This is part of an ongoing series of guest posts about issues in Norwalk. yourCT.com is a non-partisan site dedicated to airing all sides of an issue That can’t happen without valuable contributions from our readers
By Bruce Kimmel
On Oct. 3, The Hour ran a front-page story alleging that the Norwalk public school system was “under sanction” because a disproportionate number of its minority students were in special education. The article quoted Superintendent Corda as saying the state has identified areas “we have to address.” The article said the superintendent acknowledged that sanctions were in place.
Inexplicably, the superintendent declined to be more specific for the article and referred the writer to the district’s newly hired director of pupil personnel services, who could not be reached.
Soon after the article appeared, the superintendent wrote a long and detailed column for The Hour that focused on the over-representation of African-American students in special education. According to the superintendent, the city technically is not “under sanction” but is working with the state to address the problem, which, he noted, was national in scope. (Interestingly, the column does not mention what exactly the district is doing to address the problem.)
Unfortunately, Corda used a series of ratios in his column that diminished the magnitude of the problem. For instance, for the 2005-06 school year, he presented a 1.7 to 1 ratio of African-American special education students to their non-African-American special education peers, which included Hispanics. Combining Hispanic and White students is a statistical slight-of-hand that clouds the picture.
Imagine combining white and Hispanic test scores, then comparing them to African-American scores in order to show that the achievement gap for African-American students has declined. The state, in contrast, compares the percentage of African-Americans in special education against the percentage of African-Americans among all students.
After reading the original article and the superintendent’s response, it dawned on me that this was the same issue that troubled me back in the fall of 2005, when an article appeared in the Connecticut section of The New York Times (Nov. 20, 2005) that focused on special education and minorities.
The Times article noted that Norwalk “faced sanctions” from the state because in the 2004-05 school year 36 percent of its special education students were African-American, while African-Americans made up only 25 percent of the student body. The article also said that districts such as Norwalk “must spend 15 percent of the money they receive for special education services on early-intervention programs, such as literacy or behavioral-support programs.” The article stated that superintendent Corda was not available for comment. (Early on, the article said that Norwalk “faced sanctions” but later suggests the city has already been sanctioned with the 15 percent spending requirement.)
Back in 2005, after reading the Times article, I e-mailed the superintendent and my colleagues on the Board of Education. I had been on the BOE for only about three months and just wanted some information. Corda replied that he had not seen the Times article and thus was not sure how to respond to my request. Only one board member responded, and he advised me, as a newcomer to the board, not to react to articles in the “local newspapers” because their goal was to sell papers.
Eventually, I was informed that we were working with the state to address the problem. I checked the state website recently and discovered that during the 2005-06 school year, African-Americans made up about 38 percent of all special education students in Norwalk, an increase of two percentage points over the previous year, while still at 25 percent of the overall student body. I do not have last year’s data, but I am concerned that the problem seems to have worsened since discussions with the state began.
I am still troubled by that 2005 incident. I had wanted information on an issue that might possibly cast the school system in a negative light. Not only was it difficult to obtain the information, I began to feel like I had done something wrong, that I couldn’t be trusted — simply because I was asking too many questions. But the larger question was: How could the press or the public be expected to acquire accurate information if it was difficult for me as a board member?
Two years have passed and the issue of transparency and the dissemination of accurate information has become a serious problem for the BOE.
In recent weeks, the Board of Education has been subjected to three Freedom of Information requests from Norwalk residents. The Norwalk Federation of Teachers has taken the board to court, alleging a serious FOI violation. Last July, at a special meeting that included members of the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the Common Council and the Board of Education, the issue of transparency on the part of the board was repeatedly brought up by elected and appointed city officials.
At the end of Corda’s column, he writes that “The Norwalk Public Schools have been the recipients of too much publicity of late that is negative in its tone and based solely on information, much of it wrong and misleading, provided by those who relish being critics.” I do not believe anyone “relishes” being a critic. I also believe that those subjected to criticism must first examine themselves and their actions before blaming their critics.
Bruce Kimmel is a member of the Board of Education.
Oh, and Greenpeace… don’t tell us you have an editing staff now. That will surely distort your message and misrepresent you completely. Is it too late to fire them?
