Columnist: Hartford, Bridgeport Schools Urgently Need State Takeover

Veteran columnist Chris Powell writes the state education department “should have taken control of both Hartford and Bridgeport school systems long ago. Their problems are too big, their competence too small.”

How could Aleysha Ortiz go through the Hartford school system and be given a high school diploma without ever learning to read and write? Who exactly was responsible in every grade that advanced her anyway?

Maybe Ortiz’s lawsuit in Superior Court seeking $3 million in damages from the city will extract some answers, though more likely it will be settled to prevent accountability.

Rather than answer for what happened, Hartford Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez is retiring in a few weeks.

State Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker hired consultants to look into the Ortiz case but won’t answer specifically about it either. The commissioner’s excuse is what she calls Ortiz’s right to privacy, as if the young woman didn’t forfeit that right with the sensational interview she gave to the Connecticut Mirror last September and with her lawsuit.

Privacy? News of the scandal already has gone around the world.

Of course the only people the commissioner is protecting are Hartford educators.

If not for a few Republican state senators who keep pressing the commissioner about the case, it would have been forgotten long ago despite its horrible implication.

Democratic legislators and Governor Lamont, also a Democrat, act as if they have not noticed the case, even though the report submitted by the commissioner’s consultants and her use of the report as a substitute for specific accountability imply that the girl isn’t the only illiterate or near-illiterate to have been graduated by Hartford’s schools lately.

The report cites the Hartford school system’s severe shortage of staff, especially “special education” staff, with Hartford leading the state in educator vacancies — more than 200, including 50 “special education” teacher positions and 80 “special education” “para-educator” positions.

But the report adds that the problem in Hartford’s schools goes far beyond “special education,” since many students who are not disadvantaged and handicapped enough to be classified as “special education” are still slow learners and need extra help when none is available. They are referred to “special education” staffers who are already overwhelmed.

Of course this doesn’t mean that no students are coming out of the Hartford’s schools with an education. It means that no academic data produced by Hartford’s schools can be trusted.

What will be done about it? Probably not much. The commissioner says the state Education Department “will intensify our support and targeted monitoring activities” in Hartford’s schools. But she doesn’t say how.

Will the department ensure that the vacant teaching positions are filled? Will the department require that all Hartford students are tested every year to prove they can read and write?

Or will the department, the legislature, and the governor just keep waiting for the scandal to fade away?

The department says it is already giving extra scrutiny and support to the equally dysfunctional school system in Bridgeport, which has gone through five superintendents in seven years and where “special education” is also a mess. The department should have taken control of both Hartford and Bridgeport school systems long ago. Their problems are too big, their competence too small.

But state government lacks the courage for that, since it would require removing all impediments to vigorous administration in the interest of the public and students. It would require taking responsibility.

Fixing city schools would require regular proficiency testing for all students, including a test for graduation. (Students who failed the test could be given certificates of attendance — if they really did attend much.) It would require holding parents responsible for their children’s excessive absences. It would require ending social promotion. It would require accountability at all levels.

More than that, state government also would have to take responsibility for the worsening social disintegration throughout the state. It would have to explain the soaring need for “special education.” It would have to ask the biggest and most uncomfortable questions:

How are uneducated young people supposed to support themselves? Where are all the neglected and troubled kids coming from? And what turned the cities into poverty factories?