The Connecticut Council for Education Reform (CCER), a non-profit organization representing business and civic leaders, outlined its legislative priorities today. CCER’s mission is to represent the business and civic voice for comprehensive reform efforts to close the achievement gap while raising academic outcomes for all students in Connecticut.
CCER’s priorities for the 2012 legislative session include:
- Teacher and leader employment and retention policies that attract the highest quality professionals and insist upon effectiveness as defined by their ability to demonstrate improvement in student performance, not seniority, as the measure of success defined by redesigned evaluation systems.
- A system of high-quality academic interventions for every K-12 student who is behind in reading and math, which may include summer school or extended learning time, and a high school graduation assessment to ensure that a high school diploma reflects levels of competence.
- A state strategy for addressing turnaround schools and districts, which includes specific recommendations for increasing authority, accountability, parental choice and funding that follows the child.
- A chart of common accounts for accountability of state funds to determine the effective use of funds to improve student performance.
- A multi-year phase-in process to provide sufficient funding for all low-income three and four year olds to attend a high-quality preschool program.
The second and fourth of these are excellent priorities, as is the first if it can be accomplished with the input and acceptance by teachers.
It’s the third that expresses all that’s wrong with education reform. Funding following the child is code for more money for charter schools and less for local districts. Charter schools and “choice,” will not begin to address the problems identified here in Connecticut, and will harm public schools systems striving to improve .
