Related Link: Recent Accomplishments

A Diverse Town Committed to Fairness

In Hamden schools, students are 47 percent white, 33 percent black, 13 percent Hispanic and just over 6 percent Asian. The district's eight elementary schools include five which serve high-poverty neighborhoods and three which serve middle-class neighborhoods. The study included questions like "Are veteran teachers typically found at the wealthier neighborhood schools?"

While about 35% of children in Hamden schools receive free or reduced-price lunch, the district makes a deliberate effort to be equitable. Superintendent Fran Rabinowitz's "All Means All" vision for the district puts equity squarely on the table. In a district as diverse as Hamden, "All Means All" is implicitly redistributive in terms of resources. Under Fran's leadership, Hamden changed its method for choosing students for the elementary talented and gifted program to ensure a more balanced distribution that ensured program participation in each of the eight elementary schools.

Measuring Resource Equity in Stratford, CT in 2011 and Beyond

With support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, research for The Same Starting Line was the basis for development of a draft "resource allocation measurement tool" that any district could use to measure equity. Connecticut Appleseed was fortunate to secure cooperation from Stratford Public Schools Superintendent Irene Cornish to test the tool within her district. After using the draft to examine the resources provided by the district to its two high schools, two middle schools and four of its eight elementary schools, as well as interviewing the principals from all 8 schools, we similarly found impressive fairness in the district's internal allocation of resources. Connecticut Appleseed then provided Stratford's feedback on the assessment tool to the national Appleseed organization to improve it for wider use.

Connecticut Appleseed and Massachusetts Appleseed have jointly proposed that the Nellie Mae Education Foundation support application of this new tool to assess resource allocation equity during the 2011-12 school year in three districts in each state. If Nellie Mae were pleased with the results, the tool could be offered to all New England school districts.

Interest in Appleseed's work on resource equity is already sufficiently high that our "resource allocation measurement tool" will be the subject of a workshop at the National School Board Association's April, 2012 conference.