Archive for May, 2012

Mystery Skype at Springdale

Thursday, May 31, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments(2)
|
|

I spent a couple hours in Jimmy Sapia’s fourth-grade classroom at Springdale Elementary School earlier today, during which i had the opportunity to observe a variety of lessons (fourth-grade is my favorite, after all …). Over the course of the afternoon, I had the chance to check out some reading and writing lessons, but the cherry on the sundae was definitely the mystery skype.

I know — the what?

Here’s how mystery skype was explained to me: Sapia found a fourth-grade teacher at a school in another state whose classroom Skyped in with his for about 10 or 15 minutes, I lost track. During that time, students from each school presented clues about the state they live in. While one classroom recited clues, the others used their sleuth skills on Google, Wikipedia, good old fashioned maps and other means to determine which state the other classroom was from. Spoiler alert on the jump: Continue reading →

Fairfield County No. 3 most educated region in nation

Wednesday, May 30, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

The New York times ran an interesting piece Wednesday, which examined the brain drain as it relates to former industrial hubs throughout the country. It noted that many cities in the rust bet, like Dayton Ohio, are home significantly fewer college graduates than the national average. For instance, 24 percent of Dayton resident have a college degree, which sets is well below the average of 32 percent of residents in America’s metro areas.

Here’s how the New York Times contextualized that brain drain:

Dayton sits on one side of a growing divide among American cities, in which a small number of metro areas vacuum up a large number of college graduates, and the rest struggle to keep those they have.

The winners are metro areas like Raleigh, N.C., San Francisco and Stamford, Conn.,where more than 40 percent of the adult residents have college degrees. The Raleigh area has a booming technology sector and several major research universities; San Francisco has been a magnet for college graduates for decades; and metropolitan Stamford draws highly educated workers from white-collar professions in New York like finance.

The article uses data from the Brookings Institution, which identifies Stamford by its metro area, which happens to include every town in Fairfield County (I learned that a few weeks ago for this story, which used Brookings data).

A screenshot of the rankings published by the New York Times Wednesday

According to the Times report, and a chart that ran along with the story (which you can sneak a peek at over there on the right), Fairfield County has the third highest concentration of college-educated residents living in its metro area: 44 percent. It trails the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area, which comes in first with 46.8 percent of its population holding a degree and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, where 45.3 percent of residents hold a degree and is directly followed by San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at 43.4 percent and Madison, WI at 43.3 percent to round out the top five.

Connecticut makes two other appearances on the Top 100 list: The Hartford metro area is No. 15 with 34.6 percent of residents with a college education and New Haven-Milford came in at No. 32 with 32.8 percent.

Fairfield County also had the fourth largest growth among all of the top 100 metro areas in the country between 1970 and 2010. Its 26.4 percentage point leap from an in which 17.6 percent of residents had a college degree in 1970, to a place where 44 percent earned a diploma in 2010 was outpaced slightly by the San Francisco metro area (26.5 percentage points), Raleigh, N.C. (27.7 percentage points) and Boston (28.8 percentage points).

Stamford named No. 10 city to raise a family

Wednesday, May 30, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments(1)
|
|

Stamford Public Schools image of Stamford High School

Stamford was named the No. 10 best American city to raise a family in a new report released this week by Kiplinger.com. The report identified a total of 10 cities to identify as the nation’s best, including three California spots. Stamford was the only nod Connecticut received.

Here’s an explanation about the research methodology, pulled from the list:

We took a two-step approach to come up with our list of the best cities to raise kids. First, we looked for metropolitan areas with high household incomes relative to living costs, a large percentage of families with children under 18, and low crime rates. We weren’t seeking the cheapest places to live, but rather places where earnings potential is more than adequate to cover a family’s expenses.

Then, we honed in on a specific city within each of our top 10 metro areas that’s well-suited to raising kids based on educational factors (spending per student and the quality of local school districts) as well as fun factors (availability of public parks, playgrounds and libraries). We also looked at each city’s average income for families — as opposed to median income for all households — to give a realistic sense of how much it can cost a family to live in a place with so many kid-centric benefits.

The description sounds a little problematic for the City that Works. While it can be said that the “earning potential is more than adequate to cover a family’s expenses,” the wealth divide in the city of Stamford is incredibly high. According to an enrollment report released by the Stamford Public Schools earlier this academic year, 54 percent of the district’s students are labeled “economically disadvantaged,” according to federal standards.

That’s not the only issue with the methodology. The report notes that “the Stamford region contains more millionaires per capita than any other metropolitan area in the U.S. except Naples, Fla., and Los Alamos, N.M.” And choosing to measure average income for families, rather than median income places a heavier weight on the city’s top-earning families, painting an inaccurate picture of the number of families — kids included — who live in poverty here in Stamford. The report states that the average family income is $131,822, but according to the 2010 American Communities Survey, the median income is roughly half that at $66,617.

“Stamford isn’t cheap, but if you can afford to live in this preppy Connecticut stronghold, your family will enjoy some of the best living money can buy,” the report states. “Neighborhoods in North Stamford and nearby towns such as Darien boast big parks, wooded lots and plenty of young families. Crime is low, and schools are top-notch.”

Here’s the full Top 10:

1.       Omaha, Nebraska
2.      Richland, Washington
3.      Suwanee, Georgia
4.      Thousand Oaks, California
5.      East Grand Rapids, Michigan
6.      Appleton, Wisconsin
7.      Sunnyvale, California
8.      Middletown, N.Y.
9.      Corona, California
10.    Stamford, Connecticut

Video: Scofield 7th grader explains theoretical, experimental probability

Thursday, May 24, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments(1)
|
|

I spent a couple hours at Scofield Magnet Middle School earlier today to observe a seventh-grade classroom for an upcoming story I’m writing about math and science curriculum in the city’s schools.

The students in Kristen Sileo’s classroom were charged with creating an experiment to find the likelihood of ending up n Caves A and B in this example:

Sorry about the quality — it's a still from the movie clip.

The students had several choices as to how they could create their experiments using probability tools: rolling dice; drawing straws; flipping coins; or in Mark and Johnny’s case, creating their own unique three-sided die. After performing their experiment 20 times, they were asked to hypothesize whether their “experimental probability” would line up with the “theoretical probability,” which they will figure out with other math skills in their next class session.

Check out what Mark and Johnny came up with, and how they explain what their findings mean:

Stamford student earns top honors

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

Maria Farfan photographed in her home in Stamford, Conn., June 13, 2011. Farfan will receive her high school diploma Wednesday night after completing Stamford's adult ed program. Photo: Keelin Daly / Stamford Advocate

Maria Farfan, a 49-year-old graduate of Stamford’s adult education program was honored at Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting, in recognition of being named Adult Learner of The Year by the Connecticut Association for Adult And Continuing Education.

I first met Farfan about a year ago, when I profiled her for a story about her journey through adult education — a hard fought struggle that at times seemed like too much for her, she told me at the time. But when I saw her again last night, the newly minted graduate of Sanford Brown, was all smiles, full of hopes to finally get the job of her dreams: a permanent medical assistant position at Stamford Hospital. She’s no longer in the dingy makeshift boarding house she called home last year; after the article ran, she was approached by a landlord who offered her a much more livable studio apartment she said Tuesday night.

“It’s wonderful. Everything,” she said. “I’m so happy.”

Here’s what Stamford Public Schools spokeswoman Sarah Arnold read about Farfan before honoring her at the Board meeting:

Maria Faran of Stamford’s Adult Education Program has been named Adult Learner of the Year by the Connecticut Association for Adult And Continuing Education. Last year, Maria experienced the depths of despair: she had lost her job and was evicted from her apartment. Maria had dropped out of high school 31 years ago, married at age 17 and subsequently had two children. Although she had always dreamed of becoming a nurse, that was not possible without a high school and advanced degree. Maria became a Certified Nursing Assistant, a job she enjoyed because it allowed her to help people. She then heard about the National External Diploma Program and decided to make one last attempt to earn her diploma. Working one-on-one with a facilitator encouraged her to believe that she could do it. With the help of her guidance counselor, Teresa Cavaliero, Maria worked relentlessly, with incredible determination and diligence, until she succeeded in acquiring the skills needed to accomplish the many challenging requirements of the program. Recently, Maria completed her studies to become a medical assistant and plans to pursue work in that field. She was honored for all of her achievements at CAACE’s annual conference in March.

Congratulations, Maria!

Five students receive PT Council scholarships

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

AITE senior Stefan Sandoval accepts his award Tuesday night. Stefan will attend Boston College in the fall

The Parent Teacher Council of Stamford awarded five scholarships to high school seniors in its annual Maureen Tobin Memorial Scholarship award. The scholarships, which total more than $6,000, were awarded to five students, all of whom will be attending college in the fall. The students are:

  • Stamford High senior Diane Yang, who will attend Harvard in the fall
  • Stamford High senior Samantha Sye, who will attend University of Pennsylvania in the fall
  • Westhill High senior Dixita Viswanath, who will be attending Rice in the fall
  • Westhill High senior Ariel Shaulson, who will attend University of Pennsylvania in the fall
  • Academy of Information Technology & Engineering senior Stefan Sandoval, who will be attending Boston College in the fall

The PT Council awards scholarships every year in honor of Maureen Tobin, a Stamford parent volunteer who was active in her children’s school parent-teacher organizations, as well as PT Council before she passed away. The students chosen are high-achieving academics who are also judged based on financial need, extra-curricular activities, work experience, community service and an essay.

A 40-year old budget

Monday, May 21, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

I’m working on a story for this coming Sunday’s paper about Stamford’s service roll — a monument to Stamford men and women who served in World War II, which was torn down in the late 1960s. The story has really caught my interest, and I’ve been digging through archives from the 1940s and 1970s in an effort to learn more about this lost piece of Stamford’s history.

While looking up an old story from Oct. 3, 1972, which I was directed to by the Stamford Historical Society, I noticed this headline below the story I was reading:

Hmm. Well that’s one way to get an education reporter’s attention. I couldn’t help myself; I had to check it out and see just how much money Stamford schools requested in 1972. The short answer is that it was about $25 million — yes, that’s about one-ninth what the Board of Education’s $237 million approved budget was this year.

But how would it stack up against today’s dollars? According to the handy dandy inflation calculator, what cost $25 million in 1972 would cost $128,811,083.86 in 2010; for reference, the approved 2010-2011 fiscal year budget for the Board of Education was about $100 million more than that adjustment at $223,382,203.

And while the cost of running a district may have changed considerably over the last four decades, the two sides of the budget debate described in the 1972 Advocate article sound very familiar.

City Rep. Armen Guorian, a democrat from the city’s 7th district said “They’ve got a hell of a lot of fat in their budget,” while City Rep. Edith Sherman, a republican from the city’s 11th district is quoted praising then-Superintendent Reigh Carpenter, Ed.D., as a man who “has shown that he will cut every wasted dollar.”

She continued: “When we highhandedly decide we will not give them money for every single good program they bring to us, we are hurting every parent and child in this City… Unless we stop this vendetta against our Board of Education the people of Stamford shall all pay dearly for it in future years.”

Here’s the clip in its entirety:

Fairfield County schools on top of another ‘Best of’ List

Monday, May 21, 2012 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

Another week, another “Best of” schools list.

Newsweek released its list of the top 1,000 high schools in the nation Monday, which includes 10 Fairfield County schools. If it looks familiar, it’s because there’s little difference between this list and the one released by U.S. News earlier this month. The U.S. News list featured five Fairfield County schools in the state of Connecticut’s top 10; this list has four Fairfield County schools among Connecticut’s top spots.

There are a few changes in this report as compared to the one released earlier this month (which, by the way, has already been called into question for its data techniques).

While Ridgefield took home top honors for the county on the U.S News list, it was Weston High that earned the honor this time around. Staples also leapfrogged over Ridgefield High in the newest list. Darien and Greenwich rounded out the top five high schools in the county, according to Newsweek. That’s a big bump for Greenwich when comparing its placement this time around to the U.S. News list; while Newsweek ranked it as No. 11 in the state, it came in as No. 17 in the U.S. News list, behind Wilton, New Canaan and Fairfield Ludlowe.

Much of the difference in ranking is due to differences between the two reports’ methodologies. While both reports used college-readiness indicators such as student performance on either Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests, Newsweek’s methodology focused less on how students performed as compared to other like students. In an interview earlier this month, U.S. News director of data and research Robert Morse told us researchers first determined whether each school’s students performed better than statistically expected in their state, before factoring in whether the school’s black, Hispanic and low-income students were performing better than average compared to similar peers in their states from the 2009-2010 school year.

This new report doesn’t take student demographic differences into account. Here’s how Newsweek describes its methodology:

To reach these rankings, we factored in six criteria. Three of those—the four-year graduation rate, college-acceptance rate, and number of AP and other high-level exams given per student—make up 75 percent of the overall score. Average SAT/ACT and AP/college-level test scores count for another 10 percent each, and the number of AP courses offered per student is weighted as the final 5 percent. Because most of this data isn’t centrally available, we collected it from high-school administrators directly—about 15,000 of them—and received 2,300 responses.

Those differences resulted in the minor changes in rankings between the two reports, like the fact that New Canaan and Masuk high schools were completely absent from Newsweek after being added to the list in U.S. News, while Fairfield Warde suddenly showed up after having been absent before.

But with multiple reports using different methodologies to compare schools, it begs the question: Do these rankings mean anything at all? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Page 1 of 212