Fact-Check: Have Schools Improved?

(News analysis) At her reelection campaign kick-off, Mayor Toni Harp cited four indicators to argue that public schools have improved since she arrived in City Hall.

Official numbers cast doubt on the claim, while other numbers suggest improvement.

On half the indicators Harp cited, the city’s school system’s rates have actually been backsliding since she first won citywide office in 2013, according to state statistics.

Fewer students are signing up for the city’s public schools, but they’re showing up for class more often. More students are also earning their high-school diploma on time, but they’re also having a tougher time going to and staying in college.

Harp is running for a fourth two-year term on the strength of her record, hailing progress in public education as a prime example.

The indicators that Harp cited at her announcement are just a handful of the ways that a school district’s effectiveness can be measured. Experts also look for whether students are picking up new skills, whether those new skills match with expectations for that grade level, whether they’re preparing for careers after graduation, whether they’re physically fit and artistically engaged, and whether there’s significant gaps that hurt those with higher needs, among many other factors.

Overall, the state said that, last school year, New Haven scored 65 percent of the points that a district can earn, up from 62 percent three years prior when it first implemented the Next Generation Accountability system, even while Connecticut as a whole has fallen by 1.2 points over the same time period. Those scores have kept New Haven’s public schools at the top of Connecticut’s other poor cities, outperforming Hartford, Bridgeport and Waterbury.

Here are Harp’s claims tested point by point:

Claim: School enrollment is higher.

False. Enrollment hasn’t budged much over the years since Harp became mayor, but this school year, 156 fewer students had claimed desks by October than in the fall before Harp was first elected.

Claim: Attendance is better.

True. The state monitors how many students are missing more than 10 percent of the school year. That measure, chronic absenteeism, is way down by 4.8 points from the first full school year after Harp took office.

The state does not track average daily attendance, another way of looking at whether classrooms are full each day.

Claim: Graduation rates continue to go up.

True. While the state always lags years behind in publishing its graduation rate, as it checks whether students who say they’re leaving the district were actually just drop-outs, graduation is up by 4.5 points from the first full school year after Harp took office.

Claim: More students are enrolling in college.

True-ish. The state tracks the portion of students who enter college any time during the first year after their high-school graduation. As New Haven’s most recent numbers nosedived, the college-going rate is down by 5.7 points from the first class who graduated when Harp was mayor.

However, because four-year graduation rates are higher and because the high school cohorts have grown, the actual number of on-time graduates going to college is now higher, rising from around 645 in 2014 to around 725 in 2017.

Garth Harries, the former superintendent, said that during his tenure, both rates kept pace, though they’re now splitting in different directions. ​“If more kids graduate and the college going rate stays the same, then it is true more kids are going to college,” he said. ​“For my time, college going improved in parallel with graduation.”

Claim: More students are staying in college.

True. The state also tracks the portion of students who return to college for a second year. As New Haven’s numbers again dropped this year, college persistence is about where it was when Harp took office, ticking up just barely, by 0.1 points from the first class who graduated when Harp was mayor.