Chris Powell: How about basic literacy?

In a high school in the ‘50’s, when literacy was higher.

The Brick School House in Coventry, Conn., was built in 1825 and closed in 1953. It is now a local museum and the only one-room school open to the public in Connecticut

— Photo by Topshelver

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut state legislators are never more oblivious than when they propose requirements for schools to teach certain subjects. A few months ago the subject to be required was the history of the Indian tribes that inhabited the state centuries ago. Now the subject to be required is "financial literacy."

The Indian history requirement was stupid pandering to the owners of Connecticut's two casinos. For as the latest report from the National Assessment of Education Progress showed, knowledge of U.S. history among the country's eighth-graders has sunk to the lowest point since NAEP tests began, in 1994. The history of the country's Indian tribes is a mere subset of U.S. history generally, worth knowing only when the basics are mastered.

The Indian history requirement was also stupid pandering for the reason that the financial literacy requirement is simply stupid: Most students in Connecticut are hardly literate at all, never mastering basic English and math. Two weeks ago it was reported that only about a third of Bridgeport's students perform at grade level in English and only about a fifth in math. Proficiency is better in more prosperous areas but still mediocre on the whole for the state.

So why should schools pretend to teach advanced subjects when they fail with the basics?

It's because legislators and governors long have wanted to distract from the catastrophe of public education, for which they are responsible, as with state government's policy of social promotion. Legislators and governors have acted as if noisily expanding school curriculums automatically conveys learning when it conveys nothing but publicity for politicians.

Students and parents increasingly recognize the fraud, as signified by the high rates of chronic student absenteeism in schools, not just in poor cities but lately in middle-class suburbs as well. Attending school hardly seems necessary when everyone knows that, far from being penalized for not showing up, students will be promoted from grade to grade and given high-school diplomas without regard to learning.

One state legislator, Sen. Douglas McCrory, D.-Hartford, began to pick up on this issue last month at a meeting of the legislature's Education Committee. In debate on a budget amendment that would have authorized a charter school in Danbury, McCrory said the much-anticipated growth of the workforce at submarine builder Electric Boat in Groton will mean nothing to the children who are being graduated ignorant of basic skills. They won't qualify for serious jobs.

The failure with so many students in Connecticut schools is an old scandal. In his decision in the last of the futile school-financing lawsuits seven years ago, Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher detailed the horrifying gaps in student proficiency across the state, especially in the cities, citing the graduation of the functionally illiterate.

The judge added that Connecticut's teacher-evaluation system is practically useless. He could have noted that it is useless in part because, unlike the evaluation system for other government employees in the state, the teacher-evaluation system is, at the insistence of teacher unions, entirely secret.

But the remedy Senator McCrory supported in debate on the state budget -- more charter schools -- is not so promising. For while charter schools let better-motivated students escape “failing” schools, schools fail mainly because the parents of their students do, and by removing better students, charter schools make neighborhood schools worse, depriving them of their good examples.

Judge Moukawsher's remedy in the school-financing case -- the old one of spending more on "failing" schools -- similarly fails, since Connecticut has been spending steadily more in the name of education for 45 years without improving student performance, just school-employee compensation.

That is, public education in Connecticut is collapsing not because of a lack of financing but because of a lack of parenting. Indeed, the more that Connecticut has spent in the name of education, the worse education results have been. More has been spent only to gain political results, and elected officials remain OK with that.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester. (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)