In March of this year, the Connecticut legislature created an advisory group called the 119K Commission.  The group was created in response to an October 2023 Dalio Foundation report (read the report here) which found that 119,000 young people in Connecticut between the ages of 14-26 were disconnected from school and work (and therefore, a meaningful existence).  This while the Pew Research Center was reporting that 62% of teens are connected to one of the top five social media platforms “almost constantly.”

These “at risk” and “disconnected” young people are those who have graduated but are unemployed and not enrolled in college, and non-graduates who are employed, and unemployed non-graduates, who are probably out stealing your car as we speak.

The Commission’s mission, by admission,  is to transition these beautiful and capable young people into “viable education and career pathways” (before they begin bothering folks at Dunkin’ Donuts for change and smoke).

The 119K Commission states: “when discussing at-risk and disconnected youth, there's no more pressing issue than keeping kids in school.”  However, getting scant focus from this group is the pressing issue of the kids that are being let out of school.

School districts are graduating students who may not be ready (“at-risk” students) for life outside the womb.  In the report (p.22), it is stated that 70% of the 10,000 “newly” disconnected youth each year are high school graduates.

Chronic absenteeism is one factor identifying an “at-risk” student and a future indicator of disconnectedness; the “increase in the at-risk population is largely driven by the dramatic increase in chronic absenteeism,” states the report (p.24).

We would expect then to see an inverse relationship between the graduation rate and the “dramatic increase in chronic absenteeism,” in other words, when one goes up, one comes down.  This hasn’t been the case.

Using EdSight data (“Connecticut’s official source for education data”), we see that although the state’s chronic absenteeism rate between 2017 and 2022 increased by 13 percentage points, the graduation rate also increased, albeit, by 1 percentage point. 

At Hartford Public Schools, which has dumped a greater percentage of 14-26  year olds into the disconnected pool than any other district in Connecticut (p.20), we see the graduation rate between 2017 and 2022 increase by 5 percentage points (while the average Connecticut district remained relatively flat over the same period), yet the chronic absenteeism rate at HPS over this same period rose 24 percentage points, nearly twice that of the state average!  Chronic absenteeism for seniors over this period rose from 33% in 2017 to 58% in 2022, but in 2022 HPS reported a graduation rate of 74%!

When folks talk about systematic injustices and failures of societal systems, too often left out of the conversation is how the education system has failed the student by certifying with a high school diploma that despite having missed at least 10%, and most likely much more, of the critical education experience, that student is ready for meaningful participation in a 21st century global community.

Bullshit.

The Dalio report’s response to this system failure is given one paragraph in their report (p25):

“A related hypothesis was that educators and district leaders, seeing the disruptive impact the pandemic had on students, passed students who may have otherwise been identified as needing to repeat classes or grades.”

This one paragraph reflects the less-than-critical attention given to this issue.  It is not a pandemic-related phenomenon, nor is it a “hypothesis.”  It is real and it is in your face, but you are not making the connection between the rise in disconnectedness despite a simultaneous rise in graduation rates.  Hello!!

During a recent press conference on the occasion of Mayor Arulampalam creating a Blue Ribbon Commission on Education in Hartford (“Superintendent Steers HPS into City Intervention”), a co-chair of that commission, Andrea Comer, related the story of her daughter, an HPS graduate who went on to become a teacher (applause).  According to Comer, her daughter had a friend who also graduated from HPS, but “went to community college and was told he was basically illiterate.”  The failure is real, it is not a “hypothesis.”

Earlier this month, Hartford’s new police chief, Kenny Howell, spoke to the assembled community at the Maple Avenue Revitalization Group (MARG), a Hartford NRZ.  As he spoke on the need for community policing, he touched on the topic of hiring recruits who were products of the community.  However, he stated that many interested local recruits, with HPS diplomas, cannot read well enough to pass the police exams.  The failure is real, it is not a “hypothesis.”

A former Hartford High teacher related to me how he would attend Hartford High graduation ceremonies each year.  As he sat in the audience, he would point out those students marching across the stage who he knew were not ready or qualified to graduate.  The failure is real, it is not a “hypothesis.”

This year’s graduating students were juniors last year.  Last year 49% of HPS juniors were chronically absent. This year’s graduating class at HPS were freshman during the height of COVID which brought great learning loss and the recovery was reportedly going to take years.  This year the superintendent reported that HPS had the highest graduation rate in a decade!  The failure is real, it is not a “hypothesis.”

So, the 119K Commission recently rolled into Hartford on its state listening tour.  The four hour public session held at City Hall appeared to be more of a venue for local non-profits to pitch their wares and align themselves with the commission in case it returns back to the legislature and recommends the state spend $100 million so that non-profits can assist schools in reconnecting the disconnected.  To those non-profits and to school district leaders, please consider the words of Commission Co-Chair, Andrew Ferguson of Dalio Education:

“I am struck by, both tonight and in so many conversations we’ve had, how much good is happening in this state by people who are deeply committed to serving young people, to work together, just so many people are working so hard, it strikes me every time.  And yet, we still have a crisis.” 

This comment by Mr. Ferguson was after the five members of an invited panel had spoken and answered questions from the commission members.  Mr. Ferguson’s comment can be, in part, referenced to what was not said at this public meeting.   I was struck by how not one speaker from the commission, the assembled panel, or those adding public comment, spoke on the elephant in the room. 

No one spoke on the abhorrent disparities between a rise in chronic absenteeism and learning loss yet a rise in graduation rates. No one spoke on the issue and the harm of social promotion or graduating students rather than educating students.  No one spoke on the failures of the school system as it feeds the beast of disconnectedness.

It is not a hypothesis; it is a great big ol’ grey elephant.