Judge’s truth hurts in blistering education ruling

Shameful, isn’t it, that it took a ruling by a Superior Court judge to acknowledge what we have known for so long: that Connecticut deprives its poorest, mostly minority students of their constitutionally guaranteed right to a proper education.  

Governors and legislators of both parties have known that this shameful condition has existed for more than half a century; the educational establishment, teachers, their unions, local governments and the courts have tolerated it; even, at times, upheld it.

It took a Superior Court judge with only three years on the bench to finally face the truth about our separate and unequal public schools, but  Thomas Moukawsher had the advantage of knowing how the system works.  A former legislator, the judge worked in the governor’s office as a young man, served as counsel to the Democratic Party, the legislature’s Commerce Committee and the state senate president.  He was even a lobbyist for the commercial banking industry, as well as a lawyer in the private sector, before becoming a judge.  

In short, Judge Moukawsher knows where the governmental bodies are buried, and he unearthed them — with the legislature’s unwitting help when it tried to remedy a deficit by cutting state assistance to the poorest schools while increasing grants to some of the wealthiest and whitest.

It happened just last May when the deficit reducers in Hartford solved their problem in part by cutting aid to most of the poorest communities by $5.3 million — $1 million from Hartford, more from Bridgeport — while still finding a way to increase the assistance given a $1.4 million increase to West Hartford and $300,000 to the smaller, wealthier town of Simsbury. 

Judge Moukawsher did a lot more than order the Legislature to fix this disgraceful financing with all deliberate speed. He ridiculed the common and generally accepted practice of promoting kids whether they learned enough or not. He derided a system that sends kids to high school with third-grade reading levels and graduates them unfit for anything but the most menial jobs.

The ruling also mocked the method of evaluating the teachers as “little more than cotton candy in a rainstorm.” The most recent evaluations of tens of thousands public school teachers found that about a third of them are “exemplary” and nearly all the rest are “proficient.” True, an astounding 1.5 percent are still “developing” while just 0.2 percent are “below standard,” leaving us to ponder whatever that “standard” might be.

The head of the state teacher’s union, which finds itself in the embarrassing position of having been one of the groups that brought the suit a decade ago, has defended these ratings on the grounds that all of its members are doing a “terrific” job, not counting the 0.2 percent below standard, of course.

The legislature was ordered to fix things in 180 days, but that’s not going to happen. Last week, state Attorney General George Jepsen did what was expected of him and announced the state would appeal the ruling on the grounds that Moukashwer had no business sticking his judicial nose into the Legislature’s domain with his “breathtakingly sweeping orders.”  

That, of course, is about what attorneys general in the former Confederacy said about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education decision 62 years ago. That was the one that determined segregated, separate but equal schools were unconstitutional. “Legislating from the bench!” has been the irate response from states and municipalities and their political class ever since, usually when courts had the nerve to do the job the other branches failed to do.

“How much better it would be,” said a Hartford Courant editorial last Friday, “if government leaders just set about urgently solving the problems the judge pointed out rather than arguing over whether he had the right to state the obvious and try to do something about it.”

I live in Simsbury, a prosperous, well-run suburb  that people move to because the schools are so good.  It was one of the rich towns the judge cited for receiving six-figure increases in aid to education while poorer towns like East Hartford and New Britain were being cut by six figures and the poorest, like Hartford and Bridgeport, were suffering cuts of a million or more.

And how did my town react?  First Selectwoman Lisa Heavener calmly said she understood the judge’s position, adding, “It’s clear that something needs to be done with the way we fund education in the state.”

But Democrat John Hampton, who represents the town in the State House and is seeking reelection, would have none of it. “I am going to be fiercely aggressive in not only maintaining our funding but making sure we get more,” said the lawmaker.

For my part, I intend to be fiercely aggressive in voting for his opponent on Nov. 8.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.