Decrease in state’s funding for Botelle possible

By Wiley Wood

When the U.S. Department of Education parceled out $4.35 billion in 2010 to states whose schools showed measurable student gains, Connecticut failed to qualify. Its three neighbors—Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island—received almost $1 billion between them. The Education Reform Bill pushed through the Connecticut legislature last month by Governor Dannel P. Malloy seems designed to bring Connecticut into compliance with national standards in K-12 education.

With Connecticut’s achievement gap between white and minority students among the largest and most persistent in the nation, much of the bill’s effort goes to identifying and turning around the state’s lowest-performing schools. Similarly, funding has been allocated for the early diagnosis and remediation of reading difficulties in grades K through 3 and for additional pre-K slots in poor performing school areas.

Botelle, a relatively high performing school, is likely to see a decrease in state funding. A disincentive plan aimed at cutting spending in small school districts will penalize Norfolk for its above-average per-student costs. School Superintendent George Counter explains that the town’s funding from the state could be decreased 10 percent a year for the next five years. A possible merger between the Norfolk and Colebrook school districts could save both towns from losing state funding, but Counter is quick to caution that the prospect is still a long way off.

An important part of the bill is aimed at tying teacher evaluations to measurable gains in student performance. At the Housatonic Valley Regional High School, social-studies teacher and Norfolk resident Lisa Carter explains, “teachers have traditionally been evaluated on the basis of a lesson plan and classroom sessions observed by the principal or his representative. The problem,” says Carter, “is that it can become a dog and pony show.” The new model of teacher evaluation, favored by the Obama administration and stipulated in the Connecticut bill, quantifies a teacher’s effectiveness by measuring students’ knowledge before and after a period of exposure to that teacher. This “value-added” model is to be phased in gradually through a pilot program in selected schools.

Governor Malloy angered teachers initially when he proposed to abolish tenure. “There was a lot of anti-teacher rhetoric, and it just seemed that teachers were being made scapegoats for everything that’s wrong with the system,” says Carter. Connecticut’s new education bill does not abolish tenure, although the procedures for firing tenured and non-tenured teachers alike have been expedited. “But teachers are still entitled to due process,” says Superintendent Counter, “whatever the bill says about terminating someone within thirty days.”

The measures that will have the most direct effect on Botelle teachers, according to Counter, are those relating to continuing education. For their recertification every five years, teachers will need 90 hours of professional development. “But you’re not just going to be able to attend a big lecture somewhere,” says Counter. “A lot of it will have to be small-group and individual instruction.”  To Carter, making decisions about teacher development in the context of the school as a whole is essential. “You want to think long and hard about what training teachers need, the resources are too precious.”