April 2, 2013

Another Issue With High Stakes Testing: Cheating

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psu testing rally — Photo by Sam Valorose.

Education reformers in Atlanta have raised another potential concern with high stakes testing. The 2009 superintendent of the year and 34 Atlanta educators were indicted Friday for allegedly running a racket to change students’ answers on standardized tests so they would seem more proficient than they actually are.

I guess this is the superman we’ve been waiting for?

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post doesn’t think so. He wrote:

It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform — requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students’ standardized test scores — is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket.

Standardized achievement tests are a vital tool, but treating test scores the way a corporation might treat sales targets is wrong. Students are not widgets. I totally reject the idea that students from underprivileged neighborhoods cannot learn. Of course they can. But how does it help these students to have their performance on a one-size-fits-all standardized test determine their teachers’ compensation and job security? The clear incentive is for the teacher to focus on test scores rather than actual teaching.

Similarly, Erika Christakis wrote this for Time.com:

Even if we eliminate all the cheating, what remains is a broken system built on the dangerous misconception that testing is a proxy for actual teaching and learning. Somehow, along the path of good intentions, testing stopped being seen as a diagnostic tool to guide good instruction and became, instead, the instruction itself. It’s as if a patient were given a biopsy, learned she had cancer, and was then told that no further medical treatment was necessary. If that didn’t sound quite right, we could just fire the doctor who ordered the test or scratch out the patient’s results and mark “cured” in the file.

She ended her piece by calling for “a little American-style civil disobedience.”

What if all the kids in America answered the multiple choice tests totally randomly, or simply left the bubbles blank? What would we do, then, with a whole country whose educational system “needs improvement?” That would certainly be a teachable moment.

Bob Houghtaling, a drug counselor in the East Greenwich school system, made a similar call for civil disobedience by students on this website Saturday.

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013

Woonsocket Supermarkets On The First Of The Month

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stop and shop — Stop and Shop in North Smithfield. (Photo by Dave Fisher)

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) boom-and- bust cycle continued in Woonsocket this month, but not all local grocers benefit to the same degree.

Woonsocket is home to two supermarkets. A Price Rite – which traffics in highly discounted groceries – and a Shaw’s – which is operates a bit more in the middle-class price range – located within a half mile of one another. The only other supermarket options for the 40,000-plus resident of Rhode Island’s forgotten city are a Park and Shop – located just over the state line in Blackstone, Mass. – and two Stop and Shops which straddle the city – One right on the city line in North Smithfield, and another just over the state line in Bellingham, Mass.

The Blackstone Park and Shop and the Bellingham Stop and Shop are off-limits to Woonsocket SNAP recipients; the state-administered, federally-funded benefits don’t travel over state lines.

I decided to take a ride up to the Woonsocket Price Rite location, in an attempt to shed a bit more light on the first-of-the-month melee at local grocery stores. The parking lot was packed with cars, and there was a steady stream of customers entering and exiting the store. More customers waited outside the store for the next bus to come by to take them home with their groceries.

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As I walked through the store, the wide aisles were easy to navigate, but things changed as I approached the checkout lines. The lines stretched into the ends of the grocery aisles. Carriages were packed, overflowing in many cases, and customers were bagging their own groceries on the counter across from the ends of the checkout lines.

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I managed to speak to a pair of ladies who were exiting the store for a bit before store management descended on me and informed me of their store’s policy of “No Solicitation” of store employees or their customers. The women were exiting the store with two carriages absolutely bursting with food. One of the women, who didn’t want to be identified, told me that most of her SNAP benefits, along with a good portion of her disability supplement had been eaten up in this one trip to Price Rite. In total, she had spent over $500 in this one shopping trip.

Not surprisingly, there is a Check n’ Go payday lender less than 100 feet from the doors of the Price Rite, and an Advance America lender less than a 5 minute walk away.

Her disability stems from a hip injury that makes standing or sitting for long periods of time extremely painful. That pretty much rules out any job there is. She also has a four-year old daughter with autism. Her older children help her take care of the youngster, which makes it difficult for them to find full-time work with a flexible enough schedule to continue to help with the care of the disabled girl.

The Woonsocket Shaw’s Supermarket on April 1, 2013.

As I drove to the Shaw’s, again less than a half-mile from the Price Rite, and expected to find a similar situation. Instead I was surprised to find a virtually empty parking lot. Aisles and checkout lines were not overly crowded; some completely empty. A quick trip to the North Smithfield Stop and Shop showed a similar situation. Virtually empty lot, empty aisles, and short lines at the checkouts.

Supervalu Inc., the parent company of Shaw’s Supermarkets, is selling off five of its grocery chains, including Shaw’s and Albertson’s, after years of being squeezed by intensifying competition. The Woonsocket Shaw’s may be closed due to decreasing revenue.

Why is a supermarket in a city where one-third of the residents receive SNAP benefits not benefiting from expenditures of those benefits? How do companies like Shaw’s and Stop and Shop – that have many more locations in the region – not offer a price point that would make them competitive with the discount grocer?

Lastly, if – and more likely when – the Woonsocket Shaw’s location closes, the city will be left with only one supermarket. A supermarket that has a stigma amongst the middle-to-upper class remaining in Woonsocket as the “poor peoples market.” My last question is, how long will it be until those folks, by hook or by crook, are forced into shopping there?

April 2, 2013

How Religious Is RI?

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Ted Nesi recently wrote a blog post in which he compared data from a series of studies dealing with the issue of just how Catholic the State of Rhode Island actually is. First drawing attention to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolates (CARA) that places the Catholic “baptisms-to-birth ratio” at 34%, the third highest in the country, Nesi then jumps to two older studies from 2008 and 2010 respectively.

First up is Trinity College’s Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture‘s five year old study that showed those identifying as Catholic in our state dropping from 62% in 1990 to 46% in 2008 and those identifying as having no religion rising from 6% to 19% over the same period. The other study is the 2010 census by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies which declared Massachusetts the most Catholic state, pulling slightly ahead of Rhode Island.

Nesi’s main point, that the Catholic Church continues to be dominant “throughout the Northeast” and that Rhode Island will likely remain one of the most heavily Catholic states “if a new generation of baptized babies stay among the faithful when they grow up” is true, but his analysis ignores important facts about the sociology of religion.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports that 28% of American adults “have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all.” Furthermore, according to the Pew Forum, “While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration.”

The CARA blog that Nesi links to in his piece points to trends that are shrinking the Catholic Church in the United States. Trends are pointing away from Nesi’s rosy conjecture that baptized babies might “stay among the faithful.”

The CARA blog continues, “…in the 1973 General Social Survey (GSS) it is estimated that 88% of Americans raised Catholic remained as such as adults. In 2007, a major study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life estimated that this had fallen to 68%.” If these trends continue, “retention could fall to about 55% when those born in 2011 come of age in 2029.”

Though the polls arrive at various figures about Rhode islanders who identify as Catholics, these polls say little about how Catholic these respondents are. What I mean is that though the Catholic Church and Catholic hierarchy dictate religious and political beliefs to its adherents, especially about social issues like marriage equality and reproductive rights including abortion, actual Catholics have very different takes on these issues.

A 2013 Quinnipiac University Poll showed that 54% of Catholics support marriage equality. “Catholic voters are leading American voters toward support for same-sex marriage,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Rhode Islanders United for Marriage recently announced that their coalition now includes a contingent of supporters who identify as Catholic.

On the reproductive freedom front we find Catholics for Choice. The lobbyist for the Providence Diocese, Bernard Healy, might not allow that members of this organization are Catholics in good standing, but members of this group certainly identify as Catholics when asked by pollsters, and the views of this organization seem more typical of Catholics than those held by the Bishops. A 2011 Guttmacher Institute report found that 98% of American women use birth control that is outlawed under Catholic doctrine.

So though the Catholic Church may well be a major presence in Rhode Island for the foreseeable future, it seems that its future is one of ever diminishing influence and importance

More recently, Nesi put out another piece highlighting data found in the recent Gallup Poll that shows Providence being one of the least religious cities in the United States. This data is in line with the general polling trends I explored above, and should not be seen as contradictory. What we are seeing, I believe, is strong evidence of a kind of “Cultural Catholicism” divorced from the strong stances taken by the leadership of the Catholic hierarchy. A piece by Gary Gutting in the New York Times reflects thinking typical of American Catholics, I believe.

Speaking of his position as a Catholic who holds liberal and non-Catholic views on issues like marriage equality and reproductive rights, but still considers himself a practicing Catholic in good standing, Gutting says, “…the liberal drive for reform is the best hope of saving the Church. Its greatest present danger is precisely the loss of the members whom the hierarchy and the rest of the conservative core want to marginalize. I’m not willing to abandon the Church to them.”

That, and the simple desire to continue the life transition marking ceremonies and traditions of the family- events like baptism, first communion, confirmation and marriage- are the factors that allow for people to identify as what basically amounts to being Catholic-in-name-only.

April 2, 2013

Why Ken Block Wants To Kill The Master Lever

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Ken Block seems to be on a mission to distract Rhode Island from issues that actually matter to our economy. This week it’s the master lever again. Last week it was temporary disability insurance. The week before that it was food stamp fraud.

What these issues all have in common, besides being among Block’s favorite things to talk about, is they will each have less effect on Rhode Island’s economy than debating calamari or passing marriage equality.

It’s enough to suspect that Block’s off-year political strategy is to grandstand on issues that don’t really matter all that much, just so he can question the integrity of anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

Consider what he wrote on Facebook about Sen. Stephen Archambault’s decision not to join his anti-master lever mob:

Pathetic. Smithfield Senator Stephen R. Archambault tells Ian Donnis that he is not in favor of eliminating the Master Lever – calling the effort to ban the Lever a ‘minority push to level the playing field’. This means he doesn’t want to get rid of the Lever because it disadvantages certain candidates! When will our legislators start legislating for the common good, instead of their own self-interest?

There’s great irony in this. Does this mean those who favor getting rid of the master lever do so because that advantages certain candidates? After all, if it’s in the majority party’s interest to keep the master lever doesn’t that mean it’s in the minority party’s interest to do away with it?

It’s fair to wonder whether Senator Archambault or anyone else is putting their own self interest before the common good. But I think the better question is whether Ken Block is trying to legislate it away for is own self-interest rather than the common good.

From my vantage point, doing away with the master lever seems like a fine idea. I just don’t think it will have any real effect on elections. (If I did, it would be a no-brainer for me as it would probably benefit the kind of anti-establishment candidates I tend to like best!) But my guess is most people who pull the lever will simply vote straight party the long way – with some instead voting for candidates with surnames similar to their own.

Some may also vote for a so-called “Moderate” Party candidate thinking that the name implies the candidate is indeed moderate. My informal polling tells me most people who understand electoral politics AND aren’t trying to hamstring Democrats agree.

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013

Who Will Be the Next Director of Ocean State Action?

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With the exciting news that Kate Brock is moving on from Ocean State Action to take a policy position in Governor Chafee’s administration, I was thinking about who could be the next Director of Ocean State Action. I say this because Ocean State Action is probably one of the most important, if not the most important, progressive organizations in the state. Over the years, they have been able to shape the debate in Rhode Island, elect progressive candidates to the General Assembly, and push for more progressive policies that benefit all Rhode Islanders. Admittedly, they have not been 100% successful, but more often than not their success lies in advocacy, movement building, and adding the progressive perspective to policy debates.

Here are some of my thoughts about who (in alphabetical order).

Sam Bell – Currently the State Coordinator for the Rhode Island chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America (taking over after I went to grad school), Sam is young and smart and has really jumped into his role at the RIPDA. He’s also a student at Brown University.
Kristina Fox – Currently the Organizing Director at Ocean State Action, Kristina is super energetic and has been a workhorse of progressive organizing. Kristina was an organizer for UNITE HERE! Local 217 and helped win contracts at the Westin Hotel and the Dunkin Donuts Center. She just recently took over as one of the organizers for Drinking Liberally as well.
Mark Gray – Currently the “Where’s the Work?” Project Organizer at Ocean State Action, Mark looks into why there is such a dire lack of jobs in the state. Previously, Mark was with Clean Water Action, handling recruitment and training of community organizers.
Libby Kimzey – Currently Director of Programs at Capital Good Fund, Libby runs their tax assistance site and develops financial coaching curriculum for low-income Rhode Islanders. Libby is a tireless advocate and her energy was instrumental in getting Teresa Tanzi elected in 2010. She also worked with Ocean State Action and Common Cause.
Zack Mezera – Currently an Organizer at Providence Student Union with Aaron Regunberg, Zach is also a Student at Brown University studying education policy.
Aaron Regunberg – Currently the Director at Providence Student Union and Organizer for IDEA, Aaron is a great strategist and thinker about education policy. A case in point, Aaron helped organize the fantastic student-led NECAP testing that brought out about 50 people, and most of them failed it. This is reshaping the entire conversation about testing in the state.
Marti Rosenberg – Marti is one of the most revered progressive activists in the state, working on numerous campaigns in the state for as long as I can remember. She was Executive Director of Ocean State action until she stepped down in 2006 to work for U.S. Action in DC. Back in RI, she became Director at New Roots.
Ray Sullivan – Currently the Campaign Director at Marriage Equality RI and RI United for Marriage, and with any hope he’ll be unemployed when the session ends (because we’ll have marriage equality). Ray has a wealth of experience, having worked as Communications Director for the RI Democrats, RI State Director for Obama for America, and representative of Coventry from 2005 to 2010.

This is not at all a full list, and I’m certain that potential candidates will come out of the woodwork for this important position. What’s top of mind for me is that I hope the next Director does NOT come at the expense of the good work being done at another organization. Whoever the next director is, we need to keep building the Progressive movement in the state.

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013

2014 Election: More Important Than You Think

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state house november — The State House in November.

When the next gubernatorial inauguration takes place in January 2015, for preceding 30 years, a single Democratic governor will have reigned in Rhode Island for just 4 years and 2 days (barring any unforeseen circumstances leading to a Governor Elizabeth Roberts). Republicans will have ruled for 22 of those years. This is odd for a state that Gallup found to be “the most Democratic state” (tied with Hawaii).

There have been a number of things that could possibly have contributed to this. One is Rhode Island maintains a system of electing its Governor in the midterm election for U.S. President. The lower turnout means slightly fewer voters, and since the larger the turnout, the more the Democratic Party is favored, this pattern assists in electing more non-Democrats. The Party has also been hampered by lackluster gubernatorial candidates, culminating in Frank Caprio’s “shove it” comment in 2010. Finally, The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog suggested that Rhode Island is “the most most elastic state”, meaning it has a large percentage of swing voters.

That FiveThirtyEight post has RIPR’s Scott MacKay positing that voters select Republicans to check the power of the Democrats in the General Assembly. It also quotes URI professor Maureen Moakley suggesting that we may see more independent candidates in the future instead of Republicans, due to the tarnishing of their brand both locally and nationally.

I’m neither a distinguished political observer nor a professor of political science, and it has been a few months since those observations were made, but I’m not in agreement with this (note: I’m not mocking either MacKay or Moakley, just warning you to read my thoughts skeptically). Considering that the Democrats have long held a veto-proof majority in the General Assembly, non-Democratic governors have been an ineffective check. And I do not think Rhode Islanders will be liable to select more independent governors after Lincoln Chafee’s administration ends.

My feeling is that the Democratic Party now has two strong candidates in the wings in Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras. At any point over the next year, either could join Ernie Almonte in the running. They’d instantly be the favorite. If both run, it becomes harder to parse, with Raimondo having the slight edge over Taveras at this moment in terms of polling and campaign cash reserves. In response to the threat of either of the state’s most popular politicians running as the Democratic nominee, the Republican Party is suggesting Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, or former U.S. Congressional District 1 candidate Brendan Doherty.

There’s a plausible path for a Republican candidate in a four-way race, assuming Chafee remains an independent (there’s been discussion of Chafee becoming a Democrat, but I don’t particularly think it’s likely, nor likely to help Chafee electorally) and assuming that the Moderate Party fields a candidate (which will probably be Ken Block).

If Rhode Island manages to vote in a Democratic governor, it may cause more changes than you’d think. The governor has been a relatively weak position for a long time. But it’s been a useful screen for unpopular policies, partly because our governors have been so good at being proponents of unpopular policies. Thus we can talk about the “Carcieri tax cuts” but ignore the very real criticism that they were passed by an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Government power is rooted in the General Assembly. That it’s so diffuse and obscured is a notable feature of Rhode Island’s democracy; even within the General Assembly, the obvious power players aren’t always the ones calling the shots.

That might very well change with a Democrat in the governor’s chair. It seems unlikely that either a Governor Raimondo or Taveras will be content to take a back seat to the whims of the General Assembly. If the governor exerts more executive authority, what may take shape in Rhode Island may be more similar to the early days of the American Republic; with a pro-administration faction backing the governor and an anti-administration faction backing legislative power. These forces might very well meet in a constitutional convention (a possibility which shouldn’t be discounted) leading to a major fight over how the government should be structured (though it will likely be manifested in many small changes rather than large sweeping ones).

If the Democratic Party can come through this and figure out an accommodation for a Democratic governor, Democrats might finally secure presumptive control over the governor’s office. This will be boosted if economic conditions improve in Rhode Island during a Democratic administration. But if that happens, there may no longer be cover for the General Assembly.