Schools

South Windsor Schools to Receive State Grant for Technology

Funding part of $24 million grant to prepare for coming computerized testing.

Gov. Dannel Malloy announced plans to fund over $24 million in grant requests to bring more computers into classrooms and increase Internet bandwidth in preparation for 2014, when all Connecticut students will take new standardized tests online. 

The tests, called Smarter Balanced Assessment, accompany the coming switch to the Common Core Standards.

The money will go to districts based on funding requests and allocated on a sliding scale determined by town wealth.

Find out what's happening in South Windsorwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

South Windsor will receive $82,331, according to the release. 

“I believe in the Common Core Standards and do not want to impose unfunded costs on municipalities for technology-related expenditures necessary to implement these standards, which is why we secured additional funding in response to districts’ needs and concerns,” Malloy said in a release.

Find out what's happening in South Windsorwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In 2014-15, every public school district will administer the Smarter Balanced Assessment System and the state will sunset the administration of the math and English language arts CMT and CAPT tests. Districts will, however, continue to administer the science CMT and CAPT assessments.

Announced at the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) and the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) convention today in Groton, the Governor’s intention to fund all requests for technology assistance was greeted as welcome news by many in the education community.

“In order to ensure a level playing field for our students, we have to make sure our districts are equipped with all the tools necessary to succeed, which necessarily entails putting more computers into our classrooms,” said Connecticut Association of Schools Executive Director Karissa Niehoff.

Awards must be used for the purposes of purchasing new computing devices, inter-school bandwidth, or inter-district bandwidth and are determined in accordance with a town wealth measure based on a 20 percent-80 percent sliding scale.


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