Chris Powell: Trump isn’t what’s wrong with Conn. public education

1839 caricature by George Cruikshank of a school flogging.

The Hartford High School building constructed in the early 1880’s and, sadly, demolished in the 1960’s. (This is a 1911 postcard.) Public secondary education in Hartford started in 1638, the second-oldest equivalent of a high school in America. The first is the Boston Latin School, founded in 1635.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and state Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker are being cheered for refusing to certify to the U.S. Education Department that state government is in compliance with the Trump administration's view of civil-rights law. The administration's view is that ‘‘diversity, equity, and inclusion," the slogan of what I see as leftist education, is unconstitutional because it means that government is enforcing racial preferences in schools.

Exactly what racial preferences are Connecticut's schools enforcing? The Trump administration's letter to the state Education Department didn't say. The Education Department's reply said the state, with its "diversity, equity, and inclusion," is following federal law. So now, for not nodding politely at the Trump administration, Connecticut is at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal education grants, and millions may be spent in litigation to determine what, if anything, it all means.

The governor and education commissioner should have provided the certification the Trump administration sought and left it to the administration to cite specific reasons for canceling grants to the state. But no -- the governor, the commissioner, and Democratic state legislators want to be seen fighting Trump and to look like they're standing up for education.

The governor grandly proclaimed: “In Connecticut we're proud to support the incredible diversity of our schools and work tirelessly to ensure that every child, regardless of background, has access to a quality education and the best opportunity at the starting line in life. From our educators, who are mentoring and inspiring the next generation of young people, to our curriculum, our commitment to education is what has made our schools nationally recognized, and we plan to continue doing what makes our students, teachers, and schools successful."

Oh, really? 

It's not because of Trump that, despite all that “diversity, equity, and inclusion," Connecticut's schools are still heavily segregated racially.

It's not because of Trump that Connecticut's schools long have had a mortifying racial performance gap.

It's not because of Trump that, according to the little standardized testing state government dares to permit, student proficiency has been declining for decades even as per-pupil spending has risen sharply. 

It's not because of Trump that Connecticut legislators and educators have decided opportunistically to pretend that more spending equals more education even as decades of test results contradict them. 

It's not because of Trump that Hartford's and Bridgeport's school systems are dysfunctional educationally, administratively, and financially and are undergoing audits by the state Education Department even as state government refuses to accept responsibility for their longstanding catastrophic failure and take control of both.

Nor is Trump to blame for the Hartford school system's graduating an illiterate student last year, and presumably many others, nor for the refusal of the city's school superintendent and the state education commissioner to investigate and report about the case.

Trump isn't why the foremost policy of public education in Connecticut is social promotion, which crushes the incentive of students to learn, especially when they lack parenting, as many do. 

Racial preferences in government  are  unconstitutional and unjust, though the country got used to them for many years when they were euphemized as “affirmative action." As a practical matter “diversity, equity, and inclusion" is just a righteous slogan available to euphemize more racial preferences and to distract from the continuing failure of so much of public education.

But if “diversity, equity, and inclusion" ever meant what they  should  mean --  integration and more equal opportunity  -- they might be worth something. The country never will be prosperous, healthy, harmonious, and safe while it keeps creating and sustaining an impoverished and uneducated underclass.

Schools and teachers play the hands they are dealt -- the demographics of their communities. Some schools and teachers are extraordinary but in the end, all together, they will be only average, and, on average, demographics will rule.

So the education problem is far bigger than education itself. It's more a matter of how Connecticut can get more of its children ready and eager to learn in school. It won't be with empty slogans and political posturing.  

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).