PS#1: Great Schools for All

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Drawing on the lessons learned from great public schools across Connecticut, the insights and experiences of parents and community leaders tackling this challenge, and the latest research on proven policies for raising student achievement from around the country, ConnCAN presents five big ideas for closing the nation’s largest achievement gap.

1: Expanding Access to High-Quality Preschool

• Increasing funding for new preschool slots to ensure access to high quality programs for all three- and four-year-olds living in families earning below 185 percent of the federal poverty level by 2012.
• Investing in new K-3 assessments to track the progress of students and ensure that every child is learning on pace to meet the CMT goal standard by the spring of the third grade.
• Providing grants directly to qualified families so that parents can choose from among a diverse list of qualified providers to find the best fit for their child, with a public rating system to help parents make informed choices.

2: Creating Innovative New Public Schools

• Expanding public charter schools in urban districts with a focus on non-profit operators that employ proven models for closing the achievement gap. Raise the per pupil funding of charter schools to the state average and increase the number of students served from 3,600 to 10,000 by 2013.
• Focusing future magnet school expansion on proven models for closing the achievement gap and on the state’s highest performing magnet operators. Measure progress both in terms of student diversity and high levels of academic performance for all student subgroups.
• Providing matching grants to districts to support the creation of Connecticut’s first pilot schools and teacher-professional partnerships.
• Providing matching grants to districts to support the creation of new smaller high schools or smaller learning environments within larger high schools.

3: Recruiting Teacher and Principal All-Stars in Our Urban Districts

• Providing support to districts for new high-level human resources teams charged with implementing a streamlined and rigorous selection and hiring process and an extensive recruitment and mentoring campaign for new teachers and principals (with an emphasis on teachers and principals of color).
• Creating a new pipeline to recruit top teachers and principals into our cities through an expansion of Teach for America and support for the launch of New Leaders for New Schools and The New Teacher Project in Connecticut.

4: Helping Districts Implement Proven School Improvement Models

• Providing School Improvement Support teams, made up of new State Department of Education personnel and nonprofit partner organizations, and support for new district central office staff to selected districts committed to implementing proven school improvement models.
• Developing a library of school improvement models—with investments in new State Department of Education personnel, outside partner organizations and an expansion of the Vanguard Schools Initiative—grounded in the national Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) initiative and in the elements of success in Connecticut’s high-performing, high-poverty schools.
• Joining the American Diploma Project and investing in new Connecticut Department of Education personnel and outside partner organizations to support the creation and implementation of new statewide formative assessments for K-8 and new college-readiness assessments for 9th, 10th and 11th grades.

5: Ensuring Transparency & Public Accountability for Results

• Developing a public system for rating schools based on value-added measures of student performance and robust report cards for parents that present not only how well their children performed but also the “value-added” performance of their teachers and their schools.
• Piloting a K-16 data system in cooperation with state community colleges and state universities.
• Requiring a "Common Chart of Accounts" for districts' school budgets, with the goals of reducing resource disparities between schools and achieving measurable increases in the percentage of funds directly targeted at instructional improvement.