I-Team In-Depth

Progress On School Arrests, But Problems Remain, Report Shows

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Arrests in Connecticut schools dropped 13.5 percent from 2008 to 2011, but hundreds of the arrests made in 2011 were for minor policy violations such as throwing erasers, shouting, or leaving class without permission, a new report says. The report by Connecticut Voices for Children – the first comprehensive study of its kind in the state – also found significant racial disparities in arrest rates: Black students were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested than white students, and Hispanic students were 3.2 times more likely. “The overall number of arrests have declined, which is an encouraging trend,” said Sarah Esty, the report’s author and a former policy fellow of Voices for Children. “However, there remains a great deal of work to be done in terms of students being arrested for behaviors that likely could have been handled without police involvement . .

Work by High School Campers

New Haven’s Graduation Rate Improves, Sound And Co-Op Are Tops

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When it comes to graduation rates in New Haven – the Cooperative High School and the Sound School are tops – with graduation rates over 90 percent in 2012, according to data provided by the New Haven Public Schools. Overall the city’s high school graduation rate increased six percentage points to 70.5 percent in 2012, the data shows. And at the same time the dropout rate fell by 4.2 percentage points to 21 percent, according to the data. The graduation rate at Wilbur Cross High School improved the most by 10 percentage points in just one year from 60 percent to 70 percent.   For the past 5 years graduation rates at the Sound School have remained steady — hovering around 90 percent each year.