Solidly Behind `No Child' Act

The new superintendent in Hartford sounds AWESOME!  Here's my friend's take:

An exciting and very promising development in Hartford.  It's still very early, but the fact that new Supt. Adamowski didn't even wait for the train that dropped him off to pull out out of the station before he took aim at Connecticut's popular Atty. General Blumenthal's decision to sue the feds over NCLB, is a great sign of what might lie ahead. 

 

Kudos to Mayor Eddie Perez who first came in and decided to raise private voucher money to "airlift" the few high performing students in Hartford so they could get a decent education in private schools, then shortly thereafter appointed himself chair of the dysfunctional Hartford BOE, quickly ousted the Supt. who wasn't getting it done, and just this week has hired a real reformer with great credentials.  Maybe we are witnessing Hartford's version of Bloomberg/Klein?

 

This is a very promising mixture.  Here we have:

 

The wealthiest state in the country but home to 3 of the poorest cities (Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport);

The largest achievement gap in the U.S;

A republican governor;

The home base of achievement gap-closing, turbo-charter operator Achievement First;

The presence of ConnCAN, a school reform organization which has made big waves in only it's second year of operation;

A strong mayor of the capitol city;

A new reformer Supt. of a mid-sized urban district with only 24,000 students.

 

Keep tuned.

Below is an article about him.  How amazing is this?!

Steven J. Adamowski called the 4-year-old No Child Left Behind Act "a great step forward" in holding schools accountable for the academic problems plaguing many minority and low-income children.

"I think it represents the greatest piece of civil rights legislation since the passage of the [1965] Voting Rights Act," Adamowski said Tuesday at Hartford's city hall, where he was introduced as the next leader of the city's 24,000-student school system.

More than two-thirds of Hartford's elementary and middle schools fell short of the standards of No Child Left Behind this year, and many have been singled out for corrective action in a process that Adamowski said mirrors an accountability plan he helped develop when he headed public schools in Cincinnati.

Adamowski's pledge to hold schools accountable, including his record of shaking up low-performing schools in Cincinnati, was a key factor in selecting him in Hartford, officials said Tuesday.

And this:

Adamowski drew cheers from parents, teachers and others at a school board meeting when he said, "This is really not a night for congratulations. ... We'll congratulate each other when student achievement goes up."

In Cincinnati, where Adamowski worked from 1998 to 2002, he was credited with redesigning and decentralizing the school system. During his tenure, test scores rose and dropout rates declined. According to news accounts, his efforts drew praise from business leaders and others, but not everyone was pleased with what some described as an aggressive style.

He clashed with Cincinnati teachers' union officials over some issues and pushed a pay-for-performance program that eventually was rejected by the union.

Cathy Carpino, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, said Tuesday she does not know Adamowski. But she said she has been able to work with previous superintendents such as Anthony Amato, Robert Henry and current interim Superintendent Jacqueline Jacoby, and "I don't anticipate not being able to work with [Adamowski]."

Adamowski repeatedly stressed the theme of accountability Tuesday. His approach, he said, is "to give greater autonomy to those schools that are doing well [and] ... intervene in those schools doing poorly."

Last month, when the state released results of the annual Connecticut Mastery Test, Hartford was at or near the bottom of the list in reading, writing and mathematics in every grade tested. The test was given to third- through eighth-graders in school districts serving the state's 169 municipalities.

Adamowski said his goal is to have a district where "average student achievement matches that of the rest of the state" and where students attend college at the same rate as state and national averages.

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Solidly Behind `No Child' Act
By Robert A. Frahm, Hartford Courant
September 13 2006

http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-hfdsuper0913.artsep13,0,6839018.story

Hartford's new superintendent of schools, hired for his pledge to turn around a struggling city school system, is a fan of a controversial federal education law that has drawn a lawsuit from state officials and criticism from many educators.