The governor wants to encourage regionalizing by cutting back on how much the state sends to the smallest school districts. Tiny Canaan, for example, spends $22,450 for each of its 139 students, the most expensive per-student spending in the state.
But Canaan First Selectwoman Patricia Ally Mechare says regionalizing doesn't necessarily save money and argues that her town is "being responsible by spending what it takes, while the state hasn't."
Read more"We run the risk of losing good teachers, of evaluation becoming a 'gotcha' practice, and of establishing a culture of fear, rather than collaboration in our schools," Phil Apruzzese, head of the state's largest teachers union, told the Education Committee.
Read more"Let's break down this brick wall," said Sen. Beth Bye, the Senate chairwoman of the Higher Education Committee.
"Why not allow students who want to try, try?... It's a wild idea, I know, but let's let a college student take a college course."
Read moreWaves of retired teachers once covered by their districts' health plans are opting to get insurance through the state's less expensive policy.
If Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has his way, his budget will slow this migration by increasing the cost the state's 32,000 retired teachers and spouses would pay to join the state's health plan. Almost two-thirds of the state's retired teachers get insurance through the state.
When animated television tyke Lisa Simpson had to announce a tax increase to the American public, she deftly called it a "temporary refund adjustment," avoiding any mention of the three-letter T-word.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration stole a page from The Simpsons last week, repackaging a projected deficit in his new budget as a conditional surplus -- all without using the D-word.
The state has spent more than $200 million to build schools around the state for 19 agriculture programs, but 30 percent of the seats are empty.
"They built all these schools, but they forgot about giving us the money to operate them," Bill Davenport, director of one of the programs, said of the 1,500 seats that go unfilled each year.
Read moreTeachers aren't the only ones who will soon be graded and put on a path to improve or be dismissed. A plan to evaluate the state's 1,200 principals is also moving forward, and will likely be approved by the state's Board of Education Friday.
"There will be a state model for principals," Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor said, after a meeting where educators -- including groups that represent school principals, teachers unions and school boards -- agreed upon the plan.
Read moreMeriden -- To begin the job of selling his proposed education reforms, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited a school Thursday in a district with a young, dynamic superintendent and the challenges of student poverty and limited resources.
Students stared wide-eyed as Malloy swept into classrooms at Benjamin Franklin Elementary, trailed by a retinue that included Superintendent Mark Benigni, Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman and the state commissioner of education, Stefan Pryor.
A year after building the largest fiscal security blanket in more than two decades of state budgets, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy moved onto the fiscal high wire without a net.
Malloy spoke decisively Wednesday about finding spending cuts to keep his $20.7 billion plan for 2012-13 in balance, but lawmakers and the state's chief business lobby balked at the plan's barely visible margin for error.
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy is calling on legislators to completely change how the state's 45,000 teachers earn tenure by linking teachers' job security to student performance and teacher evaluations.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy unveiled a revised, $20.73 billion budget plan for the next fiscal year, adding nearly $330 million in spending over the preliminary budget, largely to fund additional education aid for towns and to bolster the state employees' pension fund.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy asked state legislators today to send an additional $50 million to school districts, a move that advocates say will cover a portion of what the state owes them.
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Elissa Maillet worries she's not going to be able to get a teaching job when she graduates from Central Connecticut State University in two years, but the sophomore with a 3.6 GPA is positioned to profit from higher teacher standards proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
If Malloy succeeds, the pool of her would-be competitors for jobs will get smaller.
Read moreUnfazed by a looming state Supreme Court decision that could say the state overstepped when replacing Bridgeport's school board, the governor wants the state to intervene in up to 25 of the state's lowest-performing schools to turn them around.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is proposing a 30 percent increase per student in charter school funding and the opening of five new charter schools.
West Hartford -- Nearly 6,500 students in Connecticut enter kindergarten each year never having attended preschool. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy wants to reduce that number by 500 students in the state's poorest districts.
"We've got to close that achievement gap" between low-income students and their peers who attend preschool, he said Thursday, standing on the playground of the School for Young Children at St. Joseph College. "This is the best invested dollar."
The peace between the teachers unions and the Malloy Administration ended Tuesday, one week before legislators convene at the State Capitol to get to work on a major education overhaul.
The battle comes from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's shutting down the Connecticut Education Association's initiative to allow educators to set the certification requirements for themselves. Instead, he plans to link the new teacher evaluation system with a new three-tier teacher certification system, where only the best teachers will get the "master certificate" label.
If President Obama has his way, the money that colleges receive from Washington will soon go to schools that can lower their tuition or at least hold it steady.
That may be a problem for Connecticut's 17 public colleges, which have almost doubled tuition and fees over the last decade and have already approved tuition increases for the next school year that exceed the rate of inflation.
Business leaders offered a simple, if politically sensitive suggestion Thursday on how to pay for many of the things needed to improve education in the state: link the laundry list of grants that the state dishes out each year to performance.
In a major shift, a diverse group of educators -- including teachers' unions, superintendent and school board groups -- have agreed that student performance, not longevity of service, should be the key yardstick to evaluating teachers.
"We've been waiting for this," said Diane Ullman, Simsbury's superintendent of schools and a member of the state panel responsible for creating the new evaluation process.
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"This is an investment worthy of being made."
Gov. Malloy to charter school students who had been bused to the Capitol Tuesday evening to thank him for proposing an increase in funds for charters.
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