By Robert A. Frahm
State Board of Education members angrily criticized lawmakers’ attempts to scale back a major education reform bill, saying today that the watered-down bill could stall the effort to fix the state’s worst schools.
“I’ve watched this process … with real dismay,” board Chairman Allan Taylor said of changes made last week by the legislature’s Education and Appropriations committees to limit a sweeping reform package proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
The revisions also drew criticism from Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, who said that aside from reducing funding for the bill, the committees also stripped it of some of its key elements, such as provisions linking teacher evaluations to decisions on tenure.
In addition, Pryor said the reduction of funding in a proposal aimed at low-performing districts and the removal of specific strategies to help those districts could weaken the state’s chances for a waiver of some requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
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