Wilton's State Rep gets a ‘Tip of the Cap’ for Education Advocacy

Gail Lavielle (R-143), the state representative of Wilton and Norwalk, recently received the ‘Tip of the Cap’ award from the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN, an organization that advocates closing the wide achievement gap in Connecticut schools.  

The “Tip of the Cap” award started last year and highlights state legislators who have shown an upstanding degree of advocacy for public education reform within their state legislature. Last year, 2010 State Representative of Wilton Toni Boucher won the award.

This year, Lavielle is one of five legislators celebrated with a “Tip of the Cap.”

“One thing that stood out with Gail was that, it was her first time in office and she got on the education committee right away and spoke out. She was instrumental in adding amendments to several education bills, including a call for strengthening teacher evaluations,” said ConnCAN CEO Alex Johnston.

The award, which is commemorated by a plaque, is “a marker of their commitment” to the issue of education reform, said Johnston.

“ConnCAN does some fine work for the state. It’s really an honor, quite an honor,” said Lavielle said.

Her ideas for public education reform

Lavielle told Patch that diving into her new position as state rep lead to a “very quick immersion” into the education system.

“Connecticut has the largest achievement gap [in the country]. The gap is so big, and it’s getting worse,” she said.

Lavielle said that public schools could learn well from charter schools, which act as laboratories that can sometimes produce some excellent results, and even “outpacing over schools in the state in academics.”

One bill which Lavielle championed for was keeping a percentage of charter school teachers employed without having to be state-certified, and ultimately that bill passed. She has also called for a standardized regional evaluation form which would ideally be used as a model for obtaining teacher evaluations in public schools.

“Something that says, ‘this teacher did a good job because of this, or this teacher needs to improve this,’” she explained.

“What do you do if someone [a teacher] is performing poorly? Under the current system, there’s nothing you can do.”

Lavielle said that firing someone would be a last result, and that a new system would ideally improve teacher performance through coaching methods; additionally, the system should also protect public school teachers as well.

“How do you improve the people out there? It’s not just ‘stay or go,’” said Lavielle.

“It’s important [for parents] to maintain a choice in where to send their kids—public, magnet, charter schools…[but] the current school funding system isn’t structured to follow the student.”

Lavielle explained that if one school received X amount of dollars because they had Y amount of students, if one of those students left that year for another school, that school would still have X amount of dollars even though the school’s enrollment had decreased.

“There should be accountability of school administrators” concerning fiscal matters, said Lavielle.

And those charter schools? Lavielle gave this example:

“I visited [a charter school] recently and the students were celebrated when they did well, like athletes.” She said this school had a dress code, and students dressed in Polo shirts in a uniform color, however, those with sterling attendance records were awarded with navy blue polo shirts. Lavielle believes that this kind of positive reinforcement in academics pushed these students to be some of the top-performing academic students in the state.

“Education is one of the few competitive edges [Connecticut has] got,” she said.

“You need a quality education or you’re sinking yourself.” 

updated 1:00 pm for mispelling of ConCAN. Previous versions of this article spelled it as ConCAP, which was incorrect.