New Haven Independent

Congratulations to Co-op and Career High Schools—both cited by U.S. News and World Report—as well as to the students at these and other schools honored for success in AP coursework. These distinctions reflect the efforts of students, their families, and their teachers over the years. How to make their academic experiences more typical is the subject of some controversy, locally as it is nationally.

The U.S. is aiming to educate more students than ever before; this is necessary and just. (1) Few educators are complacent about what it will take to succeed on a broad scale. They expect to be accountable, and should. They have a difficult job worthy of respect. Ad hominem criticism—diverting energy and undermining morale—can cloud accountability, making public issues personal. Isolating and alienating educators is not a solution. We all can be part of a community campaign for greater academic rigor, early learning, literacy, and drawing additional well-qualified teachers to New Haven and to the profession more generally.

More students should be prepared to take AP courses and to pass AP exams. The trend is positive. Continued and accelerated improvement at this upper level will depend on the fruits of the pre-K, elementary and middle grades along with high school. The CMT and CAPT are useful gauges of progress and reveal work to be done. Standardized tests and their consequences will not go away, even as their funding and implementation are debated. (2) The State Board of Education is exploring requiring new high school exit exams as well as additional academic credits for graduation, and is soliciting public reaction before approaching the legislature following the 2008 elections.

Demand for and acceptance of greater rigor beyond test prep—more and more serious homework, more reading, writing, math, science, history, languages, art and less time watching TV and playing video games—are beginning to take hold among educators, parents, and students. Curiosity and engaging intellectual pursuits, not only test-taking and study skills, need nurturing. Because of the time squeeze during school, much of this must occur after hours and/or at home.

The significance of reading and speaking to young children at home is becoming more widely known, if not yet practiced enough for reasons including parents’ work schedules. (An Educational Testing Service report examines “The Family: America’s Smallest School.”) Formal early childhood education access and quality are advancing locally and statewide, though not as rapidly or comprehensively as some advocates would like. (3)

Income eligibility standards for Head Start have increased (to 130 percent of the federal poverty level), along with federal and state funds. Still, many needy working families will not qualify, and as Connecticut Voices for Children has shown, wealth disparities are far bigger than income disparities. A state earned income tax credit would help counter the costs and limitations of child (and health) care. School readiness and early reading initiatives could grow.

The erosion of literacy habits and proficiency, as suggested by a National Endowment for the Arts report “To Read or Not to Read” and discussed at a state reading summit November 29, is a grave societal concern. It is an issue of human fulfillment and empowerment. In Connecticut as elsewhere, literacy is linked to job readiness, economic development, crime reduction and civic vitality as well as to academic attainment across disciplines. One key is reading instruction by age nine, and specific training of teachers of the early grades. Yet adult, not only youth, literacy merits consideration, particularly given correlation between reading levels of children and their mothers. With achievement gaps as large as they are on average, it will take aggressive action throughout communities to close the gaps systematically. Schools are primarily, but hardly solely, responsible.

Teacher quality—including recruitment, development, and retention of the most promising educators—is a major factor. (This extends to pre-K teachers, whose qualifications, pay, and turnover rates naturally affect early education.) Impressive already are many of the New Haven Public Schools’ teachers; we need to keep and support them and attract more. Fittingly John Nguyen of Hillhouse High School, in receiving a national award, spoke of colleagues deserving recognition for their important work, too.

Every New Haven Public School has certain especially dedicated teachers, and many schools have a predominance of such conscientious professionals. All of the high schools with cited AP scholars have on their faculties multiple colleagues who have devoted time and care to professional development through the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute in recent years. Fully eight current Career High School teachers were Institute Fellows in 2007 alone, as were three from Co-op, five from Hillhouse, and three from Wilbur Cross. Others were Fellows previously in this inclusive, not exclusive, teacher-driven partnership for grades K through 12. Completing the Institute involves participating in a months-long seminar in the sciences or the humanities led by a Yale faculty member, as well as writing a curriculum unit for students. Fellows join the university community. (For a list of seminars, Fellows, and units, see this link.)

It is reductionist to attribute all of students’ shortcomings to schools, and then to take for granted the performance of “extraordinary” students such as the AP scholars who were honored. There are often inequities across several dimensions. Interrelated influences on student achievement include:
• Student motivation and persistence
• Teacher quality and expectations
• School leadership and school culture
• Curriculum
• Data on, and attention to, each student’s needs
• Families, including work schedules, child care, and home literacy practices
• Peer groups
• Early education (pre-K) availability and quality
• Length of school day and school year
• After-school, weekend, and summer extra-curricular learning

This is not to excuse but to underscore the role of public schools. Still, they can’t do it alone. Educators, parents, mentors, employers, taxpayers, community groups, students—we have to work together to enhance equality of opportunity, further challenging young people and ourselves.

Josiah H. Brown lives in New Haven with his wife and two young children. He is associate director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and a volunteer with organizations including the Greater New Haven Literacy Coalition, whose events were featured in these New Haven Independent articles:
Their Second Chance Starts With Reading
A Day For Literacy.
Curriculum units that New Haven teachers have written as Institute Fellows—working as colleagues with members of the Yale faculty in the humanities and the sciences—are available here. In 2008, the Institute will offer six seminars responding to requests of New Haven Public Schools teachers, who are invited to contact their school Representatives for information in advance of the January 29 application deadline.

1. Massachusetts is helping to set the pace in the U.S., with its eighth-graders achieving at rates among the best in the world, according to a November 2007 American Institutes for Research comparison of the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) with international exams. Average math achievement in Massachusetts trailed several Asian nations and Belgium. Yet it surpassed that in 40 other countries, including Australia, Russia, England and Israel. Students in Connecticut, as well as those in New Jersey and New York, performed comparably in math to counterparts in Australia, the Netherlands and Hungary. In math, only five countries in aggregate reached the Proficient level of achievement: Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Twenty-two countries were at the Basic level (including the U.S.) and 19 countries Below Basic. In science, only two countries were at the Proficient level: Singapore and Taiwan. Twenty countries were at the Basic level (including the U.S.) and 24 countries Below Basic. It should be noted that these strata of “proficiency,” etc. are, like the NAEP, more stringent than the definition of proficiency on state tests such as the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT). The NAEP proficiency standard can be compared to the “goal” standard for the CMT—i.e., fewer students are deemed “proficient” on the NAEP or at “goal” on the CMT than are deemed “proficient” on the CMT. Connecticut reluctantly lowered its standard following enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, so as to minimize the number of schools penalized for not reaching what would have been exceptionally difficult proficiency levels in a national context in which certain states’ exams are far tougher than others’. Connecticut’s “proficient” level remains more exacting than in many other U.S. states and what is now called its “goal” level is perceived as rigorous and valid.

2. The State of Connecticut sued over the annual tests required by the No Child Left Behind law, said to be an unfunded federal mandate. Evaluation of schools on the basis largely of test scores, but through different formulas, has led to a paradox in New York City. There, the schools New York State has labeled “in need of improvement” are significantly at odds with the City’s own new grading criteria. More than half the elementary and middle schools that got an F under those city criteria are rated in good standing under the federal law; more than one fifth of the schools the city awarded A grades are rated failing for state/federal purposes. (See “Albany Adds 60 Schools to City List of Failures,” New York Times, December 21, 2007.) These contradictions are partly about the weight given to individual students’ academic growth versus schools’ overall average scores for various sub-groups of students.

3. My family has personal experience with child-care challenges. Slots—-let alone subsidized slots—in accredited centers are scarce, particularly for kids younger than three; waiting lists are routine. New Haven does have several notable early education programs, as well as the promising All Our Kin, which aims to boost both child-care access and quality while training
women to become licensed providers.