Where education reform goes wrong in Connecticut: Part One

According to Governor Dannel P. Malloy's proposal to improve education, minority students are three times as likely to be far behind in math. Why should this be? There is clearly not an intelligence gap; there is no difference in math ability between ethnic groups. The problem is not one of race, it is poverty. According to the Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey foundation, in 2011 the percentage of Connecticut school-age children living in a family where no person is working full-time is 26%, and the percentage of children living in poverty (income below $22K for a family of four) is 12%.

Those numbers don't tell the full story. Numbers for child poverty in Connecticut are a close match for the "behind in math" numbers in the governor's proposal. The child poverty rate in urban areas with primarily minority populations (such as Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven) are almost as high as the numbers of children who are behind in math… and have been getting worse, according to the state's own data. Looking solely at ethnic groups, the percentage of child poverty for Hispanics is 31%; African Americans, 25%; non-Hispanic whites 5%. The US Department of Education numbers for students behind in math for the same groups are 51%, 50%, and 14% respectively.

There will always be some children behind in math; our children are not, in Garrison Keillor's words, "all above average". Consider this: Hispanics are six times more likely to be poor than whites, and African Americans five times as likely… but both minority groups are less than four times as likely to be behind as whites. Thus it is clear the education gap is not caused by failing schools and poor teachers but by the simple connection between poverty and a lack of education.

The correlation of these data is clear, the reasons less so… but it is definitely a problem when more than 1/3 of the population of a city is so poor surviving becomes more important than attending school. Remove poverty and students of all ethnicities will perform at essentially the same level.

In 2004 Connecticut set a goal to cut the poverty rate in half by 2014. Since the poverty rate has actually risen since then (10% in 2001, 11% in 2003, 12% in 2011), making that goal seems impossible. Participation in most of Connecticut's programs for poverty is below 50%; according to a 2009 report from the Urban Institute (paid for by the State of Connecticut), poverty could be reduced by implementing stronger outreach efforts and improving access to programs, particularly by removing the 21-month lifetime earnings limit while at the same time reduce the earned income credit for those programs.

Therefore, it is my opinion undoing some of the "reforms" of the Rowland and Rell administrations would be the best step toward closing the education gap.