School Reform Misses Some Numerical Targets

In the five years since New Haven launched a lauded school-reform drive, it has increased the number of students enrolled in college for two years — but failed to close the performance gap between the city and the rest of the state.

Those results, and others measures of the progress of New Haven’s school-reform drive, were emerged, and parsed, Monday night at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Education’s ​“Teaching and Learning Committee” Monday night.

Meeting at Career High School, the board discussed the limitations and potential uses of new data showing the progress the district has made in reaching its school reform goals — and what to do about it. Administrators, teachers, parents and students turned out to hear the committee ​“go deep with each other” in their analysis of the charts, and later shared their own interpretations and innovations.

Schools Superintendent Garth Harries said district staff worked hard to compile the information, and chose from a large number of total available indicators. The main question the charts should answer: ​“Are we having a big impact on the students that stay with us?”

Johnston: ​“Off Course” On Achievement Gap

This document lists a few district goals and charts data showing the status toward achieving them. The achievement gap between New Haven’s students and the rest of the state is decreasing by an average of .5 to 1 percentage point per year, essentially ​“flatlining” compared to projected progress, said Alex Johnston (pictured), board member and former CEO of the advocacy group ConnCAN.

“We’re really off course,” he said.

The dropout rate has dropped from 27.3 percent in June 2010 to 19.3 percent, a significant decrease, though not the target 16.3 percent.

An ​“encouraging” outcome was an increase in graduating students who stayed in college for two years, especially when paired with a decrease in students who did not graduate from high school. The green line rising over time is ​“the most important line,” Johnston said. ​“That’s the farthest out we look.”

Johnston hypothesized that the district tackled easy-to-fix, ​“low-hanging fruit” problems first, giving them an initial bump, but not sustaining reform.

“If there are schools that are stuck, that is the time to get radical,” he said, citing the turnaround at Lincoln Bassett School as an example of sustainable change.

Committee Chair Alicia Caraballo said that the district as a whole has made a lot of progress, but the same schools have been struggling for about 15 years. The board should use the data to ​“look intensively at schools receiving significant amount of resources” in order to track whether or not they progress, she said.

Board member Che Dawson noted that these schools continue to see problems despite changes in the administrations, student bodies and even physical buildings. ​“Is it about poverty?” he said. ​“What is it?”

“The community has never been considered as an element” affecting a school’s status,” committee chair Susan Samuels added.

Harp: Track A Cohort

Aggregate data without qualitative information makes it difficult to determine ​“where the outliers are,” Mayor Toni Harp said, offering a caveat at the beginning of the discussion: ​“What is really driving the numbers?”

Breaking down the charts by individual schools and gathering relevant demographic information on their surrounding communities would allow for better use of the data to continue reform efforts, she said. Tracking a single cohort over several years could also provide an interesting set of data.

Harp said the system should look into helping parents, not blaming them. She said the school system has not reformed its approach to take into account major changes in family structure, especially in low-income families.

Many families are headed by women who sometimes work two full-time or three part-time jobs, instead of staying at home with their children, she said. The school system is stuck in a 1950s black-and-white ​“Ozzie and Harriet” approach to family life, she said, instead of providing support to address an array of needs.

“When we suspend a kid, we send him home to what?” she said. ​“Sometimes the grandmother is working, too.”

The second document discussed at the meeting tracked several measures and indicators of student success from 2009 to 2014.

The board’s new framework presented in September lists ​“fundamental reading capability by first grade” and ​“PSAT and SAT scores” as crucial indicators for early and college success. The data shows just 10.8 percent of 11th grade students meeting the College Board’s benchmark for the SATs, and 13.1 percent of tenth graders meeting standards for the PSATs.

But kindergarten test performance did not necessarily match up to accurately predict reading proficiency in first grade, Harp pointed out in the data.

“There’s no single measure of preparation” for reading, making that analysis difficult, Harries responded.

The committee budgeted 10 minutes of remarks from the public. Harries noted that many staff members were in attendance to hear the analysis.

Carolina: Shift Hiring Priorities

Hillhouse High School Principal Kermit Carolina stood to present a couple of innovations for continued radical reform. To increase ​“talent” and ​“equity,” he said, the district should put a moratorium on hiring at most schools until struggling schools like Hillhouse, Wilbur Cross and Lincoln-Bassett have a chance to hire the most talented teachers and staff.

Carolina also said that certain schools take in many students who come in with educational challenges, such as low testing scores. He said ​“spreading those students out” instead of ​“concentrating” them would put them in contact with students who are excelling, prompting struggling students to ​“feed off” the positive peer pressure.

Parent and school advocate Megan Ifill said schools considered ​“failing” actually have students with ​“severe learning disabilities but killer work ethics.” She also suggested the district take into account the number of social workers a school has when determining performance.

Parent advocate Florence Caldwell said that historically community schools like Lincoln-Bassett have been used as ​“dumping grounds” for disruptive students the magnet schools could not handle. Community schools should not have to rely on the state for resources, she said.

One student spoke out at the end of the meeting. Kimberly Sullivan, a junior at Sound School, said the information from her school could be skewed by the disproportionate number of students who are not from New Haven. ​“Are we getting more out-of-town students or are we improving what we’re doing?” she posited.

The next committee meeting will involve a discussion of more school-specific data, Harries said.