On May 7, 2024, the General Assembly passed H.B. 5523, a budget stabilization bill that appropriates funds for fiscal year 2025 and makes a number of different policy changes to K-12 education and other areas. Along with maintaining the $150 million in additional funding for K-12 education in FY 2025 that was allotted as part of the state budget passed last year, the bill overhauls how Connecticut distributes state education funding to school districts.
This fact sheet includes key stats and figures about Connecticut's over 54,000 multilingual learners, as well as information about funding for bilingual education programs.
This collection of policy briefs covers Connecticut's multilingual learner population, their education, current challenges, and opportunities to improve education programs and services for multilingual learner students and their families.
Concerns and Recommendations for Connecticut Multilingual Learner Education
Connecticut's Multilingual Learners
Multilingual Learners and Academic Performance
Funding for Connecticut's Multilingual Learners
Multilingual Learner Education Comparisons
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This policy briefing details the current mismatch between student learning needs and per-student spending in Connecticut’s local and regional public school districts, and examines some of the factors that contribute to this mismatch.
The Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula uses several components to calculate town ECS grants, including student counts and town wealth data. This model shows how each town's variables for the ECS formula have changed over the past five years.
District Reference Groups (DRGs) are a classification system that groups local and regional public school districts together based on the similar socioeconomic characteristics and status of their students. Developed by the Connecticut State Department of Education, the DRGs have not been officially updated since they were first released in 2006. Although not for official use, the School and State Finance Project has replicated the DRGs using updated data and the same methodology and variables as the original DRGs.