In violation of state lobbying laws, corporate education reform group behind Malloy’s disastrous special education funding proposal
Among the many bad budget recommendations included in Governor Dannel Malloy state spending plan is a proposal that would leave Connecticut’s cities and towns without the resources they need to properly fund mandated programs for students who require special education services.
Now, according to documents acquired through a Freedom of Information request, Malloy’s absurd proposal which undermines Connecticut’s special education program was actually developed by a corporate education reform group, despite the fact that the group reported that it did not engage in any administrative lobbying activities.
The entity in question is an off-shoot of the Connecticut Council on Education Reform (CCER), a corporate funded lobbying group that has been trying to divert scarce public resources to Connecticut’s charter schools, while lobbying on behalf of Malloy’s massive Common Core SBAC standardized testing debacle and his other corporate education reforms.
Last year, staff from CCER formed The Connecticut School Finance Project.
Following Governor Malloy’s recent proposal to create a Connecticut Special Education Cost Cooperative, a new bureaucratic structure designed to inappropriately control special education funding and services, The Connecticut School Finance Project prepared an “independent analysis examining these proposed changes and how they align with six key principles and practices all special education finance systems should follow.”
However, neither the Governor nor the lobby group revealed that the proposal was actually developed by the Connecticut School Finance Project after months of close communication with the Malloy administration and their “independent analysis” was of a plan they actually wrote.
Worse, in an outright lie and in apparent violation of state law, the Connecticut School Finance Project reported to the State Ethics In violation of state lobbying laws, corporate education reform group behind Malloy’s disastrous special education funding proposal - Wait What?:
