t think a lack of money is to blame for that. Instead chronic absenteeism is at the root of the problem, he said.
“You can’t have that,” he said. “If they aren’t in the classroom, there’s no way to help them.”
Davis said it’s “completely unacceptable” for students to graduate high school in certain school systems without the same skills as those learned in others, “which is essentially what the court ruling said.”
Agreeing with Guglielmo, Davis said funding is not necessarily the reason.
“The real question for the legislature shouldn’t necessarily be how much funding should be sent to these lower performing districts or how much more funding should be sent to them,” Davis said. “It should be centered around how can we improve the students’ outcomes — how can we make them have higher achievement levels.”
Ackert said the disparity in graduation requirements is “a sad situation,” and promoting unqualified students through the grades is “a disservice to the student, to the family, and to the community.” But, he added, the issue falls on individual school systems, not the state.
There’s much to learn from charter and magnet schools, Belsito said, as they’re “doing an excellent job.” Educational performance disparities among urban and suburban students are “a huge part of the problem” because there is often a lack of stability and oversight at home, he added.
“A lot of the students don’t have the home encouragement,” Belsito said, noting that a stable home life is key to student success.
Teacher evaluations
Also in his ruling, Moukawsher questioned the state’s teacher evaluation process, saying, “state standards are leaving teachers with uselessly perfect evaluations and pay that follows only seniority and degrees instead of reflecting need and good teaching.”
Guglielmo said teacher evaluations are difficult because senior teachers with the most experience oftentimes are responsible for students with intellectual disabilities, which can negatively impact their evaluations due to lower test scores.
He said he’s concerned about dissuading veteran teachers from working with lower achieving students to receive better evaluations. This would replace them with less experienced teachers, which is “exactly the opposite of what you want.”
Belsito countered, though, that some tenured teachers tend to simply go through the paces knowing they can’t be fired.
“Maybe Common Core isn’t the right way,” he said, critical of the universal curriculum.
Ackert said teachers should be evaluated based on mid-term and final exam scores, not standardized tests.
That’s made teachers, students, and parents unhappy with the current teacher evaluation process, which has “an over-emphasis on standardized testing,” Davis said. He added that he expects Moukawsher’s ruling to be appealed prior to January, when the legislature reconvenes.
Either way with the state’s financial woes Davis said he expects the topic to be a major issue next year, and it will be “incredibly difficult” to find additional funds if the court ruling stands.
Guglielmo said Senate Minority Leader Leonard A. Fasano, R-North Haven, already has met with the Republican caucus in part to begin dissecting the decision and determining how to proceed.
“I don’t think it’s a quick fix,” Guglielmo said, adding that he feels the problems with the state’s educational system are “a huge societal problem” and cannot be solved in six months.
But work has to be done.
“We have no choice,” Guglielmo said. “These kids are going to make or break the state of Connecticut, the country, and the future.”
Ackert said legislators should look at what works in other states, and Larson said he’s hopeful the legislature’s Education Committee puts together a working group “so that you don’t have to start from square one.”
Belsito said Moukawsher might have done the “absolute right thing” by forcing the state to revamp its educational system, but admitted, “now we’re in the biggest damn hole that we could ever be in.”
