Issues & Solutions
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Policy: Our Plan
We’ve made strides, but there is still much more to do.
Today, ReadyCT advocates for Pre-K-12 education policies and practices that advance academic excellence and career-connected learning for all public school students in Connecticut.
As the name ReadyCT implies, we are dedicated to preparing students to walk a path toward success – success in college, career, and life!
Our policy pursuits are guided by:
A Focus on Talent
To ensure all students can thrive, we must recruit, prepare and support qualified and committed educators.
Coherence
Examining how existing and proposed policies impact each other leads to meaningful progress.
Best Practices
Historically underserved/underperforming districts can benefit greatly from optimizing and scaling what has already been proven to have impact in successful school districts.
Connecticut’s Fiscal Reality
Optimizing existing resources as well as exploring new funding opportunities figure prominently in our policy pursuits.
Addressing the Achievement Gap
We’ve been doing this since our 2011 founding, when we designed a plan to address the Connecticut achievement gap. At that time, Connecticut had the nation’s largest achievement gap — the difference between test scores for low-income students and their peers. The gap existed despite the fact that Connecticut students were, overall, scoring among the top five states in national math and reading tests.
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The 2019 Legislative Session
Computer Science Education: P.A. 19-128 expands students’ access to computer science classes and helps to better prepare teachers to teach the material. NOTE: ReadyCT is currently pursuing several opportunities to ensure all students are sufficiently exposed to this critical content area.
Opportunity Gap: P.A. 19-130 seeks improvements from underperforming districts in literacy, attendance, and chronic absenteeism while also directing these schools to use evidence-based practices. NOTE: Next session, ReadyCT will continue the opportunity gap conversation with an eye toward increasing funding transparency.
Teacher Performance: P.A. 19-139 mandates a workgroup to study issues relating to edTPA, and this was a compromise after some interested parties advocated for dismantling it. NOTE: ReadyCT will keep abreast of the workgroup’s activities.
Minority Teacher Recruitment: P.A. 19-74 requires the design and implementation of strategies to hire more minority teachers. NOTE: For the 2020 legislative session, ReadyCT will aim to leverage this mandate for policy that recruits and hires more minority school leaders.
Other Policy Advances Since the 2011 Report
Since our founding, we have collaborated with like-minded individuals and organizations to improve public education in Connecticut. Those collaborations have helped to:
- Increase reciprocity for out-of-state educators
- Improve efforts to recruit educators of color to the teaching profession
- Adopt the Connecticut Core Standards
- Redefine high-quality professional learning for educators
- Reform educator preparation
- Garner approval for new alternate routes to educator certification
- Improve the educator evaluation and support process
- Advance Turnaround School efforts
- Contribute to a statewide increase in public school graduation rates to 87%
- Establish the Office of Early Childhood
We are committed to addressing all education policies as they pertain to our vision of a public school system that offers academic excellence, equity, access, and inspired learning.
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