Amistad Academy, an Achievement First public charter school in New Haven, graduated 25 students in June, 2013. All were accepted to a college—and 85 percent of college age AF students are still working toward their degrees. That’s the good news, and the affirmation of the value and efficacy of Connecticut’s charter schools.
Yet that cohort began in ninth grade in September, 2009 with 64 students. 39 dropped out, 11 for what the school’s administrators called “acceptable” reasons, the rest were “losses.”
That’s the bad news. And that’s the challenge for Amistad, even though it is the number one school in the state for African-American student achievement, and Connecticut’s number four high school in US News & World Report 2014 Survey.
Dacia Toll, Co-CEO of Achievement First, talked to Y’s Men on March 19 about education in this country, about AF and about charter schools in Connecticut. While her interest is in “creating opportunities for low income students,” her talk was more far reaching.
AF is a non profit organization that operates 29 charter schools in New York City, Connecticut and Rhode Island, including 11 in this state. AF educates 8,100 students from Kindergarten to 12th grade; 85 percent receive free or reduced lunches; and 80 percent will be first in their families to graduate from college. Many live in unstable homes, often single parent, in which books are a rarity, and English is not the first language.
Charter schools primarily serve low income and minority students whose parents seek a better education than they believe is available in their neighborhood school. Entrance is by a blind lottery, and without screenings or admissions exams for prospective students.
Every state has a “devastating achievement gap by income level,” but “Connecticut has the largest in the nation... while our upper income students are among the best in the nation, our lowest are quite the opposite—47th of 50, with a gap of 3.5 years by high school."
“One of the starkest most painful depictions of the achievement gap” is that 77 percent of students whose household income is in the top quartile nationally earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 24, while a mere nine percent of those in the lowest quartile do.
That is but one marker of the problems that face US education. Over the past dozen years our schools have fallen from among the best in the industrialized world to about 24th among 65 nations surveyed in the OECD’s most recent Program for International Student Assessment. US schools scored below average in math, and about average in science and reading—overall, between the Slovak Republic and Lithuania, and two spots behind Russia.
Forty four states, including Connecticut, are addressing the need for standards by implementing Common Core State Standards. CCSS will set a national standard for Language Arts (English, when I was in school) and Mathematics so that every US student will learn the same things in every grade, and every student will graduate having seen—if not mastered—the same body of information, and so every student enters college without needing remedial work.
“You have to be college ready to graduate from high school” Toll said.
Second, “we need to have great teachers because ineffective teachers harm students."
Toll used AF as an example. They admit a significant number of fifth graders who come in at a 47 percent proficiency against Connecticut standards. By 8th grade they’re achieving at the 75 percent level—a result above the state average.
The impact of effective teaching continues - ”82 percent of AF’s graduates receive college degrees, against that nine percent of US low income high school graduates.”
Third, “we need more choice and competition in education.” Charter schools provide that. Connecticut stepped in gingerly almost 20 years ago. Supported by the state's primary teachers' union, the Connecticut Education Association, a mere six were established, and those were viewed as test sites rather than an alternative education channel.
Only 16 have been authorized since—“anemic, even though they are the single highest performing schools serving low income students.”
The day Toll spoke with Y's Men the General Assembly Education Committee was hearing testimony on a bill to place a moratorium on additional charter schools. As a consequence, Ms. Toll went immediately from Y's Men to Hartford to speak against the bill, and was unable to join an enthusiastic group for the speaker's lunch that typically follows meetings.
This time around the CEA stood in opposition to expanding charter schools, which led to speculation as to whether charter schools have transitioned from an education to a jobs issue.
Subsequent to Toll's talk the proposed moratorium bill was defeated in committee.