Can A Private Firm and Federal Funds Fix Harding High?

  
School targeted by Obama administration school improvement grant






  

    

      
By Robert Frahm

      
Published: Feb 14, 2011

    

    

                   
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Principal Kevin Walston tries to resolve a dispute between two students and a teacher
  Photo:Robert Frahm, Connecticut Mirror

            
          
    

          

      

	 



	BRIDGEPORT--Long before lunch hour begins, the cafeteria at Harding High School fills with students sitting idly around tables. Some chat on cell phones. Others slump in chairs. Not a book in sight.



	Most are chronic class-skippers, rounded up by hallway monitors working for a private New York City-based consulting firm charged with trying to turn around one of Connecticut's worst high schools.



	Whether a private company can do what local officials have failed to do is uncertain, but the experiment to rescue Harding - backed by $2.2 million in federal stimulus money - will be watched closely by officials from Hartford to Washington, D.C.



	Harding--plagued by high dropout rates, disciplinary problems and academic failure--is one of 14 struggling Connecticut schools to receive U.S. Department of Education School Improvement Grants.



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          Education Investigation        

        
                

          

	 



	Overview: Has the education stimulus 'moon shot' hit its target? 



	In the two years since Congress made the federal government's largest one-time investment in public schools, change has rippled through classrooms from coast to coast. Tennessee and Delaware have revamped their laws to promote the growth of charter schools. Massachusetts and Maryland have launched efforts to tie teacher evaluations to student performance. Reflecting similar moves elsewhere, a persistently failing high school in Oregon is investing a record amount in additional training for teachers.



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		It's had such a long history of failure that it doesn't believe in itself



        
-Rudy Crew, Global Partnership Schools

      

          
      

                              
      

         
             
                    

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