West Hartford -- Nearly 6,500 students in Connecticut enter kindergarten each year never having attended preschool. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy wants to reduce that number by 500 students in the state's poorest districts.
"We've got to close that achievement gap" between low-income students and their peers who attend preschool, he said Thursday, standing on the playground of the School for Young Children at St. Joseph College. "This is the best invested dollar."
The peace between the teachers unions and the Malloy Administration ended Tuesday, one week before legislators convene at the State Capitol to get to work on a major education overhaul.
The battle comes from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's shutting down the Connecticut Education Association's initiative to allow educators to set the certification requirements for themselves. Instead, he plans to link the new teacher evaluation system with a new three-tier teacher certification system, where only the best teachers will get the "master certificate" label.
If President Obama has his way, the money that colleges receive from Washington will soon go to schools that can lower their tuition or at least hold it steady.
That may be a problem for Connecticut's 17 public colleges, which have almost doubled tuition and fees over the last decade and have already approved tuition increases for the next school year that exceed the rate of inflation.
Business leaders offered a simple, if politically sensitive suggestion Thursday on how to pay for many of the things needed to improve education in the state: link the laundry list of grants that the state dishes out each year to performance.
In a major shift, a diverse group of educators -- including teachers' unions, superintendent and school board groups -- have agreed that student performance, not longevity of service, should be the key yardstick to evaluating teachers.
"We've been waiting for this," said Diane Ullman, Simsbury's superintendent of schools and a member of the state panel responsible for creating the new evaluation process.
Read moreThe after-effects of the 2011 Penn State child abuse scandal continue here, with both the University of Connecticut and state legislators examining possible policy changes regarding who must report such incidents.
The Connecticut State University system hired the Washington lobbying firm McAllister & Quinn, paying it more than $100,000 last year to seek, among other things, federal funding for a robotics project at Central Connecticut State University. But CSU's relationship with its hired gun in Washington may soon end. "If there are no earmarks and less grant money in Washington, does it make sense to have a lobbyist?" said Colleen Flanagan, spokeswoman for the Board of Regents for Higher Education.
Read moreConnecticut state university officials hope to lure college-bound students from New York state this fall by offering them in-state tuition rates if they enroll in one of five graduate programs. Most of these programs have experienced dramatic declines in enrollment in recent years because of a drop in New York students willing to cross the border.
Read more"Who says we can't?" said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in response to a comment that many think the state will be unable to turn around its education system without an influx of additional money. The governor is gambling he can figure this out, but he has a deadline.
Read moreThe Board of Regents for Higher Education is recommending a 3.8 percent increase in tuition and fees at the four Connecticut State Universities and 3.1 percent at the 12 community colleges for the upcoming school year.
This recommendation will be voted on Thursday by the full board, just two days after the proposal was released. A spokeswoman for the regents was unable to say whether a public hearing was ever held on the proposal.
Connecticut's cities and towns are hoping lawmakers will spend the next few months deciding to increase local education grants -- even if communities don't start to see the money for a few more years. The wish list released Tuesday by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities also asks for a reform of binding arbitration and prevailing wage laws and a constitutional ban on unfunded mandates.
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy promised today in a wide-ranging radio interview that his planned education reforms would be "the most far-reaching in our state's history," a bold assertion certain to raise expectations about how he intends to improve troubled districts in an era of tight finances.
A three-year investigation has determined that a tenured professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center fabricated and falsified data, the health center announced Wednesday. The health center has started dismissal proceedings against Dipak K. Das, director of the Cardiovascular Research Center and a professor in the department of surgery. It has notified 11 scientific journals that have published studies Das has conducted, frozen all externally funded research in his lab and declined $890,000 in federal grants that he was awarded.
Read more"It's stressful because you have to wake up early, but in the end it's the better choice so it more than makes up for it," explained Tyrone Almonte, who chose to attend Greater Hartford Academy of Math and Science, one of the few schools in the state with a longer school day than the mandated state minimum.
Read more"We're talking about saving almost $5 million a year," said Michael Meotti, executive vice president of the new Board of Regents for Higher Education, which now oversees the 100,000-student Connecticut State University and community college systems. "We are not keeping any associate chancellors," he said.
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy may have given an energizing pep talk on education reform to education advocates and leaders Thursday, but it was what he said later to reporters that will likely receive the largest cheers: "To make some of the progress we need to make in early childhood and teacher improvement, some additional monies are going to have to be expended. So, I believe that districts, and/or the state, are going to have to spend more money."
Read moreFarmington -- Gov. Dannel P. Malloy marked his first anniversary in office today by finalizing the deal for the state to invest $291 million in a genetics research institute at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
The state's partnership with The Jackson Laboratory, a world-renowned research center in Maine, is an attempt to ride the field of personalized medicine into a new economy.
More than half the school superintendents in the state say the state is not helping to close the achievement gap between minority and low-income and Caucasian students. One-quarter say they have no authority to turn around low-achieving schools; 91 percent say they lack the ability to remove ineffective teachers; and two-thirds say that red tape thwarts their abilities to implement change.
Read moreTeachers unions and education officials will soon begin butting heads as the Malloy administration tries to reform teacher tenure and other laws the unions have worked hard to protect. But Tuesday was a day of niceties, as the union representing more than 41,000 teachers unveiled the reforms they would like to see this year.
Read moreTwo reports released Thursday give disappointing figures in two key categories in Connecticut education: the number of students dropping out of high school, and the number of high school graduates who go on to college.
And, the reports are accurate -- unlike those released for years that were accused of being based on "funny math."
Stephen F. Cashman, chairman of the elections enforcement commission
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THE MINIMUM WAGE
Connecticut's hourly minimum wage of $8.25 is one of the highest in the nation, trailing Washington at $9.04, Oregon at $8.80 and Vermont at $8.46.
Five of the six New England states exceed the federal minimum of $7.25. The exception is New Hampshire, whose minimum is the same as the feds.
Connecticut is one of 18 states with a minimum higher than the federal standard. Twenty-thrree are at the federal level, four are below it and five have no minimum wage.
Ten states have a minimum wage indexed to the cost of living.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
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