March 4, 2013 – RI Future

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013

Gist On Public Education Disparity In Rhode Island

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gist in eg — Education Commissioner Deborah Gist at Archie R. Cole Middle School in East Greenwich.

I went to an East Greenwich school this morning to interview state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist about the education disparity between the affluent suburbs in Rhode Island and the poorer inner cities. While I was waiting for her a 7th grade student came into the office to report finding a diamond.

This pretty much sums up public education in Rhode Island. In Central Falls, seven of ten students are in danger of not graduating. In East Greenwich, students literally find precious gems on the floor.

East Greenwich and Barrington offer better public education than Central Falls, Woonsocket, Providence and Pawtucket not because they have better students or better teachers or better test scores. It’s because they have more money.

It’s true that the state spends more on the average student from impoverished school districts than it does on the affluent ones, but even still it’s very hard to argue that kids in East Greenwich aren’t getting a much better education than kids from Central Falls are. In this clip, Gist admits that by her own metrics, EG students do get a better education than Central Falls students.

In fact, if resources were doled out by a school’s need rather than the public sector’s willingness to pay, students in Central Falls would get way more tax dollars than would students in East Greenwich. But we only use those metrics to decide who fails, not where to apply our resources. The state is implementing a new funding formula that will help, but it is not enough and it is being phased in very slowly to mitigate the hit to taxpayers.

In the meantime, the haves are getting a good public education in Rhode Island while the have-nots are not. The question is not whether we are doing more for the have-nots, the question is are we doing enough.

This is the single most important issue in local public education. Not whether we use test scores or grades to measure performance, and not whether we focus our resources on the many in traditional public schools or the few in pilot program charter schools, but how do we make sure kids in every corner of the state get good educations. Is it by giving them more tests, or is it by appropriating more resources? The right answer might not be the easiest or cheapest answer. It rarely is.

Here’s my full 7 minute interview with Gist.

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013

East Siders Are Outraged Over Fired Librarian

Residents on the East Side of Providence and patrons of the Rochambeau Public Library are shocked and outraged by the recent dismissal of librarian Tom O’Donnell from his job in February.

O’Donnell was reportedly fired for “insubordination” by Providence Community Libraries (PCL) executive director Laura Marlane. On February 25th over 40 supporters attended a PCL board meeting to ask that O’Donnell’s dismissal be reconsidered. The board took comments but would not comment on the particulars of the case.

Since his dismissal support for O’Donnell has been growing. Those who know Tom O’Donnell have a hard time imagining a scenario that rises to the level of insubordination, but so far the PCL has been mum on details, citing privacy concerns. Letters of support have been coming in from book publishers, the Rhode Island Blood Bank, the Summit Neighborhood Association and countless private individuals. The office Mayor Taveras is logging calls on this issue (401-421-2489).

There is a Facebook support page set up where the story is being tracked and a grassroots effort to get O’Donnell reinstated has begun.

Tonight at 6PM there is going to be a meeting at Rochambeau in the Community Room to organize an ongoing picketing and informational campaign. According to the Facebook page, the picket is intended to be friendliest ever and to accomplish three goals: to alert more members of the community about Tom’s firing; gather signatures on a petition and to talk with our neighbors about what Rochambeau Library means to the community and about what we the people want our Library to be.

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013

Ex-Red Sox Are Bad For Rhode Island Business

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Here’s an economic analysis that is both true and misleading at the same time: former Boston Red Sox players are bad for non-baseball related business in Rhode Island. It’s true, I’ve analyzed it and the facts prove it.

The most famous example is Big Schill’s failed foray into video games. But who remembers the equally-short lived Roger Clemens Wood-Roasted Chicken on Bald Hill Road in Warwick? Probably only me and Liam Tierney, Dave Shaw and Brian Quattrucci. We waited in a line, consisting only of us, to be the Rocket’s first-ever fast food customers; He was supposed to be there but, as was so often the case in the early 90’s, he just didn’t show up…

Despite the preponderance of evidence, ex-Red Sox Mike Stenhouse, journeyman outfielder and career .190 hitter, thinks Rhode Island should trust his abilities as an economist. His latest analysis, in today’s ProJo, concludes that slashing almost a $1 billion in revenue would be good for the state’s struggling economy. It’s true, he’s analyzed it and the facts prove it.

Of course, Stenhouse’s pseudo-study of sales tax policy is no more valid than my examination of former Red Sox players in Rhode Island. I could have included baseball-related businesses in my study and Sam Horn’s successful hitting school in North Kingstown would have bumped the average up to .333 – that’s MVP-type numbers. And if one includes all ex-Red Sox employees, well then Saul Kaplan would make it a coin-toss – a 50 percent swing, just by crunching the numbers differently!

This is the kind of voodoo economics that Stenhouse’s conservative policy shop, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, specializes in. It purports to offer economic analysis but it’s far more accurate to call it far right wing propaganda, specifically trafficking in policy that serves to shrink the size of government. (By the way, this is not a scoop – everyone involved in state politics knows this and any contrived outrage from the right is just all part of the kabuki theater.)

But here’s what I think is the really important part: traditional mainstream media doesn’t really have a lot of tools to present this truism to its audience, and the tool that does exist is virtually non-existent in Rhode Island. For a state that is overwhelmingly liberal, the vast majority of mainstream media op/ed voices are conservative. The Journal editorial page is highly unlikely to run a reasonable counter-opinion to this piece.

Policy shops like Stenhouse’s are designed to look like think tanks specifically so that they will be misinterpreted as such by the mainstream media. And locally it works like a charm: The Providence Journal will always label everything Ocean State Action does as being labor-backed because they are transparent about their funding, while Stenhouse will never be labeled a corporate pawn because he isn’t transparent.

This is great politics for fiscal conservatives. I’d say Stenhouse’s Center for Freedom and Prosperity has been really successful at keeping the conversation away from reasonable tax increases on the rich and focused instead on the unreasonable elimination of the sales tax.

But don’t blame Stenhouse. He’s just doing what he went into business to do: use pseudo-economics to rally support for right wing policy. Blame the ProJo op/ed page editors. They are the ones not doing their jobs, which is to inform and educate Rhode Islanders about their community. I’m not saying the newspaper of record ought to join RI Future on the far left, but it ought to be fair and balanced enough to host the occasional counter-balance to the conservative dogma it ascribes to.

In the meantime, I’m going to see if Bill Lee wants to leave his farm in Craftbury, Vermont start a think tank here in Rhode Island…

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013

Phoenix on Aaron’s Law

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I don’t want anyone to miss the recent piece in the Providence Phoenix on the positive organizing that has emerged out of the tragic loss of Aaron Swartz, particularly around the push to pass “Aaron’s Law” to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act:

There are several critiques of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Courts have interpreted CFAA such that a violation of a product or service’s terms of service can trigger criminal penalties. The law also allows prosecution for the sort of small-bore technical workarounds — altering how a program is used for instance — that is standard fare for hackers. And it focuses too heavily on felony penalties, critics say, with little room for misdemeanors.

The story also deals with some of the emotional issues surrounding this campaign, including insights from David Segal, who is one of the people leading the charge on this issue.

Swartz “was chiefly friends with activists,” Segal says.” He dated an activist. Even his parents have an activist instinct. So I think there was immediately a sense that we had to do something — make something positive happen in light of what had befallen all of us.”

That speaks to me a great deal. Personally, I am pretty new to the internet freedom cause (it was always easy for me to say, “It’s the internet, it’ll always be there, what’re they gonna do?”), but the more I learn about it, the more critical it seems to me. And I have learned that Rhode Island’s usually progressive-champion Congressional delegation is actually not very good on this issue, and may not support Aaron’s Law. So the next time you happen to see a member of our delegation (as you probably will at some point in the next couple months, since this is Rhode Island), it might be worth mentioning this issue.

The death of Aaron Swartz hit me like a ton of bricks. I went to high school at the same K-12 school that Aaron grew up going to, and his younger brother is one of my best friends. As terrible as this loss is, however, I continue to be inspired by the positive activism and organizing that has emerged from dark situation. Let’s make sure something good comes out of this.