The disconnect helps explain the struggles of public schools in Windham, a district in rural eastern Connecticut that ranks near the bottom in a state known better for high-performing schools in the tony suburbs of New York City. Last year, the state took the unprecedented step of intervening here to address budget problems, falling test scores and soaring dropout rates.
But the frustrations of the Latino families that Lozada encounters are hardly unique to this blue-collar former mill town: Hispanic achievement gaps have been found in every school district where the data is available in Connecticut, a corner of New England that critics say has been slow to adapt to its largest and fastest-growing minority population.
