E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y

Improving and ExpandingHartford’s

Project Choice Program

Prepared for the Sheff Movement coalition

by Erica Frankenberg

Poverty & Race Research Action Counci l , Washington, DC September 2007

AcknowledgmentsThis report would not be possible without a number of people, including those interviewedlisted in Appendix A. Phil Tegeler from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council pro-vided resources, guidance, and contacts; project interns Christina Ramsey and Katie Brewerfrom Trinity College and their supervisor Professor Jack Dougherty assisted with some datacollection; Chinh Le, Susan Eaton, and Kathryn McDermott have informally talked with meabout Sheff. I appreciate the assistance of numerous assistants not listed above who helped tocoordinate these interviews, particularly Tennille Cintron at CREC. Marcus Rivera was alsohelpful in sharing data on the program with me. Thomas Kissling edited an earlier draft ofthis manuscript.

We are particularly grateful for the support of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving,which provided funding for this research, and the Capitol Region Education Council(CREC), which acted as a fiscal agent for the Project Choice Campaign. The Sheff Movementcoalition is independent from the Foundation and CREC and the conclusions of this report are not meant to reflect those of the Foundation or CREC.

About the AuthorErica Frankenberg is an advanced doctoral candidate at the Harvard University GraduateSchool of Education. She has authored a report on the racial segregation of public schoolteachers and is also co-author of a series of reports and articles on school desegregation trends.Recently, Frankenberg helped coordinate and write a social science statement filed with theU.S. Supreme Court in the Louisville/Seattle voluntary school integration cases, regarding thebenefits of integrated schools (Ms. Frankenberg’s analysis was specifically cited and attached asan appendix to the dissenting opinion of Justice Breyer). Frankenberg helped author a widelydisseminated manual on voluntary integration published by the NAACP Legal Defense Fundand the Civil Rights Project at Harvard. She is the co-editor of Lessons in Integration: Realizingthe Promise of Racial Diversity in American Schools (with Gary Orfield, 2007) from the Universityof Virginia Press.

Table of ContentsIntroduction to the Sheff Movement coalition and the Project Choice Campaign . . . . . . ii

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Section I: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Section II: Demographics of the Hartford Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Section III: Benefits of Racial/Ethnic Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Section IV: Other City-suburban Desegregation Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Section V: Stakeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Section VI: Recommendations and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Appendices

Appendix A: List of Interviews Conducted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Appendix B: Participation in Project Concern and Project Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Appendix C: Recommendations for Improvements to Websites Related to Project Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Appendix D: METCO Students, as a Percentage of District Enrollment & Minority Share, October 2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83

P r e p a r e d f o r t h e S h e f f M o v e m e n t c o a l i t i o n 2 0 0 7 i

ii Improving and Expanding Hartford‘s Project Choice Program

The Sheff Movement is a community basedcoalition that is working to expand andstrengthen the range of quality, integratededucation programs available to Hartfordfamilies under the Sheff v. O’Neill school de-segregation court decrees. These programsinclude the “Project Choice” program,which places Hartford children in suburbanschools, and a system of 15-20 Hartford-based magnet schools that are open to chil-dren from throughout the Hartford Region.

The coalition has recently launched theProject Choice Campaign, a new project togive voice to the network of Project Choiceparents and alumni and to expand supportfor the Project Choice program in the Hart-ford suburbs. The Campaign kicked off itswork with an anniversary conference on De-cember 2, 2006, co-sponsored by the Capi-tol Region Education Council, celebrating40 years of the Project Concern/Project

Choice program in Hartford. We are nowworking to develop committees of support-ers in selected suburban towns, with focusgroups and some small-scale events, and weare preparing a DVD that includes inter-views with alumni and some of the originalfounders of the Project Concern program.This research report is also a key part of thecoalition’s work.

Philip Tegeler of the Poverty & Race Re-search Action Council (and a former lawyerin the Sheff case) is helping to oversee theProject Choice Campaign, along with SheffMovement co-chairs Elizabeth HortonSheff and Jim Boucher.

The Project Choice Campaign is grateful forfunding support from the Hartford Founda-tion for Public Giving, the Hartford CourantFoundation, and the City of Hartford.

Introduction to the Sheff Movement

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The Project Choice program, whichprovides integrated school opportuni-ties for Hartford schoolchildren

throughout the region, is an integral part ofthe State of Connecticut’s response to the1996 Sheff v. O’Neill school decision. TheChoice program has been overshadowed bythe larger interdistrict magnet school pro-gram, but like the magnet program, ProjectChoice has also lagged in its growth – leavingthe state well short of its desegregation goals.Simply put, suburban districts in the regionhave not yet provided a sufficient number ofseats to meet the student demand for the pro-gram. However, local districts do not makesuch decisions in a vacuum – there are impor-tant issues of funding, transportation, studentsupport, coordination and capacity that haveto be addressed by the state before the pro-gram can grow to its full potential. This studyexplored these issues in depth and includesrecommendations to improve and expand theProject Choice program for participatingtowns and students.

In looking to the next phase of compliancewith the Sheff v. O’Neill mandate, ProjectChoice could have a larger role than in thepast. This is largely because the program is themost efficient means of placing students in in-tegrated school placements. Typically, an inter-district magnet school will take several years ofmarketing and awareness among suburbanparents to attain a meaningful degree of racialintegration. In contrast, placements in theProject Choice program provide Hartford stu-dents with immediate access to integrated

schools and classrooms – usually in exemplarylearning environments.

Though the program’s growth has lagged,there appears to be ample capacity in suburbanschool districts to accommodate additionalProject Choice students. Of the 27 participat-ing districts, ten provide less than 1% of theirseats to Hartford students, and every district isunder 3% of total enrollment. The state ofConnecticut’s school facility capacity data,which looks at only physical school capacity,suggests there may be thousands of potentialseats in already existing suburban schools. Thisrough capacity data needs to be supplementedby a careful district-by-district review of actualcapacity in the suburban districts, to determinefair target goals for each town in the region. Ifthere were greater funding for Project Choice—for faculty, staff, and curriculum materials—suburban districts could use their excess capac-ity to accommodate more Hartford students.

The slow growth and low suburban participa-tion rates in Hartford’s Project Choice pro-gram stand in sharp contrast to similarprograms in Boston, Minneapolis, and St.Louis. In these cities, suburban districts aretaking significantly larger numbers and pro-portions of students. In Boston’s METCOprogram, for example, Boston minority stu-dents account for more than 3% of district en-rollment in fourteen suburban districts. Onesuburban Boston district enrolled 415METCO students in 2006 (in contrast, thelargest participating district in the Hartfordarea enrolls 96 Project Choice students).

Executive Summary

2 Improving and Expanding Hartford‘s Project Choice Program

Even at the current low participation rates,Project Choice students make up a substantialpercentage of the total Black and Latino en-rollment in most participating suburban dis-tricts – in other words, without this program,student diversity would decline significantly atmany suburban schools. The Choice program,by creating more diverse schools, brings sub-stantial benefits to participating Hartford stu-dents and to suburban students and districts.Research on the long term benefits of integra-tion, including studies of Hartford’s ProjectConcern, shows that students of color in inte-grated schools are more likely to graduatefrom high school, go on to college, and gradu-ate from college than their segregated peers.There are also benefits for all students, includ-ing white suburban students, such as improvedcross-racial understanding and communicationskills and a reduction in racial prejudice andbias, as well as improvements in critical think-ing skills associated with exposure to a broadercross section of student backgrounds.

In addition to the long term benefits of diver-sity for students and society, there is recent ev-idence that Hartford students participating inProject Choice are doing better on standard-ized achievement tests. More than half of Proj-ect Choice students are performing at or aboveproficiency on state standardized tests in bothmathematics and reading, rates that are higherthan their Hartford Public School peers andblack and Latino students statewide. This isperhaps not surprising, in that many of thesesuburban schools are high achieving, resource-rich environments with relatively small classsize and low percentages of low-income stu-dents – which makes it more likely that ade-quate teaching resources can be devoted toeach student’s needs. These recent achieve-ment results are consistent with achievementstudies of Hartford students in the Project Con-cern program in the 1960s and 70s.

The youngest Project Choice students alsoshow impressive academic gains. In the “EarlyBeginnings” program, an interdistrict kinder-garten program (offering half day kindergartenalong with a full day enrichment option in se-lected suburban districts), Hartford studentshad large gains in language acquisition.

In trying to ascertain the reasons for the slowgrowth in the Project Choice program, we in-terviewed nearly fifty participants and ob-servers in the program and reviewed the rolesand responsibilities of the key “stakeholders”in the Project Choice program, including theState of Connecticut, the Capitol Region Edu-cation Council (CREC), the Sheff plaintiffs,the state courts, the suburban school districts,and Hartford families participating in the pro-gram. While each of these entities has an im-portant role, our primary conclusion is thatresponsibility for the program is too diffuse –there is no central “champion” for the program.

The State of Connecticut: One conclusionwe reached, as have others, is that the State ofConnecticut – through its Commissioner andDepartment of Education – must play a leadrole as the champion for expansion and pri-mary implementer of Project Choice. Thestate can no longer play a passive role in theChoice program if this program is to signifi-cantly expand. It must become an active part-ner with CREC and the local districts, but italso must lead, fund, monitor, and enforceChoice program obligations. Their obligationsinclude:

Adequate per pupil funding for subur-ban districts: The recent increase in perpupil reimbursement to suburban districtswill help in expanding the Choice pro-gram, but this is still far from adequate.Fair reimbursement for Hartford studentswill enable suburban districts to fund the

teacher training, district coordinators andother program enhancements that are nec-essary to support Project Choice studentsin the district and possibly reduce studentattrition.

Transportation funding: The recent in-crease in Project Choice transportationfunding from $2100 per student to $3250per student is very helpful, but will notnecessarily be adequate to reduce long busrides until the efficiency of bus routes isincreased by larger district enrollments inthe program. Until enrollment reachesthis point, funding should be maintainedat an adequate level to ensure that no stu-dents have longer than a one-hour trip toschool, and that all students have access toafter-school athletics and other extracur-ricular activities.

CREC program support funding: Evenif the state were to more fairly compensatethe suburban districts, the state shouldcontinue to fund and further expand theinnovative and essential support staff andprograms that CREC provides: interven-tion specialists to assist students with thetransition to suburban schools; teachertraining programs for suburban teachers;and summer and weekend academic sup-port activities for Project Choice students.

Marketing and parent education: Al-though demand for seats currently out-strips supply, the publicity and marketingof the Choice program has been over-looked. This is a function that the stateshould lead. It is important that there be atwelve-month plan for continuous infor-mation dissemination about the programto all Hartford schoolchildren and theirfamilies. There should be a particular em-phasis to market the program to families

with young children (where suburbanavailability is greatest) and in the Latinocommunity. The parent information cen-ters being proposed to consolidate magnetschool fairs, application materials, andother information on magnet school pro-grams should also include full informationon the Choice program.

Expand the “Early Beginnings” pro-gram: The proven results of this full dayintegrated kindergarten program shouldattract both Hartford parents as well assuburban districts looking to expand Proj-ect Choice in the lower grades. The stateshould also look to expand the New Be-ginnings concept to its statewide preschoolinitiatives, to help foster integrated experi-ences for children in pre-kindergarten.State and suburban officials should recog-nize, however, that the “Early Beginnings”program will not alone be a panacea, assome parents are reluctant to send kinder-garten-age children to school on a bus.

A Project Choice Advisory Committee:A standing advisory committee to theCommissioner and State Board of Educa-tion should be set up, including all stake-holders in Project Choice, to ensure that avariety of views are received and consid-ered by the state and problems and pro-gram needs are dealt with quickly.

Expectations of suburban districts:Only the state is in a position to set expec-tations for each district’s participation inthe Choice program. The State Depart-ment of Education has an important roleto play in setting ambitious but fair annualrequirements for each town to significantlyexpand overall regional participation in theProject Choice program.

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4 Improving and Expanding Hartford‘s Project Choice Program

Capitol Region Education Council(CREC): CREC was viewed by many peoplewe interviewed as a highly competent adminis-trator of the program. However, as a stategrantee, they are not in a position to providethe strong leadership and advocacy that theprogram needs on the state level. Greater ef-forts should be devoted to publicity and mar-keting of the program, as discussed above, andCREC should take additional steps to engageparents and alumni of the program to developa voice in the region in support of the Choiceprogram – including working directly with theSheff Movement coalition on parent outreachand engagement.

The Sheff plaintiffs and the state courts:The Sheff plaintiffs can hardly be faulted forthe slow growth of the Choice program – theyhave returned to the trial court three separatetimes since 1996 to argue that magnet andchoice programs are growing too slowly. Thestate court system, however, has not beenquick to support the Connecticut SupremeCourt’s mandate. As the implementation of theruling goes forward, the state courts need torecognize their essential role as part of the im-plementation process.

The suburban school districts: The majorbarrier to growth of the Choice program is thefailure of suburban districts to offer a largernumber of seats to Hartford children. SomeHartford-area districts barely participate in theprogram, and even the districts with thelargest participation rates are far below the lev-els of participation in other city-suburban pro-grams across the country. This is not an issueof capacity – most districts have ample space tosubstantially increase participation in the pro-gram, and only a few districts have a largeenough resident minority school population tobe exempt from required participation. The

key barriers to greater suburban participationin the Choice program are inadequate per-stu-dent funding levels and the lack of clear guid-ance from the state as to the number of Choicestudents each district is expected to enroll.Stronger per-student funding would create in-centives for suburban participation, and wouldeliminate the financial objections of some localresidents. Clear fair share participation targetsfrom the state would eliminate the notion thatsuburban participation is “optional” and woulddefuse undercurrents of concern that a town isdoing more than its fair share, or taking “toomany” Hartford students.

Even without waiting for a strong mandateand enhanced funding from the state, there areadditional steps suburban districts can andshould take to enhance the program. First, andmost obviously, towns should offer the maxi-mum number of seats available for ProjectChoice students, without waiting for state di-rection. Nearby districts with particularly lowrates of participation should take the lead inthis process, and local school board membersand other political leaders should set a positivetown for participation in the program. In addi-tion, increasing diversity of suburban teachingstaff is critical (districts should consider imple-menting city-suburban teacher transfer pro-grams where towns have difficulty attractingteaching candidates of color), as are focusedefforts to engage city parents in school-basedactivities, including the development of “hostfamily” programs. On-going teacher develop-ment programs (like the Hartford toursCREC sponsored this summer) can increasesensitivity of suburban staff to the issues facedby Choice students. St. Louis and Boston bothhave useful models of professional develop-ment and student support for suburban townsto consider; perhaps local universities can col-laborate on these important projects.

Hartford families participating in the pro-gram: Project Choice would not exist withoutthe Hartford families and students who partici-pate in Project Choice despite the long hoursof transportation, and going to a distant schoolwhere they may know few others—sacrificesthat are often overlooked. Additional supportfor Hartford parents to stay connected to theirchildren’s schools may be needed, especiallywhere transportation barriers, distance, andwork schedules may interfere. Hartford parentsin the Choice program are also in a good posi-

tion to represent and advocate for the Choiceprogram in suburbs and on the state level. Allof the participants in the Project Choice pro-gram, including CREC, need to work to helpgive these families a voice so that they too canparticipate in the implementation of the pro-gram and the education of their children. Thisorganizing work has been begun by the SheffMovement coalition (which sponsored this re-port), but it will require the support of all theother entities engaged in Project Choice.

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6 Improving and Expanding Hartford‘s Project Choice Program

Thanks to Mary Pettigrew of ampersand graphic design for assistance with the design and layout of this report, and to James Baker (James Baker Design, Hartford) for the Project Choice Campaign logo.