CT Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell and her counterpart in Rhode Island, Ken Wagner, recently offered salient ideas about how their states are ahead of the curve on assessing students’ performance according to the Common Core State Standards – and how assessment is changing for the better.  It’s all about executing and communicating well.

In a very frank discussion April 8^th at the Yale School of Management’s annual Education Leadership Conference, Dr. Wentzell and Dr. Wagner shared the view that the assessments of critical thinking in connection with the Common Core eliminate time-consuming test prep activities because the exams are no longer multiple-choice, process of elimination exercises.

Whereas there was once a logic to test prep under previous State tests, those activities are now “kind of silly,” Dr. Wagner said.

The more rigorous Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) assessments that Connecticut uses require students to interpret evidence from their reading, the kinds of academic activities that are useful for Advanced Placement and career experiences, Dr. Wentzell said.  Student improvement will stem from making sure they receive great instruction, she added.  “There’s no shortcut.”

Prior to becoming CT’s education commissioner, Dr. Wentzell served as the Hartford Public Schools’ assistant superintendent of Pre-K-12 education and also led the HPS transition to the Common Core beginning in 2010.

Bridging the Honesty Gap

The State’s transition to SBAC, now in its second year following adoption of the Common Core in 2010, also “bridges the honesty gap,” Dr. Wenzell told a packed room at the conference.  Connecticut’s previous State tests were developed prior to State standards and hence were not aligned to them, she explained.  “We had a 30-year record of lying to our families as to how their kids were being tested.  This is a movement to honesty.”

Indeed, “The previous assessments weren’t telling the complete story of grade-level readiness,” she said, adding that there was no great conspiracy; it was just the way things were done.

With the more rigorous Common Core State Standards, Yale panelists from Chicago and New Haven confirmed, predictably lower scores have inspired a backlash from parents and pundits critical of the tougher assessments.

“We must continue to communicate well that these are new standards,” Dr. Wentzell advised.  “This is a new baseline, a different approach, and the scores look different.”

“Persisting through difficulty is what education is all about,” Rhode Island Commissioner Wagner added.

CT students will take the SBAC through June and then the State will report baseline results later in the summer.

Hartford Schools are preparing to cut the Fiscal 2017 budget by $19.3 million, jettisoning some 236 positions, consolidating Bulkeley Upper and Lower High Schools, and discontinuing planned renovations at the Clark and Martin Luther King Schools, all to deal with the ramifications of the State and City budget crises.

That 4.4 percent cut comes in tandem with some $20 million in increased costs, including contractual salary increases of $6.7 million, a difficult balancing act.  The District sends 82 percent of funds to schools – and her central office leadership team has been cut by 30 percent, Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez said.

The budget calls for 20 positions to be cut from central office as well as some 96 teacher positions to be eliminated.  Given staff attrition over the summer (teachers retiring or moving away, etc.), teaching jobs will open up, hence it is impossible at this time to say just how many actual layoffs will occur.  As of April 19, all but 40 of the certified staff (teachers and administrators) affected by the budget cuts had found positions, the superintendent said.

Here are the video of the April 19 Hartford Board of Education workshop on the budget and the slides presented by Dr. Narvaez.  The full recommended budget document is here.

A Board Finance Committee Meeting to Remember

Chaired by Board Member Craig Stallings and joined by (fellow committee members) Board Chair Richard Wareing and Board Member Beth Taylor, the Hartford Board of Education’s Finance and Audit Committee this past Monday examined shifts in enrollment and the reasons for them.  Here are some highlights of the discussion:

• Some 20 percent of Hartford students at the high school level attend technical high schools including Prince Tech; another 20 percent attend CREC magnet schools, Chief Data and Accountability Officer Jeron Campbell reported.  “We should start talking to those kids” in focus groups, Board Chair Richard Wareing suggested, noting that the tech schools “are eating our lunch.”

“Yes, in a major way,” Dr. Campbell replied.  School camaraderie, athletic programs, and even how much fun students are having, as indicated by social media posts, are all factors.  “I would love to know what’s driving students on such a consistent basis,” Mr. Wareing said.

• Looking at the increasing costs (rising by $3.9 million next year) for special education services, Dr. Taylor asked whether nearby school districts are willing to work to regionalize services for students with disabilities.  “I’d like to see a five-to-10-year plan,” she said.  Many superintendents are discussing the possibilities, Dr. Narvaez said, and the District is conducting an audit of the programs.

Regional purchasing is happening, Chief Financial Officer Paula Altieri told the committee, but “Getting people to kind of let go and share services is hard.”

The Bottom Line.  The District faces a new reality with the deep budget challenges upon us, with the thoughtful strategic plan – and emphasis on equity – hanging in the balance as adjustments are made to implement it with dwindling resources.  Dr. Taylor suggested a workshop be held to closely examine the issues surrounding out-of-district placement costs for special education, which, for residential care, can be $67,000 per pupil.  That examination as well as the probe of why students tend to opt out of Hartford could be enormously helpful in long-term sustainability planning.  Like the city, the District has structural issues that now need to become this Board’s priority for their entire term, starting now.

Mayor Luke Bronin April 18^th underscored the City’s fiscal situation as “worse than we could have imagined,” with a deficit of $48.5 million looming for Fiscal 2017.

Two days later, as a sign of the City’s weak financial position, its bond rating was lowered.

When the mayor last week recommended his budget, he warned of continuing ripple-effect deficits in the years ahead.  Pointing out that Hartford’s mill rate (74.29) is almost twice as high as any other city or town in the state – he said he won’t recommend higher taxes.  His initial concept was to set up a Financial Sustainability Commission to preserve City options, keeping City Council and mayoral oversight in place, rather than accede to a lack of control in the event of bankruptcy.  The City Council and State legislative delegation deep sixed that oversight concept fast.

Unfortunately, one of the easiest available escape routes, for decades, has been a tail-light exodus from Hartford every single day; the pattern of segregation that has beleaguered our metropolitan region.

Poverty is concentrated in most metro areas, as it is in CT cities, as are the service providers for our society’s deepest hardships.  Being in service to children is not cheap.  Ignoring the issue of regionalization is cheap.  Cuts are being felt now – and they’re deep.

In Hartford, a further raising of taxes would be a negative incentive, possibly driving out employers.  For this reason, the mayor has vowed not to hike taxes (already at the highest level in the state … and in one of the poorest cities in the U.S.).

The mayor discussed the City budget at a town hall yesterday (see today’s Courant article for details).  He also has detailed a number of indicators of what is commonly referred to as the City’s “structural deficit”:

• Small Tax Base.  Hartford is a 17-square mile city in an otherwise wealthy metropolitan region.  Yet half the City’s property (among State, religious institution, and nonprofit organizations) is tax exempt.  No more blood in that tiny turnip.
• Not Done with this Year’s Deficit Yet.  The Fiscal 2016 budget, with its underestimated overtime, pension, and other payout costs, led to the projected deficit and layoffs yet to be resolved.  Deficits going forward are one thing; the one going backward isn’t pretty either.
• The Cupboard Is Bare.  Past reliance on one-time sales of City property to save the day this day has run out of gas.  While the City does recommend conveying its Battison Park land in Farmington to its pension fund (to help defray coming costs), there are no more band aids.  Indeed, the City reserve fund for emergencies will hit zero next year and the budget recommendation calls for eliminating 40 non-uniformed positions.
• Trade-Off.  Police District Service Officers and other special duty police officers will be returned to patrol and subsidies for festivals and parades will end, and even more significant reductions will occur in every area, including those for the Department of Families, Children, Youth & Recreation, so crucial to early preschool and enrichment activities.  That’s a profound killing-your-seed-corn issue.
• No Gain.  Education, representing half the City budget at $284 million, will remain flat funded for the eighth consecutive year.  The normal – and rising – cost of living increases for staff at all levels take place annually; those rising costs have had an impact on student resources for almost a decade.
• Back of the Bus.  As well, a dramatic reduction is proposed for school construction funded under the City’s Capital Improvement Plan.  To minimize future borrowing, the mayor proposes to put the brakes on the previously announced plans for knocking down and rebuilding the environmentally challenged Clark School and finally renovating Dr. Martin Luther King Middle School (the original Weaver High School).  The more recent Weaver High School facility on Granby Street, where renovations have been well under way and on course to be completed, is going forward at the moment.

For perspective, Governor Dannel Malloy recently relayed State budget details on the WNPR “Where We Live” program, online here.  The nation has endured 11 recessions since World War II, he said, and the Great Recession of 2008 certainly was the worst since the Depression of the late 1920s, which had at least a 30-year impact.  Recovery takes time.  With State revenue sources deteriorating – and levels of growth so important to spearhead spending, the State will have to adjust its priorities to a new reality, the governor said.

The Bottom Line.  The governor – and Hartford’s mayor and school superintendent – are now under the broiler of budget cuts, very steep for Fiscal 2017.  However distressing the reductions may be now, the projections for tomorrow, unless corrected, foretell an even deeper plunge.  Year-by-year manipulations have tended to disguise the structural deficits that annually drag us down.