WILTON, Conn. State Rep. Gail Lavielle received the Tip of the Cap award for education advocacy from ConnCAN, a think tank and education advocacy group founded in January 2005.
Lavielle, a Republican who represents parts of Wilton and Norwalk, got her award from Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now in a recent ceremony held at Wilton High School.
The award recognizes Connecticut state legislators who fight for great public schools for every Connecticut child and who make public school reform a priority of their legislative work. Lavielle thanked ConnCAN for recognizing her commitment to education.
"It is particularly meaningful to me, because of ConnCAN's laser-like focus on students and their achievements, and on making sure that every one of them has an opportunity for an excellent education one that will allow them to keep learning for the rest of their lives," she said. "I also want to thank all of you who have taken the time to be here this evening. I thank you for joining me, and ConnCAN, in our commitment to the quality of Connecticut's education which is the real cornerstone of our state's future and its ability to be the best place to live, work, raise a family and stay.
"But there's more to why education is so important. One of the wonderful things about our country and our state is the sheer variety of perspectives that make up our population and the different pathways our educational system and our society offer for taking best advantage of each individual's talents, skills and ideas. If you know what you like and what you do well, and you're willing to work hard, there are opportunities for you. A good education, if it is really good, should help you understand those things. It teaches you how to absorb information, to assess it, to organize your thoughts about it, and to develop a point of view. It helps you learn to know yourself. Even while it distinguishes you from the crowd, it helps you contribute to the world around you, and it helps you enjoy it. If everyone has a great education, our society becomes more interesting and more innovative, and we raise the quality of everything we do.
"I do want to mention that we have right here in Wilton and Norwalk several very fine examples of great schools. I particularly want to congratulate Wilton's Middlebrook School for being named one of this year's National Blue Ribbon schools, and the Norwalk School District for its designation by the state Department of Education as a top performer in terms of improvements.
"Through my work on the Education Committee, as well as meetings with leaders from the State Board of Education, the Department of Education, the newly constituted Council on Education Reform, the Early Childhood Alliance, and, of course, ConnCAN, I know there are a number of priority areas that need our immediate and focused attention. These include:
Early education. Children who are not prepared intellectually, socially, and emotionally for kindergarten and the early grades are not equipped to learn as well as others and to acquire the fundamental reading and math skills they need to pursue the rest of their education. Any ground lost by third grade becomes far harder to recover in later years. We must address quality and access, as well as operational and cost efficiency, and we must look at not only pre-school, but also the range of early childhood services.
Accountability. This word means a lot of things. It means developing clear, transparent standards that help administrators and teachers evaluate student learning outcomes. It means providing guidelines for evaluating administrators and teachers that reward excellence and facilitate improvement, and help teachers and administrators assess whether they are getting results. It also means understanding how education funds are being spent, and whether they are being used as efficiently as possible to reach clearly identified goals.
Education funding. Our education cost sharing formula, which is used to calculate how most of the state's public education budget is allocated among school districts, has led to both real and perceived inequities that need review and revision.
Teacher preparation and opportunity. Great teachers are vital for student progress, and this is where close collaboration between our public schools and our higher education system can be very important. Giving new teachers more classroom experience and more chances to interact with current and future colleagues who are achieving great learning outcomes is one opportunity. Considering alternative pathways to certification is another. Recognizing great teachers as potential resources for excellence in our graduate teaching programs is another.
Flexibility and choice. Connecticut is a small state, but there are vast disparities among its local populations and school districts. A one-size-fits-all approach cannot meet the needs of all of our schoolchildren. Charter schools, magnet schools, traditional public schools can all be effective in different places, and where they are working, we should encourage them, and duplicate them when sharing those best practices makes sense. We also need to review state mandates, because there are many which may be counterproductive or of no benefit to certain schools or districts.
"During this session, we made headway in a few of these areas with bills that I co-sponsored or strongly supported. We passed a bill that allows charter school teachers and administrators to obtain permits to teach without full certification if they have demonstrated effectiveness in their positions. New legislation also moved the required start age for kindergarten from 7 to 6. We made school environments safer with anti-bullying legislation. And we passed other bills that focused attention and resources on developing plans and structures for closing the achievement gap and for developing a coherent system for overseeing early childhood education and development.
"But on most of these initiatives, we are still just creating a framework. It's time to go faster. What's next? There are a couple of reasons for optimism. One is that we have a new Education Commissioner, Stefan Pryor, who has an unusual background and believes that Connecticut's yawning achievement gap is a "mandate for change." Connecticut has a new opportunity to apply for Race to the Top funds for use this time on early education, and maybe our state will be able to win a grant for that very key area. Another reason for hope is that Governor Malloy has asked that our 2012 session have a special focus on education. If everyone can forget the demands of special interests and concentrate on students, perhaps we'll have just the context we need to make extraordinary progress.
"There's a great joy in learning for those who are open to it, and it's one that can last a lifetime. Part of providing a good education is imparting that joy. If a child is taught from the earliest age to value learning and academic achievement, he or she will pursue it and crave it and enjoy it. It will become a matter of personal pride and even a badge of honor. Making sure this happens is perhaps our most important goal."
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