The Connecticut Department of Education has released a report comparing the performance of Hartford city students who are enrolled in a magnet school or surburban school to the performance of those who remain in their local school. “The data indicate that Hartford-resident students enrolled in choice programming opportunities perform at higher levels than those who are enrolled in the city public schools,” said Kelly Donnelly, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Education. In fact, the differences are quite stark. As the CT Mirror explains,
[I]n a typical fifth grade Hartford classroom of 25 students last school year, 12 students were not proficient in reading. In a magnet school run by the Capitol Region Education Council with students from all over the region, just two of the 25 students from Hartford were not proficient.
The option to transfer to a suburban school or apply to a magnet school stems from the seminal case Sheff v. O’Neill (1996), in which the Connecticut Supreme Court held that Hartford’s racially isolated schools violate those students’ right to an equal education under the state constitution. This new report by the state is the first to examine the achievement affects of the program. After seeing the data, Martha Stone, an attorney for the plaintiffs, was emboldened. “I challenge the state to show any other mechanism that is closing the achievement gap as quickly,” said Stone. “The state should be looking at regional solutions if we really want to solve the problem in a robust way.”