I took a break from watching the NY Jets beat the Patriots on Sunday to chat with Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton about education and state politics. My favorite team, the Cleveland Browns are watching the playoffs from home as usual so I didn’t mind missing a few snaps. Below is the interview followed by my commentary.
CCC:
Education was front and center in Hartford recently, aside from money or the lack thereof, the thing we hear about most is the achievement gap between low-income students and their peers, as someone who has spent years in the classroom as a teacher, in your opinion how can we best address the achievement gap in the state?
Mark Boughton:
“For years I was not on the school choice bandwagon because I didn’t feel we put enough resources into our public schools, but the new economy, an economy that is much different from anything we’ve ever seen, now requires that we re-evaluate the way we do things. From a financial, fiscal standpoint, we really need to increase competition within our school districts because that will create and drive efficiency which will in turn drive the necessary changes that we’ll need to deal with the reality of a new economy where there just isn’t the money that there used to be to do the things that we need to do.
Giving parents a choice, seems to me, particularly in the urban cores of Connecticut, the easiest way to elevate standards and get better efficiencies out the system. What I mean by that is it seems kind of silly that a student should have to walk by a successful parochial school or a successful charter school even, in order to get to their failing public schools.”
Boughton cites The Amistad Academy in New Haven and the Achievement First Academy Middle School in Hartford as two examples of charter schools that are making strides in closing the achievement gap. He adds that freeing teachers from archaic union rules and regulations and driving more of the money toward students with technology and resources that allow children to learn the way they learn now, which is much different from the way previous generations learned are also among the key elements of success. Boughton said there should be more charter schools in Connecticut and there needs to be fundamental change in state government to insure that “the dollars follow the children,” meaning that if the state of Connecticut allocates nine thousand dollars a year per student then that nine thousand dollars should follow that student to the school of his or her choice.
CCC:
I recently spoke to a group of high school seniors in Waterbury and found that many of the students didn’t believe they had a shot at much of anything, let alone achieving success. What can the education system do to address that kind of dismal outlook within the student body?
Mark Boughton:
“I think part of the problem is by the time you get to high school, if you haven’t had success, and I’m not going to say people aren’t redeemable because they are, but it makes it a lot harder to be successful. You get sort of a defeatist attitude that there isn’t anything better for you. But when you capture kids when they are young and you bring them into a program that has success, now all their options are open, now college is not something out of reach. Now a career is not out of reach. They can do anything they chose to do with their lives. That feeling of helplessness and hopelessness now goes away.”
CCC:
Federal stimulus money was used to shore up the annual Education Cost Sharing grants that Connecticut sends to each local school system. The stimulus grant, which accounts for 14 percent of the state education grant, runs out in July. How much impact would a loss of those funds have on Danbury?
Mark Boughton:
“It’s going to have a tremendous impact if those funds aren’t replaced but understand, even if the city were to give the board of education the same amount of money this year as they got last year there are still going to be massive layoffs. And that’s what I mean when I talk about the structural problems that we face in education. Even if you tread water you are still losing ground because of the way system is designed and the amount of unfunded mandates that have to be paid for. Even if the budget were held flat you would still see layoffs and reductions in services. That’s why we can’t just deliver the services the way we used to and expect better outcomes. That’s what we’re doing right now, we’re trying to raise the bar on achievement, close the achievement gap, but we have fewer resources and we have not changed the important thing which is the organizational structure of our schools. Fewer administrators, more teachers, and getting rid of some of the union rules that oversee staffing, in particular we need to have merit pay for teachers so that good teachers who are successful get paid more and if you don’t do a good job you don’t get a raise next year which by the way is what we do in private industry every day. Those are the things that motivate people and will breed success in our schools and ultimately will be what is best for children.”
CCC:
Politically speaking, what can we expect from the new administration going forward and what would you like most to see from the Republican Party in the immediate future with an eye toward 2012 and 2014?
Mark Boughton:
“The Republicans are going through a bit of catharsis right now of understanding why they lost, but it’s really not that difficult. The reason why we lost is that we don’t have a ground game to match that of the Democrats. We were right on the issues, we won 129 out 145 towns so that tells me that our message was there but we couldn’t deliver our voters to the polls on Election Day. My personal goal for the next three or four years is working with party leaders to develop a get out the vote effort which is more than just some of the traditional things but a true voter ID, getting them to the polls on election day effort. Also we have to fight it out in the urban cores, even though we probably won’t win those cities we can’t ignore them because a lot of the issues that the residents of our large cities face, we are on the right side of those issues we agree. It’s just that they don’t know what our message is because we haven’t been there to tell them. We need to work on conducting outreach. We have to have a Republican party that looks more like the people we serve and that means we need a better recruitment effort in terms of African Americans and Latinos, who actually tend to be more conservative politically and agree with our views, it is just that the republican party, the name or brand if you will, has become so tainted and we’ve got to turn that around.”
“In terms of the new administration, their challenges are many and frankly I’m concerned already by some of the discussions I’m hearing. I’m concerned by the large numbers of legislators that have jumped ship over to the new administration because the members of the democratic super-majority in the legislature were the very people that got us into this mess to begin with. Why would you hire them? It’s like hiring the people that set your barn on fire to put it out. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s going to take a lot of courage to make the structural changes that we need and I don’t think they have it. I’m disappointed in the administration initially but I’m optimistic for the state and I’m optimistic that we’ll get there but I think we are definitely challenged by some of the decisions already made by the new administration.”
End of Interview
So far this semester I’ve spoken to high school juniors and seniors in Hartford, East Haven, Waterbury, and Wolcott. I’ve seen first-hand how badly some of Connecticut’s students are educationally short-changed by a lack of proper resources needed to deliver a quality education. I have also seen a definite lack of hope and motivation in many of our students.
Let me be crystal clear on this point. It is NOT because they don’t want to be successful. Nobody wants to be poor and nobody sets out to be a failure. It’s just that too many of our young people DON’T SEE ANY WAY THAT THEY CAN achieve success. So while I agree with Mayor Boughton that Connecticut’s education system must be fundamentally changed from the top down, I would add that we need to do a better job of getting the message to our children that can indeed achieve great things. That kind of change in attitude comes from the bottom up. A combination of structural reform in our educational system and students motivated to learn will close the achievement gap.
In November of 2010 the Connecticut Republican party walked face-first into a stark reality. We need more support from the big cities in order to win elections. Andover, Bridgewater, and Cromwell aren’t enough to carry us anymore. Therein lays a challenge. How do republicans get more support from the minority communities that make up a large portion of the population in our large cities?
As an African American I can say with some authority that black and brown folks simply aren’t buying what the Republican Party is selling, partly because republicans are doing a poor job of selling and partly because of perception of the party in minority communities. However, if we can indeed mount successful outreach and recruitment efforts in the urban cores of the state and increase our support base there by even a small fraction, the political landscape in Connecticut will shift. How do we do that? I’m working on it. I’ll get back to you.
Meanwhile, to my fellow Connecticut residents who live in our large cities I say this. When both parties are actively and vigorously competing for support and fighting to represent your interests, you win! Competition breeds excellence, it’s a beautiful thing.
Wayne Winsley
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