There are two modes of understanding a thing, of how things are viewed.  There is the classical mode, where intertwined elements, the underlying form, are seen and understood as functioning to produce the bigger picture.  Then there is the romantic mode, where a thing is seen as it is, in all its aesthetic beauty, where the underlying form is not a concern, and which gives folks agita.  Folks don’t like agita.

Take a motorcycle for instance.  The romantic sees the shiny chrome, the style of the frame, and the magnificently painted gas tank, like the award-winning designs painted by Shawn Kienia in the 1990s, and reckons it is a nice bike.  The classicist sees the design of the engine, listens to the engine’s rhythm at work and at rest, views the hue of the exhaust and knows that all the internal parts and functions are operating as they should to create a nice bike.

Where the hell am I going with this?

Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez (entering her 8th year leading the district), her administrative team (largest of any public school district in Connecticut), her outside partners (paid $20 million last school year), and the Board of Education (the board of education), are but a few of the elements creating the underlying form of Hartford Public Schools.  Functioning together, their mission is, the bigger picture is, to ensure that students achieve educational success (real success, not some watered-down alternative).

All things in the district are there to produce one thing, educational success.  However, as was painfully and pathetically clear during the Board’s recent Regular Meeting and the awarding of $2.5 million in “Community Schools” contracts, how the underlying form is succeeding at producing the bigger picture is not being shared by the Superintendent, her administrative team, or their outside partners and the Board accepts the romantic reports which they do receive.

The Community Schools discussion began with Board Member Browdy asking, where’s the beef?  Ms. Browdy stated that the Board was supposed to receive reports from each of the 6 community-based organizations (CBO) containing metrics to show what each accomplished last school year.  No such reports were received.  Board Member Oliver echoed Ms. Browdy’s concern, asking how success is measured.

To these concerns, the Superintendent’s Chief Engagement and Partnership Officer, Nuchette Black-Burke stood up and proudly stated the following:

The “determining metric” used is a 75% attendance rate for students in the programs. Also used is the completion of site visits and the adherence to all of the elements which the CBOs had listed in their scope of services, all which would be included in an end of year report that would be submitted to the Superintendent and her team.  “Those were the metrics that we had put in place,” stated Ms. Black-Burke.

To Board members looking for data as proof of a job well done, this statement was empty and useless.  Romantic, if you will.

A representative from each of the CBOs would then take the floor and explain what success means to them.  None of them, not one, stated how their work with HPS students has resulted in overall educational success for the students who participated in a particular program.

There were pathetic attempts to romanticize data by stating “we did this” or “we did that” and “this many showed up,” but none of them could state how as a result of their program, the students in the program increased their ELA scores by X, or their Math scores by X, or that the chronic absenteeism rate of the kids in the program dropped X.

Dean Jones, from the Blue Hills Civic Association, stood up and gave exact numbers for students in his program who received holiday gift cards, birthday cakes, groceries, and home visits.  However, when it came to the number of seniors in his program who graduated, he didn’t give the exact number, he stated it was “100%.”  That means absolutely nothing if we do not know how many seniors were in the program in the first place.  Was it 1?  5?  36?

Failed city councilman and failed mayoral candidate Nick Lebron stood up as a representative of the group Catholic Charities and stated that they have their own internal metrics, yet he provided not an iota of data which one could use to assess his groups worthiness for receiving a $700,000 HPS check.

And of course, we heard the same refrain at this meeting as we hear at every meeting where data showing success is asked for.  This instance came from Joe Bumpers of the Boys and Girls Club of Hartford, who stated, yes, we have data, not with us, but we can provide it to you.

Even in a less than perfect world, if these CBO folks, or the Superintendent and her failed staff, were to provide us with actual objective data from these programs, it would be of the internal program type, what the student may or may not have achieved while participating in the program.  When we do get data from the Superintendent’s hand-picked partners, it is of this type.  Yet this data is rarely connected to the overall goal of the school district, educational success for those students in the program.  How is the underlying form functioning to produce overall educational success?

Creating this web of an underlying form at HPS has been the Superintendent’s strategy since 2015.  Students traversing the underlying form at HPS may be put in a happy place while in the program du jour, but we do not see overall achievement at HPS. 

A 10-watt light bulb will burn bright as hell when placed in a cardboard box, but put it in an empty auditorium and it’s as useless as a ham sandwich at a Bar mitzvah.