The Hartford Public Schools have stepped up staff training on diversity and cultural competency, in alignment with State recommendations following last November’s controversial professional development exercise at SAND School, in which colored-dot stickers were placed on the shirts of English Learner and special education students.

Following an investigation that included interviews with parents, SAND teachers, and central office staff, the State Department of Education’s report of findings last month suggested a number of ways the District’s internal, external, and crisis communications need to be improved.

According to the State, the placement of the dot stickers on the backs of students’ shirts was designed to allow observation of particular instruction for English Learner and special education students.  The technique “treated students differently on the basis of disability and national origin,” the State concluded, when the exercise could have been conducted without using colored stickers to identify students.

Former Assistant Superintendent Chris Hempel planned the November 9 SAND exercise, but was not interviewed as part of the State investigation.  He resigned less than a month after the incident.

Parents reported that their children were harassed or bullied as a result of the labels being placed on them – including some who had the stickers on them when they went to lunch that day.  Teachers reported they were not aware of the reason for stickers being placed on the students – and most parents interviewed later said they learned of the technique via the news and social media.

In a July 22^nd letter to SAND school families, Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez recounted that immediate action was taken on the day the training exercise was held; it was determined to be inappropriate and not to be used again and explanatory letters and meetings with parents followed.  Several of the State’s new recommendations “fully align with the work we have implemented as a district,” she pointed out, including training for principals on diversity and cultural competency every month this past year, as well as at cabinet and other staff meetings.

SAND School has gone beyond the State-recommended equity audit to enhance its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, Dr. Narvaez added.  “I take very seriously our work on cultural competency and meeting the needs of every child,” she wrote.  “We have worked consistently to strengthen our practices in this area.”

The Courant article discussing the report is here.

The Bottom Line.  The sticker incident was dismaying … and can never happen again.  Parent trust is crucial and must be constantly earned, not undercut by foolhardy research techniques.

This unfortunate incident has served, however, to sharpen attention to the issues of diversity and equity; clear internal and effective external communications; and protocols for crisis communications, all vital to the success of Hartford students.

When Dr. Robert Putnam walked the wide Bushnell stage from stage right to stage left, illustrating the divide between advantaged and disadvantaged children, at times he seemed about to burst into tears.  His latest book,Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, was the topic of discussion … and when Hartford Foundation for Public Giving President Linda Kelly introduced him with a promise for authentic dialog, she got it.

Dr. Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, spoke to how the American Dream is evaporating amidst the heat of income, education, and racial and class divisions.  While the uber wealthy are thriving, he said, middle class Americans haven’t gotten a raise in 30 years.  Moreover, fewer and fewer Americans are living in mixed neighborhoods; yet another one, the segregation gap, is growing.

Here are some of the other factors Dr. Putnam pointed out in his discussion of the opportunity gap that American families confront:

• Different Worlds.  A decline in young people finding fiance(e)s from the other side of the tracks.  “We tend not to marry those we have not met,” he said jokingly.  Gaps are growing as the most extremely wealthy and the most destitute groups burgeon not just separated by race, but place.  “Where you live matters,” he remarked to an audience all too familiar with the differences between Connecticut’s cities and smaller towns.
• Exploding at the Extremes.  Whereas the upper third of the population, with college degrees, tends to be rich, the lower third, which didn’t get past high school, decidedly is not.
• One Parent Doing the Work of Both.  In 2012, more than two-thirds of American children whose mothers did not graduate high school lived at least some of the time with a single parent (the figure was 20 percent in 1953).  While he certainly does not blame the single mom, Dr. Putnam said, “It’s just really harder for them.”
• Unbelievably Different Life Trajectories.  Whereas his own granddaughter “chose college-educated parents” and graduated from Haverford College and went on to study in France, another grandchild of a friend “chose working class parents,” he said, as though a newborn could choose.  The differences are stark.  The less advantaged young lady saw her parents split when she was five years old; her father hit her and refused to feed her; she spent time in “juvie”; and the best she could hope for was dating a guy with two infant children from a different mother.

The children’s opportunity gap represented here spans a range of experiences, from having the latitude to leave your job and have dinner with your kids to the wherewithal to afford extracurricular and summer enrichment activities (or, as Dr. Putnam insisted, “End pay to play!”)

Given the grim implications of this opportunity gap, Hartford, our State, and our nation ought to address the question why we have turned such a blind eye to the issues of our children’s futures.  Hearing Dr. Putman at the Bushnell, the message was clear:  If you are here, your kids will be fine.  Now, what can you do to help others?

Why Did HFPG Invite Dr. Robert Putnam?

“The invitation was about the work we are doing in 29 towns – already ongoing,” Elysa Gordon, senior adviser to Hartford Foundation for Public Giving President Linda Kelly, said in an interview this week.  “Just investing in programs and problem solving is not enough; we are looking to systemic investments to address disparities that are at best stagnant and at worst, growing.”

Segregated neighborhoods evince neither the collective empathy nor responsibility for addressing inequality, she added.  Hosting Dr. Putnam was a way “to bring together the community for a common understanding of the state of our disparities – and the factors contributing to the opportunity gap.”

Solutions to the problem are just as important as recognizing it, she emphasized, pointing to two documents that take solutions into account:

• The 2016 Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, “Closing the Opportunity Gap Report,”from the Harvard Kennedy School; and
• The 2015 American Enterprise Institute/Brookings Institution report, Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream.

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving supports the construction of on ramps for reducing the opportunity gap (for example, its Career Pathways program) and works to sustain partnerships that promote student learning in the State’s highest-need Alliance Districts, of which Hartford is one.

“Each town in the region should think about each other; we all need to be concerned about opportunities for all,” Ms. Gordon emphasized.  “Success in any one place raises the boat for all.”

Here is a C-Span panel discussion, in which Dr. Putnam’s points about working families (and those of other notable researchers) are illuminated.

The Bottom Line.  School and housing segregation reflect economic segregation – and the work of Dr. Putnam puts the onus on everyone to boost jobs and income for low-income families, enhance early childhood education and development, encourage parents to be active partners in their children’s education, increase intensive mentoring of children, and widen access to higher education.  As he put it, it’s not a red-state/blue-state problem … it’s a purple problem.

Today we have clarified yesterday’s tabular information about Hartford high school students’ performance on the new SAT, as you will see below. 

The State Department of Education yesterday issued student performance data from the new SAT, which has been adjusted in light of the Common Core State Standards.  Scores from Hartford and the other large cities, not surprisingly, were distressingly low.

[Clarification:  The State database treats Achievement First as a separate school district, which caused us to omit its high school from our data gathering.  When we recognized the discrepancy today, we revised the table accordingly and present it fully below.]

Students’ performance on the new SAT is rated according to four levels: those who did not meet, were approaching, met, or exceeded the achievement standard.  The SDE news release is here; it includes a link to explore the data online.

As the table below now shows, only two Hartford high schools surpassed the total statewide average score – and the proportion of students citywide who met or exceeded the standard in Math was 14.8 percent, compared with the statewide average of 39.3 percent.

Looking further at the English Language Arts (ELA) and Math scores on the new SAT, the statewide proportions of Black and Latino students who met or exceeded the ELA standard on the new SAT were 36.4 percent and 39 percent, respectively.  In Math, those statewide proportions were 12.4 percent for Black students and 15.5 percent for Latino students, respectively.

For Hartford, those corresponding percentages for Black and Latino students meeting or exceeding the ELA standard were 27.6 percent and 24.6 percent, respectively.  In Math, 92.8 percent of Black students and 93.3 percent of Latino students did not meet the standard.