If you have a question or concern about special education law, school administration, federal standards, or the overall rights of a student, please feel free to call the expert education law attorneys at Maya Murphy, P.C. in Westport today at (203) 221-3100 .

In a broad and lucid indictment of the funding system for education in Connecticut, a state Superior Court judge had the wisdom and courage to call it what it has become: befuddled, misdirected and irrational.

In doing so, Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher laid bare one of the biggest challenges the state faces: providing a solid education to all of its students, especially its poorest. And he insisted that it could be accomplished.

Now the pressure is on the legislature to make it happen.

In his ruling in the 11-year-old case, the judge gave the General Assembly six months to come up with a completely new method of funding schools, saying, "Beyond a reasonable doubt, Connecticut is defaulting on its constitutional duty to provide adequate public school opportunities because it has no rational, substantial and verifiable plan to distribute money for education aid and school construction."

It's about time. The old education cost-sharing grants were built on outdated and bizarre formulas and repeatedly revised by political whims, and they left poor districts badly underfunded.

The ruling lit into the unbalanced funding of rich and poor districts, referring specifically to seemingly arbitrary changes in the current state budget: "During the recent budget crisis, this left rich schools robbing millions of dollars from poor schools," Mr. Moukawsher wrote. He cited $5.3 million in cuts in education aid to the state's poorest districts.

"The system cannot work unless the state sticks to an honest formula that delivers state aid according to local need," he wrote. "The achievement gap between the rich and poor in Connecticut is not just because our rich do so well. If it were, our poor would consistently outpace the poor in poorer states. But they don't."

Legislators got a scolding that they deserved. "An approach that allows rich towns to raid money desperately needed by poor towns makes a mockery of the state's constitutional duty to provide adequate educational opportunities to all students," Mr. Moukawsher wrote.

Other Broken Parts

The decision properly went beyond funding issues and highlighted other broken parts of the system.

Referring to the state's teacher evaluation system as "little more than cotton candy in a rainstorm," Mr. Moukawsher finally addressed the opaque and meaningless ratings that only serve to hide poor teachers from the scrutiny they require.

"State standards are leaving teachers with uselessly perfect evaluations and pay that follows only seniority and degrees instead of reflecting need and good teaching," the judge wrote. The teacher evaluation system "has left virtually every teacher in the state — 98 percent — being marked as proficient or even exemplary while nothing in the system and no one in the case indicated these results are useful or accurate."

He added: "These empty guidelines mean good teachers can't be recognized and bad teachers reformed or removed."

Everyone who has been paying attention knows that to be true. Now legislators will be forced to admit it and address it.

The ruling pointed to a variety of other serious problems — that graduates of urban school districts are often prepared for neither "college nor career," that funding for special education is "irrational" and that vast spending on construction is unnecessary.

"Even with the government spending $1.8 billion every year on special education in Connecticut, the state requires little or nothing of districts in how they go about spending it," he wrote. And the system "spends money on school construction without rhyme or reason. The state devotes $1 billion to school construction every year when the rest of its basic education aid totals roughly $2 billion."

Legislators must rise to the occasion. They have an unprecedented opportunity to create a simple but effective funding principle, fair and free from political fiddling. They must resist the temptation to think only of their own constituents and think instead of Connecticut as one community, where cities and their rich suburban neighbors are interdependent.

It's long past time for a new deal.

If you have a child with a disability and have questions about special education law, please contact Joseph C. Maya, Esq., at 203-221-3100, or at JMaya@mayalaw.com, to schedule a free consultation.

Source- http://www.courant.com/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-education-funding-ruling-0908-20160907-story.html