There’s a lot to like about our newly adopted state of Connecticut. The people are uncommonly friendly — no New England standoffishness that I’ve noticed — and the landscape is especially gorgeous, from the hills of the northwest to the coastal towns. It’s a smart state, and there seem to be a lot of good things happening all over.

But there also some serious issues in Connecticut. One certainly has to do with an state economy has has all the evidence of poorly thought management and planning. I don’t know enough yet to understand where the blame for that properly rests.

Another has been made abundantly and distressingly clear with a ruling on the state’s education structure by State Superior Court judge Thomas Moukawsher last week. The judge found Connecticut has created a highly unbalanced system of public schools which — not the judge’s words, but mine — resemble in many ways what happened with segregated schools in the South for so many terrible years. The judge found there has been a systematic effort to increase not just funding but educational services of all kinds for students in the wealthy areas of the state at the expense of those in less well off school districts. The rich have gotten rich, and the poor have gotten poorer. that’s a disgrace.

The judge ruled that the lawmakers were “not committed to a principled, constitutional system” that distributed aid based on need and on sound educational practices. Because of that. the state’s testing systems are meaningless, and the judge blasted the state for “imposing token statewide standard” that are unrelated to student learning and achievement.

This sounds more like a ruling in Mississippi than Connecticut, doesn’t it? And there’s more: the judge’s words are a severe chastisement for the way the state has overseen its public education in the last decade. There is no excuse for that, and this legislature has got to begin remedying this crisis. As a newcomer, I certainly am not familiar enough with the system to specify the blame other than the obvious legislature and governor. I hope both will take a hard look at this ruling and begin a serious discussion over how to make necessary changes.

At this moment, I don’t know whether it’s a Republican or Democratic “issue,” but I can’t see that it matters unless there is no effort to revise the existing educational system. Sadly, the only response I’ve seen from any legislator is a comment from a Democratic state senator who said he felt the ruling “overstated” the problem. Unfortunately too few people in power seemed to recognize the state had any problem at all until this ruling.