What is needed now is support, encouragement and political will. That is the crux of the matter as presented to the Westport Weston Y's Men last week by Dacia Toll, Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate, and co-founder of Achievement First, a charter school management organization which day-by-day is lifting impoverished students in Connecticut out of an educational achievement gap that is second to none in the United States.
What is an achievement gap? It is the educational trough between the rich and middle class and the poor, the black and Hispanic kids who perform on average more than three grade levels behind their peers on state assessments by the eighth grade. Connecticut has the worst achievement gap in the country, ranking 50th out of 50 states. Connecticut has experienced the largest increase in income inequality in the nation over the past two decades. The state now has the second highest juvenile incarceration rate for Hispanic males and the third highest for African-American males. In 2007, for the first time, the Connecticut state government spent more on corrections, $611 million, than on higher education, $601 million. The students simply do not possess the skills and the knowledge they need to compete on a level playing field, say those in the know who advocate for them on a daily basis.
The seeds of Achievement First began 10 years ago in New Haven with the founding of Amistad Academy, a public charter school whose mission it was to prove that impoverished urban students can achieve at the same high levels as their affluent suburban counterparts. Joel Klein, the New York City Schools Chancellor said, "Some people say that you can't fix public education in this country until you fix poverty. I think they have it exactly backwards. We can't hope to really fix poverty until we fix public education."
For the past seven years, Amistad Academy students, 100 percent of whom are selected by blind lottery, 78 percent of whom receive free and reduced lunch and 98 percent of whom are African-American or Hispanic, have beat state averages in reading and math, demonstrating that they can achieve on par with their wealthier peers statewide. Amistad Academy has received nationwide recognition and has served as a model, inspiration and a blueprint for other schools.
What are the components of this miraculously successful educational model? The answer is a strict, old-fashioned approach that emphasizes hard work, discipline and achievement. The most important element of the model is the tenet that only the best teachers will bring the students out of the cycle of failure, and therefore a superior teaching staff is one of the most important requirements in the mix. Add to that a longer school day, a longer school year, and a culture that cheers excellent grades, and focuses on and rewards achievement and brooks no excuses like lateness, rudeness or half-baked attempts. In the words of Dacia Toll, "We do sweat the small stuff."
Achievement First was created in 2003 as a non-profit organization, with the goal of using the knowledge gained from operating Amistad to replicate the model, both in Connecticut and New York. The network has grown from 84 students to 4,500 students at 15 academies in Brooklyn, New Haven, Bridgeport and Hartford. In five years, it is projected that Achievement First will reach 12,000 students with its successful model.
Andy Boas, a Westport resident and founder of the Charter Oak Challenge Foundation, has supported educating impoverished students in Bridgeport for nearly 10 years. Long an admirer of Dacia Toll and the work of Achievement First, Boas was determined to broaden the impact of the foundation he started which has helped more than 100 economically disadvantaged Bridgeport high school students finish college in a city where the drop-out rate is over 90 percent. Committed to expanding his reach, Boas established the funding for Achievement First Bridgeport, a middle school which opened in 2007 and which has just moved into a beautifully renovated formerly abandoned school in Bridgeport which now is educating 250 students. Next year the school will be educating students in grades 5-7 and a kindergarten through eighth grade model is evolving.
Said Boas, "We are grateful the Y's Men invited Dacia to speak about both the shameful state of education in Connecticut's urban areas and the work Achievement First has undertaken to ensure a first-rate education for those who need it most. We have demonstrated, through our results over many years, that any child, from whatever disadvantaged community, has the capacity to learn and thrive. The quality of a child's education should not be determined by her zip code."
It is no surprise that the major problem faced by those endeavoring to lift students out of the cycle of educational impoverishment is funding. The problem is particularly vexing in Connecticut. Charter schools in Connecticut are public, but they do not receive the same state funding as schools operating within the traditional model, with a board of education at the helm. In Connecticut, the price charter school educators pay for the hard work they do, and the success rates they engender, is a reduction in the funding provided by the state for each student.
Said Toll, "It costs $12,000 to educate a student in Connecticut. We receive 75% of that, roughly $9,000 per student. And we do it with double and triple the results."
Toll asked voters to reach out to state legislators to change the ground rules and increase funding for charter schools, with their proven successful methods. She said the Connecticut expansion of the Achievement First schools will otherwise be stymied, because the funding issues are so daunting, with private funding now required to fill the gaps. "We must have political engagement," she said.