A contingent of Norwalkers went to the State Department to complain about the Education Cost Sharing Formula. It would appear that Norwalk does not receive its fair share of funds for grants. I'm not sure, but The Norwalk Hour appeared to state that the Norwalk contingent went comparing Median incomes of different districts. As I recall, median incomes means one just lists the incomes of wage earners and the exact middle income reported is the median income. I would think that Norwalk, of all cities, has very rich top income earners. Is that really the best way to present the incomes of the city? Is it a fair way to present the income average of this city? What is the best way to present incomes of a city that has very rich and very poor families?
Next, there has been much discussion about tenure. In order to participate in Obama's Race to the Top funding, teacher tenure has to be revamped. Tenure will be tied to testing, observations and more. What are your feelings about possibly losing good teachers because of this new way of evaluating teachers?
Educated Yesterday - the focus at the state was on - ECS, I see that you need to be educated today. Hats off to Lisa, Lauren and Jack for speaking up on a topic that can truly change how this town receives funds - thank you Lisa, Lauren and Jack!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the Hype with Tenure? Why are good teachers worrying - when it is the bad teachers that make those good teachers bad? I'm for tenure change!
Education cost sharing IS ECS. That's what I was saying........I don't claim to know everything and I most certainly can make mistakes, but I don't think I did in this case.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with the ECS formula is that it has been tweaked over the past six years to (i) advantage rural towns, (ii) over-count children in poverty (which benefits cities like Hartford and Bridgeport , while hurting Norwalk which has a significant number of “working poor” families) and provide for a skewed measurement of a town’s ability to pay for education (by overemphasizing land values and median income).
ReplyDeleteThe formula needs to reflect that even children who are not at federal poverty levels (but who might be on free or reduced lunch) have particular needs for which greater funding is reasonable. The formula must also reflect that there are certain efficiencies for school districts which have a majority of students at the poverty level and that funding need not increase exponentially for these districts. The formula also needs to address that there are certain costs associated with non-English speaking students (which is not reflected in the ECS formula). Another glaring deficiency of the ECS formula is the use of “median” income as part of the town wealth factor— median income measurements does not take into account the particular needs of diverse communities like Norwalk.
In my written testimony (which is available on the CT General Assembly website at http://cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/CommDocTmy.asp?comm_code=ED&date=02/22/2012), I walked the committee through some of the deficiencies in the formula and suggested how it might be changed.
Thank you, Steve, for providing the much needed specifics regarding the unfairness of the formula. I truly appreciate your input.
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