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Connecticut’s public schools just got another bad report card.
Defending Education’s September 2026 Rankings on Integrity in State Education (RISE) put the state 43rd out of 51, tied with Delaware. Tennessee finished first. The District of Columbia was last. Except for New Hampshire, New England was otherwise clustered at the bottom of the rankings.
The ranking covers five areas: gender and sexuality policy, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” content, parental rights, teacher policies, and foreign influence. Connecticut did not fail every category. It just failed the one parents have been fighting about for years, and it did not do much better on the rest.
A zero on gender and sexuality
On gender and sexuality policy, Connecticut scored 0 out of 40. Rank: 45th, tied with California, Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, and Washington.
The report scored four things. Connecticut got nothing on any of them.
The state has an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum requirement, rather than a restriction or even silence. It does not ban males from girls’ sports. Its nondiscrimination law covers gender identity and expression. Its anti-bullying law does too.
States at the top of this section — Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and others — scored 88 percent, mostly by keeping gender ideology out of curricula, keeping boys out of girls’ locker rooms, and declining to write gender identity into statewide discrimination and bullying statutes. Connecticut did the opposite on every single line.
DEI: goals, data, and retention money
The DEI section was only marginally better. Connecticut scored 42 percent and ranked 39th.
The report gives Connecticut a 10 for restorative practices, however the score should actually be 0. That's because the state included a restorative justice requirement beginning in 2025 via Connecticut General Statutes (C.G.S.) Sec. 10-Sec. 10-222jj. The Centinal contacted Defending Ed regarding the oversight.
"There is a need for more robust data in some areas of the rankings. For example, the last best report on restorative justice in the states is from 2021. While most of the data is still accurate, we will work with our partners in education reform to create a more robust dataset in the future, but these areas are just too important to leave out of the rankings entirely," a spokesperson said.
Connecticut also scored a 10 on antisemitism policy, meaning the group credited the state with laws or initiatives protecting Jewish communities, teaching the Jewish experience, or prioritizing efforts against antisemitism.
Everything else went the other way. The state requires discipline records to be reported by race. It sets public teacher-diversity goals and collects the data to match. It funds teacher-retention programs with a specific focus on increasing workforce “diversity.” Anti-DEI legislation has been introduced, the report says, but not enacted as of 2024 — a 5, not a 10.
Iowa, Missouri, and West Virginia led this section at 92 percent. Connecticut’s mix is the familiar one: symbolic credit on antisemitism, structural policy pointed at race and identity everywhere else.
Parents are not in the loop
Parental rights: 35 percent, 24th.
The score that really matters is a zero on disclosure of a student’s transgender status. Defending Education averaged district practice and state law. Connecticut has no state law requiring schools to tell parents if a child is using a different name, pronouns, or gender identity at school. The group also found districts with policies that allow staff to keep that information from parents.
Sex-education transparency scored a 7 out of 10, which is how the state avoided the absolute bottom of this section. North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia led at 85 percent, driven by disclosure rules and limits on gender content in sex education. Connecticut’s parents still do not have a statewide right to be told when a school socially transitions their child.
Unions yes, E-Verify no
Teacher policy: 31 percent, 30th.
Connecticut does not have a right-to-work law. Collective bargaining for K–12 teachers is permitted. E-Verify is voluntary, not required. The one point in the state’s favor is that public sector striking is illegal, worth 10 points in the report’s scoring.
Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina scored 100 percent in this section: E-Verify, right-to-work, no public-sector strikes, and collective bargaining prohibited or sharply limited. Connecticut protected the classroom from walkouts and left the rest of the structure to the unions.
No state policy on Chinese government influence
Foreign influence was a zero. Rank 12, which sounds better than it is. Only a handful of states scored any points at all. Alabama, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas have enforceable limits on Confucius Institutes or other Chinese government education funding. Iowa, Louisiana, Utah, and Wisconsin have narrower restrictions. Connecticut, like most states, has no relevant statewide policy. The report scored that as nothing.
The pattern
None of this will surprise parents who have sat through a Connecticut board of education meeting. The state mandates inclusive gender curriculum, does not separate sports by sex, writes gender identity into discrimination and bullying law, does not require schools to tell parents about a social transition, sets teacher-diversity targets, and has no statewide guardrail on Chinese government money in education.
Defending Education’s index is explicit about what it is measuring: whether state government is keeping gender ideology, race essentialism, union leverage, and foreign funding out of public schools.
Tennessee is showing one way to run a public system. Hartford is showing another.
You can download the full report here:
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