Contributor
Alex Johnston, CEO, ConnCAN
Related Link:
http://www.conncan.org
Biography provided by participant
Alex Johnston is Chief Executive Officer of the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN). As ConnCAN's first employee, Johnston launched what is now regarded as one of the nation's leading state-level education reform organizations. In the five years since, he has led ConnCAN's effort to advocate for state policies that will ensure every Connecticut child has access to a great public school. In 2009 ConnCAN, achieved two major legislative victories through its 'Mind the Gaps' campaign: overhauling the state's teacher certification rules and opening up stores of longitudinal student achievement data to the public.
Johnston previously served as director of operations at the New Haven Housing Authority, working as a member of the management team tasked with turning the agency around from the brink of receivership. A graduate of Harvard University, he studied at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship and received a D.Phil. in politics from Oxford's Lincoln College, where he studied the impact of government funding on non-profit service providers. Johnston lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Caroline and their dog Nelson.
Recent Responses
October 19, 2009 01:49 PM
I do believe that it makes sense for the Department to seek legislative relief from the eligibility requirement that districts receiving I3 funds make AYP for the two years prior to their application, but not because I support removing AYP requirements themselves, as do some others weighing in here. In fact, maintaining a high bar on the definition of AYP will be a very important tool for ensuring that districts and state education agencies continue to be intensively focused on the hard work of school and district turnaround that is critical to closing the nation’s achievement gap. But much as…
Read moreSeptember 22, 2009 03:23 PM
When it comes to tackling America’s dropout crisis, the first thing we need is to actually recognize that we have a crisis. Then we need to recognize that this crisis is actually one that schools themselves have the power to solve. And that’s where a lot of Americans, educators and citizens alike, simply aren’t on board. Instead, many of us, drawing on personal experiences in which extensive parental support has been an essential component in our own success, continue to believe that it is in fact an essential condition for all children’s success. This persistent belief flies in the face of all the…
Read moreSeptember 2, 2009 05:48 PM
Bill Jackson is absolutely right that one key ingredient for successfully engaging the lowest performing schools in the country is public will. As many district leaders have found out to their chagrin over the years, parents and community leaders sometimes mobilize to defend even the lowest performing schools in their midst—and as I’ve witnessed myself in Connecticut’s cities, parents in some of the lowest achieving schools often paradoxically grade their own child’s school at the top of the scale even while panning a district’s performance overall. This is one set of real challenges that need to be overcome in order to…
Read moreSeptember 2, 2009 05:47 PM
Bill Jackson is absolutely right that one key ingredient for successfully engaging the lowest performing schools in the country is public will. As many district leaders have found out to their chagrin over the years, parents and community leaders sometimes mobilize to defend even the lowest performing schools in their midst—and as I’ve witnessed myself in Connecticut’s cities, parents in some of the lowest achieving schools often paradoxically grade their own child’s school at the top of the scale even while panning a district’s performance overall. This is one set of real challenges that need to be overcome in order to…
Read moreAugust 18, 2009 09:53 AM
Structuring this as a challenge fund is definitely the right way to go—and even more so because the proposal has two explicit tiers of competition. One set of awards for states that are already blazing a trail, and a second set of awards for lagging states that are given a clear pathway for making themselves competitive for funding by stepping up with a sound plan. The challenge approach is important precisely because the politics of pre-K education at the state level is complicated by the powerful interests of existing providers in both the private and public sector both of which tend…
Read moreOctober 15, 2009 06:55 PM
I do believe that it makes sense for the Department to seek legislative relief from the eligibility requirement that districts receiving I3 funds make AYP for the two years prior to their application, but not because I support removing AYP requirements themselves, as do some others weighing in here. In fact, maintaining a high bar on the definition of AYP will be a very important tool for ensuring that districts and state education agencies continue to be intensively focused on the hard work of school and district turnaround that is critical to closing the nation’s achievement gap. But as much…
Read more
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