School Officials Stress Positives

By Jim Farrell, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

Jan. 22–Although standardized test scores for students in East Hartford are well below state averages, residents watching board of education meetings on the local public access channel have recently been treated to a primarily positive picture.

At each meeting, three or four principals gave power point presentations focusing almost exclusively on pockets of progress.

An improvement, say, in how well fourth-graders handled certain math problems, or in eighth-graders’ word editing skills.

“If we’re not promoting education, then we’re not doing our jobs,” said Hilde Mayranen-O’Brien, chairwoman of the school board. “With all the negatives and all the criticism out there, it’s very important to focus on the positive.”

A dose of self-promotion is hardly new at school board meetings, but officials say it is becoming increasingly important to counter the drumbeat of criticism facing many districts, tied in part to the federal No Child Left Behind law.

“You need to balance the equation,” said Kathy Frega, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Education Association, which recently released a study projecting that within eight years almost 90 percent of public schools in the state will fail to make adequate yearly progress on standardized tests.

In Manchester, the school board took a slightly different approach earlier this month, dedicating 2? hours of a televised meeting to showcase enrichment programs in place throughout the district.

Chairwoman Margaret Hackett said the Manchester school board’s top priority is addressing the achievement gap between white students and their minority counterparts.

“The school system is constantly working on remediation,” Hackett said, but she noted that the public has nevertheless been getting “a steady diet of test scores not up to par, and subgroups that aren’t proficient, and warning letters going out.”

The enrichment presentation featured six school principals talking about special classes, community outreach programs and other initiatives designed to stimulate and inspire students.

“There are a lot of wonderful things going on,” Hackett said.

Superintendent Kathleen Ouellette agreed.

“There’s more to us than the snapshot in time you get from the [Connecticut Mastery Test] and [Connecticut Academic Performance Test],” Ouellette said.

Like Ouellette, East Hartford Superintendent Marion Martinez said that calling attention to positive developments should not be construed as an effort to sugarcoat problems.

However, Martinez said it is important for taxpayers to know what’s being done to address low test scores.

“You can’t focus on everything at once,” said Martinez, noting that the presentations gave her principals the chance to discuss testing in detail. “In the areas that we have focused on, we have seen some tremendous positive results.”

Martinez said she welcomes feedback from the community, but wants to be sure that residents have a chance to get a thorough explanation of test results that are quite complex.

“Years ago, it was, ‘Here is a child’s score’ — end of story,” she said. “Now it’s a lot more complicated.”

Robert Damaschi, who has served on the East Hartford Board of Education for 25 years, said he has seen a growing emphasis on the problems in education. “But people who are critical really and truly don’t always do their homework,” Damaschi said.

Contact Jim Farrell at jfarrell@courant.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

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