Bridgeport, Connecticut is in many ways a typical mid-sized east coast city, but its public schools are failing its poorest students at higher rates than anywhere else in the country, even as its wealthiest succeed.

In an effort to close the gap between its highest and lowest achieving students, the city adopted a small but ambitious new Head Start program aimed at kindergarten students and their teachers in fall 2006 called the Total Learning Initiative. The program, which is a hands-on, arts-intensive training regimen administered by the Total Learning Institute (TLI), launched with $500,000 of initial funding.

“It’s expensive, but it’s incredibly effective,” noted TLI trainer Patricia Bogart at the World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, where she and president Susan Snyder were present to receive an innovation prize. She said that after three years, test scores in the schools that have implemented the program are “soaring.”

Total Learning Initiative trainer Patricia Bogart said the key to her program's success has been reaching the youngest students first.

Its cost may well raise some eyebrows, especially since only a few students have benefited so far. Just one kindergarten classroom in one school implemented the program in its first year. State lawmakers, impressed with early results, allocated $1.2 million per year for the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 school years to expand the TLI program to 16 classrooms in eight schools in Bridgeport, according to a 2007 article in The Connecticut Post. Other Head Start programs statewide, by contrast, received a total of $1 million in new funding between them.

Unlike many other teacher training systems, which are conducted outside of the school day, the Total Learning Initiative trainers work almost every day with teachers in their classes, suggesting new approaches and working directly with the students. “We’re right there in the trenches,” said Bogart. “After we’ve worked with a teacher, day-in and day-out for a year, they’ve changed the way they teach.”

The program focuses on early childhood development, starting with kindergarten students in its first year, and expanding to first and second grades in the years following. “The key is reaching them as early as possible,” said Bogart, who noted that it is much more difficult to close an achievement gap than to prevent one from forming.

Bogart said she hopes the innovation prize will help bring national, even global attention to the program, which currently employs 23 trainers and operates only in schools around Bridgeport.