CEA Policy Director Donald Williams spoke about the future of state education policy on a panel today at the Neag School of Education. From left are panel moderator Neag Associate Dean and Professor of Educational Leadership Casey Cobb, Williams, ConnCAN CEO Jennifer Alexander, and CAPSS Executive Director Joe Cirasuolo.
Donald Williams, CEA’s director of Policy, Research and Reform, stood up for the interests of public school students and teachers as a member of a panel today at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “To ignore poverty and racial isolation in high-poverty schools is to ignore the fundamental problem in those schools,” he said.
The panel discussion on the future of K-12 education policy in Connecticut also featured Joe Cirasuolo, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS), and Jennifer Alexander, CEO of ConnCAN.
Saying that Connecticut has some of the best schools in the nation, Williams told the audience that the state needs to concentrate its efforts and resources in the right areas. “If we want to succeed in lessening the achievement gap, we have to be honest about the problem and work to erase the opportunity gap,” he said.
The solution to lessening the achievement gap, “is not additional and endless testing, technology, and data collection. Treating children like widgets on a high-tech assembly line is disrespectful of the needs and individuality of those remarkable children,” Williams said.
Williams said that, as a state, we can lessen the opportunity gap when we treat teachers as professionals, provide students with high-quality pre-K, offer before- and after-school programs, encourage parental involvement through family resource centers, and meet the needs of students in the communities where they live.
Alexander said that a critical area of focus for the state should be raising standards and accountability. She said that the adoption of the Common Core and the use of annual high-stakes assessments are essential to reform.
“We can’t improve what we can’t measure,” she said.
Cirasuolo made a pitch for a proposal to personalize student learning that his organization unveiled in 2011. “To meet new expectations for public education the whole enterprise has to be transformed,” he said. “We must reverse the relationship between time and learning so that learning is the constant and time is the variable.”
“There is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution to improving public education,” Williams said. “We have to look at the needs of students and families in each individual school and reach out to all stakeholders in a community.”
Finally a reasonable voice for teachers, students and public education. I congratulate Don Williams, director of policy, research and reform for his insight into the opportunity gap in this state. It is not a problem of continued or more high stakes testing and accountability but one of giving more opportunity to students in our urban communities. Well done and thank you Don Williams for being a true voice for our teachers and schools.
Donald Williams is right on. He understands not only children but the system and fixing the problem.
Alexander is so wrong. The gap is real. Making it larger with toughness and standards does not solve anything but to create a wider gap. Accountability exists already for teachers and learners. She is suggesting to just add another messy layer on top of societal problems that need to be adjusted first. The gap is not getting smaller. Has it?
Personalized student learning, suggested by Cirasuolo, sounded like a self-fulfilling brag and can only be implemented and succeed with smaller class sizes. Can he suggest that too? Teachers have been individualizing instruction well before 2011.
How many classroom hours have these individuals spent teaching in the 21st century?