Open letter regarding Civil Rights

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”—Mark Twain

Connecticut has the widest achievement gap in the country.  The supporters of SB 24 repeat this over and over as the driver behind education reform.  The Governor and others have even gone so far as to call this the “Civil Rights challenge of our time.”  While the fact is that the statistics show that too many of our schools and too many of our students are being left behind, the statistics neither determines the causation nor the solutions.  There are a variety of ways to approach this complex problem. SB 24 is not the best approach.  The measures in this bill do not address what studies overwhelmingly show to be the root causes of the achievement gap and instead would just serve to exacerbate the true problems.

First it is important to understand what the achievement gap is really telling us.  Connecticut may have the highest gap, but that piece of information is not enough.  If you look at the other side of the scale you see that West Virginia has the lowest gap.  To look at these numbers out of context, it would seem to suggest that we should be more like West Virginia—a highly dubious conclusion.  The achievement gap tells us that there is a discrepancy between the highest performing students and the lowest.  The statistics also show that this gap falls along the lines dividing the wealthiest and the poorest communities.  At one time, this looked to be a racial divide (hence the “Civil Rights challenge” comment) but recent articles in the New York Times point out that the problem is financial in nature.  This mirrors the real experience in our towns.  Because funding for education comes from the property taxes of individual community, students in wealthy communities such as Greenwich, Westport, and Woodbridge, are able to provide a better learning environment for their students than can Stamford, Bridgeport, or New Haven.  What the gap is showing is that the students in the wealthy communities are far out-performing their fellow students in the poorest communities.  This piece of information should not come as a surprise to anyone who is keeping up with the way poverty affects whole communities including parents, children, and schools.

Likewise, the statistics do not offer a solution for the problem although solutions can be found by thinking about the root causes.  The easiest solution for closing the achievement gap would be to stop the highest performing students from doing so well.  This Vonnegut-style “equality” would explain why West Virginia, among the poorest and most rural of states, has a minimal achievement gap.  This of course would be a ludicrous suggestion but it demonstrates how focusing on one measure—the achievement gap—in isolation from other factors affecting education is an empty argument.  Likewise, the focus on “accountability,” as if teachers and students do not try to close this gap every day on principle, is an over-simplistic yet easily legislated “solution”. 

The theory is that if teachers are held accountable, they will teach more effectively.  If schools are held accountable, then principals will run their school more efficiently. And if teachers and principals are unable to help students perform on a test, then the schools will be turned over to someone who can make it run well and communities will pay them to do so.   This translates into a downward spiral where the only people who benefit are those who stand to make money from education.  Schools which are currently in danger of failing are also the schools in the poorest communities.  SB 24 increases funding to those communities, but the lion share of that funding is earmarked for the privately run, for-profit charter companies like Achievement First.  This one private institution will see its per pupil ECS grant rise by $2,600 per student.  The hardest hit communities who need funding increases the most will see increases of less than $150 per pupil.  In addition, the “money follows the child” provision mandates that communities whose students attend charter schools have to pay an additional $1000 per student to those charter schools.  The result of this bill is that one corporation, Achievement First, stands to gain $10 million dollars while communities such as Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford will continue to hemorrhage both monetary and human capital.  The result is that these schools and the students left in them will not only continue to fail but will fall further behind. 

This solution would still have merit if there was evidence that privately run, for-profit charter schools were more effective at educating students and therefore would be instrumental in closing the achievement gap.  However, this is not the case.  Stanford’s CREDO study of charter schools in the nation demonstrated that while 17% of charters were more effective at closing the achievement gap in their students when compared to similar traditional public schools, 35% were less effective—a failure rate of 2 to 1.  The other 50% performed at the same rate as their traditional public school counterparts.  The New York Times reported in February that although charter schools which underperform should be closed, the reality is that they do not.  It reports that only 6.5% of charters that came up for renewal were closed even though studies show that 35% are underperforming.  Ultimately, privatizing education is not going to solve the problem. 

If we are to really address the root cause of the achievement gap, we need to tackle the true underlying cause—inequality.  This is the same root cause of all civil rights challenges: the discrepancy between those who have access to resources needed to achieve at the highest levels and those who do not.  I recently spoke to a student who told me he could not complete an example on this year’s Math CAPT because he had an older calculator which did not have the function that was being tested.  Not having access to the same resources that the rest of his peers enjoy puts him at a disadvantage and once teacher evaluation is linked to CAPT performance, it puts the teacher at a disadvantage too.  Siphoning money from at risk schools will only make it more difficult for those schools to turn it around.  In the meantime, the students in that school will fall further behind.

Back in 2010, the NAACP issued a statement that unequivocally opposed charter schools as a solution for closing the achievement gap and opposed “money follows the child” measures.  The resolution states:

the NAACP will strongly advocate for immediate, overarching improvements to the existing public education system; and ….the NAACP rejects the emphasis on charter schools as the vanguard approach for the education of children, instead of focusing attention, funding, and policy advocacy on improving existing, low performing public schools and will work through local, state and federal legislative processes to ensure that all public schools are provided the necessary funding, support and autonomy necessary to educate all students.

This resolution comes from an organization whose sole purpose is to tackle civil rights challenges.  The NAACP says that they are committed to finding solutions which will benefit ALL students.  This can only be done by reforming the way education in Connecticut is funded so that each student has access to excellent schools.   I agree this is the Civil Rights challenge of our times and SB 24 does not address that challenge.  SB 24 will only work to further the divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”