{"id":1328,"date":"2012-02-28T09:06:49","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T14:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2012-02-28T09:42:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-28T14:42:14","slug":"education-discussion-hits-%e2%80%9chome%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/2012\/02\/education-discussion-hits-%e2%80%9chome%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"Education Discussion Hits \u201cHome\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

HARTFORD<\/strong>— This past Monday, February 27, 2012, a discussion was held regarding the report Opportunity in CT: The Impact of Race, Poverty a<\/a><\/em><\/strong>nd Education on Family Economic Success<\/em><\/strong> <\/a>written by Judith Carol and published and sponsored by the Connecticut Association for Human Services<\/a> (CAHS).\u00a0 The discussion, held in the Old Judiciary Room of the State Capitol, was facilitated by a group of highly-accredited individuals in the educational and political arenas.\u00a0 A highlight of the discussion was the verbalized viewpoint of Erin Boggs<\/a>, deputy director of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center<\/a>.\u00a0 Boggs\u2019s agenda was implementing affordable subsidized housing into areas with higher opportunity and more successful schools. Boggs\u2019s agenda on housing was acknowledged and discussed many times in the discussion and provided what seemed to be a fresh idea in the debate over the erasure of the achievement gap.<\/p>\n

Erin Boggs and Affordable, Subsidized Housing<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>During the discussion, Boggs commented, \u201cOne thing I really want to focus on is we need to think very hard and be very thoughtful about how we place our affordable subsidized housing.\u00a0 This history has been that we have simply placed that kind of housing again, and again, and again in areas of very high poverty and it makes no sense.\u201d\u00a0 Boggs continued, \u201cIn terms of connecting people to higher opportunity, a lot of this is about housing and making sure that we can place that exact same housing in areas just at very base level: where the schools<\/em> are good…where schools are thriving. We do have a lot of schools in low-opportunity areas that I think are struggling really because there is an over concentration of poverty.\u201d\u00a0 By placing affordable housing in more-affluent and lower-poverty areas with better school systems, less-affluent families would be encouraged to move to these types of areas.\u00a0 Boggs goes on to explain how poverty-stricken students would then receive a better education and the closing of the achievement gap would be facilitated.<\/p>\n

To strengthen her point, Boggs mentioned a study from Montgomery County, Maryland which dealt with scattered site public housing. In the study, according to Boggs, public housing was placed in areas of high and low opportunity. It was found that students who lived in the public housing in areas of high opportunity, \u201ccut the achievement gap in half,\u201d as put by Boggs.\u00a0 By moving the housing from its typical placement in low-opportunity areas to high-opportunity areas, students performed worlds better.\u00a0 Boggs was referencing Heather Schwartz\u2019s report Housing Policy is School Policy: Economically Integrative Housing Promotes Academic Success In Montgomery County, Maryland<\/a>.\u00a0Schwartz\u2019s report does in fact confirm Boggs\u2019s claim and further supports Boggs\u2019s argument that housing is an integral factor in closing the achievement gap\u2014a welcomed idea which stands out from the more typical potential fixes of the achievement gap such as racial integration, parental involvement, and accountability.<\/p>\n

Boggs also mentioned the court case Thompson vs HUD<\/a>, which took place in Baltimore County Maryland in 1994. Boggs alluded to this court case to prove that it is possible for people from segregated, low-opportunity areas to coexist with people from high-opportunity areas in the suburbs. Boggs explained that Thompson sued HUD because HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development<\/a>)\u00a0gave out Section 8 vouchers<\/a> which would cause resegregation. The court ruled in favor of Thompson and a settlement was put forth. Bogg\u2019s describes the settlement as \u201cadvising people with Section 8 about other housing options outside of high-poverty concentrated areas.\u201d\u00a0 She then goes on to say that many people were against this idea. However, the settlement was enacted and the result was not negative, as people thought it would be. In fact, when the people with Section 8 moved outside of these areas and into suburbs with high opportunity, it was found that the suburbanites did not express opposition to the integration. Bogg\u2019s also said that not only were most of the families and children accepted into the suburbs, they were \u201cwell acclimated into the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opportunity in CT: The Impact of Race, Poverty and Education on Family Economic Success<\/em> : the Report and the Discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The discussion on CAHS\u2019s report was lacking information on educational topics.\u00a0 CAHS\u2019s discussion was largely based on the economic and employment problems in Connecticut and did not address education beyond the certain points made my Erin Boggs (as many of her other points were not education-based) and the points made by George Coleman<\/a> (former commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education who argued that the closure of the achievement gap cannot be achieved when racial segregation is present and whose points were not center-stage).\u00a0 Although the report itself did address educational issues, the discussion of the report only mildly reflected this.\u00a0 The report itself was also not a piece of literature on education.\u00a0 Instead, the report stated many facts about the achievement gap and then proceeded to discuss how the achievement gap affects family economic success, rather than pose too many exact solutions to the problem.<\/p>\n

In addition, by the end of the meeting it was clear that the discussion had been just that: a discussion.\u00a0 No plan of action was decided upon and nothing truly seemed to have been accomplished. Although the discussion was interesting and informative to both its audience and participants, in the end it did not produce any specific results.<\/p>\n

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Danyelle Doldoorian and Priyanka Menezes and friends<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HARTFORD— This past Monday, February 27, 2012, a discussion was held regarding the report Opportunity in CT: The Impact of Race, Poverty and Education on Family Economic Success written by Judith Carol and published and sponsored by the Connecticut Association for Human Services (CAHS).\u00a0 The discussion, held in the Old Judiciary Room of the State … Continue reading Education Discussion Hits \u201cHome\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}