Commentary—

Connecticut Still Not Serious About Education

By William A. Collins

Lousy test scores,

Make us groan;

But help’s not in,

The schools alone.

Oh, the humiliation! It seems that rich inland towns like Avon and Simsbury, once part of Connecticut’s educational upper crust, have been unceremoniously dumped into a second-class category. The state Board of Education has arbitrarily created a whole new elite classification of superrich towns, all down by the Gold Coast, that are wealthy beyond the fantasy of mere mortal municipalities upstate. All the kids in Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, etc are truly superior. At least financially.

But if demotion to second class seems painful to some kids, ponder the ones down in ninth class. For example, while roughly 85 percent of sophomores in spiffy Avon were meeting state goals on this year’s standardized test, in nearby Hartford only 17 percent passed.

Plainly Connecticut’s education problem is not with youngsters whose learning environment begins with prenatal care and finishes with graduation from Wilton High. Rather the problem lies with those who can’t afford prenatal care at all, or much of any other kind. We’re talking here about poor diet, single-parent or no-parent households, mandatory parental drug sentences, constant shifting from school to school, excessive television, destructive peer pressure, relentless prejudice, and all the other harmful attributes of poverty and race.

So does our state government tackle these social ills? You bet, spoonful by spoonful. We have programs for Head Start, health clinics, child care, remediation, Section 8, Medicaid, free meals, food stamps, etc. But unfortunately the bureaucracy, inconvenience, faltering budgets, and long waiting lists for many of these benefits limit their utility. Further, they generally depend on the limited initiative and savvy of unlettered, stressed-out families.

Also undermining the learning readiness of poor kids is that unspoken elephant in the parlor — segregation. Connecticut is one of the most segregated states in America, and discrimination in perpetuity is enshrined in our statutes. “Home Rule” allows towns to keep out poor people, and we do just that. Economic (and racial) purity is the goal, and zoning is the tool.

One case in point comes from this year’s SATs. Neither Stamford nor Norwalk, reasonably large and prosperous cities, boasted a single National Merit semifinalist. No small part of the reason is the 50 percent minority school enrollment in both towns. This severely stresses staff and budget, and triggers much parental panic. For the educationally intense, that panic leads to flight, either to suburbs or to private school.

In reflecting on these dreary conditions you might conclude that our heavy reliance on standardized testing is pretty irrelevant to such school ills. You’d be right. Testing is done mostly to create the illusion of meaningful activity, and to buttress certain high-end real estate markets. No Child Left Behind is the worst culprit, since it punishes as well as measures poor districts.

But worse yet is our property tax system. It forces desperately poor cities to suicidally raise their tax rates in order to pay for schools. State aid, thanks to an ancient lawsuit, is also a large player, though now dwindling. From a high of 45 percent of total educational costs a decade ago, it now provides only 39 percent.

Meanwhile experimental programs in Harlem show that it does indeed take a village to raise a child. Social services, especially health care, need to serve a poor kid through ten-hour school days, and then follow up with him at home. This care must begin in the maternity ward.

At the same time more harm is daily done to poor kids by lawmakers insisting on longer mandatory drug sentences for their parents than for all the serial child molesters in the nation.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)