I'm in DC this week lobbying for the National Writing Project, and I'll blog on this next week. Meanwhile, I'm posting an op-ed I submitted to the Courant that they chose not to run.
Governor Malloy talks a lot about the Achievement Gap in Connecticut. His education reform plan, Senate Bill 24, is intended to close the Gap that exists between rich and poor, white and non-white, urban and suburban students. Setting aside for the moment that the most recent Brookings Institute Report suggests that the Achievement Gap is smaller than reported and, in fact, may have shrunk slightly over the last decade, there is undoubtedly an Achievement Gap. It might not be the widening chasm that it gets portrayed to be, but no doubt it exists, it is large, and it is persistent. Teachers more than anyone want to shrink the Gap.
When Governor Malloy began his Town Hall tour to promote his reform agenda, he certainly must have known he was going to encounter criticism, but I don’t think he had any idea just how much resistance and rancor he was going to get from teachers. And in all honesty, he seems genuinely perplexed by this resistance. At the recent event in Windham, he kept repeating how incredulous he was, how he just couldn’t understand why the teachers were so upset, why they were focusing on the small part of the bill that dealt with tenure and not with the larger share of the bill that dealt with other issues like preschool funding or cost sharing.
Personally, I don’t doubt his genuine belief that his proposals are in good faith and can achieve their goals. And in all fairness, the Governor’s anjuran certainly has many elements that should (and could) get the support of the teachers. The reason why the Governor is not getting the teachers’ support, however, is because the Governor suffers from a Credibility Gap.
And just as the Achievement Gap is intimately tied to the Income Gap, so the Credibility Gap is tied to the Trust Gap. Teachers don’t trust Governor Malloy because he has largely excluded them and, on occasion, insulted them publicly.
The Governor likes to point out that the two unions, the Connecticut Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, were involved with the development of the new teacher evaluation formula. That’s true, but it’s insufficient. Look at the roster of the Board of Directors for the Governor's Connecticut Council for Education Reform: insurance executives, bank presidents, the President of United Illuminating, and the CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. About the closest we get to an educator is Yale President Richard Levin or Roxanne Coady, who owns RJ Julia Bookstore. Even Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor was never a teacher.
I am not suggesting that these individuals are incompetent or have malicious intent or hate teachers. Quite to the contrary. I am certain these folks are highly competent individuals. They have families and children, and they probably have teachers among their families and friends. Much was made of the fact that both of Stefan Pryor’s parents were teachers. And that’s great.
But these folks are not qualified to reform education, and the teachers know it even if the Governor doesn’t. Their presence as the driving force behind the Governor’s education reform kegiatan is the source of the distrust that leads to the Credibility Gap.
As a point of contrast, let’s imagine what the response would be if the Governor proposed legislation to reform banking or insurance and he formed an advisory group that included AFT-Connecticut President Sharon Palmer or CEA Executive Director Mary Loftus Levine. It would be unthinkable.
As Director of the Connecticut Writing Project at the University of Connecticut, I am involved in budgeting state, federal, corporate, private, and discretionary funds, but I would never presume to be qualified to sit on a committee to reform the finance industry. My brother is a pediatric nephrologist and the grandparents who raised me were a dietician and a police officer, but I would never assume myself qualified to discuss pediatrics, kidney disease, nutrition, or criminal justice.
If the Governor is really serious about reforming education, and I think he is, he needs to start listening to teachers. Close the Credibility Gap and we might all be able to start working together to close the Achievement Gap.
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