May 23, 2013 – RI Future

May 23, 2013May 26, 2013

Keep Rhode Island campuses gun free

Still before the Rage released at the Board of Education meeting on May 23, 2013.

On April 4, 2013, the University of Rhode Island campus was locked down for hours after, as the Providence Journal reported, “people in a lecture hall said they heard someone say they had a gun. Police found no gun or a shooter.” In response to this event, a URI committee proposed arming the campus police.

At their May 23, 2013 meeting, the Board of Education is expected to voted to allow URI, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island, to arm their campus police. URI President, David M. Dooley, endorses the introduction of guns on campus. This and the decision to move URI commencement exercises indoors for security reasons are all symptoms of a society that has lost its way in blind fear, and appoints its university presidents to groups of no academic consequence such as the Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council.[1]

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 30,000 gun related deaths occur in the US each year, while approximately 100,000 Americans are physical victims of gun violence. How do we even begin to quantify the grief caused by guns in this relentless slaughter in our midst?

A decision to introduce more guns fails to acknowledge that fear on the part of armed police leads to the shooting of unarmed people, often people of color. A tragic incident at Hofstra University, just days ago, confirms this pattern.[3] The introduction of more guns ignores the fact that the UK has a mostly unarmed police force and a fire arm fatality rate that is 40 times lower per capita than in the US. A review of the shooting incidents on college campuses shows that armed police responding with weapons of deadly force failed to protect these communities. Arming campus police may, in many, create the illusion of safety but reality belies this perception. The experiment has been done globally, and the results are in: more guns spells more violence, more victims and more fatalities.

We are alarmed by the prospect of armed police on campus with yet more guns to be introduced into our hyper-violent society with the sociopaths it creates in its image. Since the mass killing in Newtown in December of 2013, there have been more than 4,000 gun fatalities in the US[2] This statistic has not penetrated our national awareness. As a society, we pay attention to spectacular events, but we fail to notice the frightening reality of the numbers of fatalities due to violence, and racial, economic and environmental injustice.

In particular against this backdrop, it is an essential function of our educational system to teach non-violent conflict resolution. Arming campus police is fundamentally inconsistent with this critical function of education.

References

URI President appointed by Secretary Napolitano to new to new Homeland Security council
How many people have been killed by guns since Newtown?
Hofstra University student shot and killed by police trying to save her. A Hofstra University student was accidentally killed by a police officer on Friday during a home invasion and robbery, according to reports.

May 23, 2013May 24, 2013

Gist, education reform blasted at BoE meeting

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Neither Dr. Gist nor the education reform movement came off very well at the Board of Education meeting earlier tonight. She only had one supporter among those who gave testimony. I was unable to speak, time ran out, so later in this post I’ll write what I was planning to say. Before I get to that, a few notes about the meeting.

Important: the BoE is accepting written comments on the Gist renewal up until June 1. No vote was to be taken tonight. Submit early, submit often.

For those of you who want a blow-by-blow account of the early part of the meeting, look at my Tweets: @gusuht

Those who did get to speak were outstanding. The vast majority of the speakers were teachers with lots to say. Chairman Mancuso, noticing the lack of time, bumped up parents and students to the front of the line. By far the most telling and moving testimony was given by a student who graduated from a RI High School a year ago, and has since been in college. Roughly, he said that in high school, with all of the testing and teaching to the test and test practice he had lost his love for learning. Once in college he was freed from the dehumanizing testing regime and regained this love. The Gist reforms had hindered his learning, not helped it. It had emptied his spirit, not nurtured it. I hope Bob caught his name. Interestingly, he was the only one who came without a prepared text, but I think he had the most impact. Or I hope so.

OK, my almost-testimony. Actually, the major part of it was a Letter to the Editor, by someone else, in a New Yorker issue late last year. The Letter was in response to an article in an earlier issue (“Public Defender,” by David Denby, the New Yorker, November 19, 2012). That article was about the famous reformed education-reformer Dr. Diane Ravitch. Briefly, up until ten years ago she was a leader of the education reform movement, pushing testing, charter schools, etc. What happened? Ten years ago she looked at the results and they stank. So she switched 180 degrees and is now speaking out around the country against the education reform movement.

Here’s the Letter; it’s from the December 24 & 31, 2012 issue of the New Yorker, in the Mail section, page 8. I have not modified it in any way.

As Ravitch argues, reform strategies based on extensive reading and math tests, followed by rewards and punishments for teachers and schools based on those test scores, along with the encouragement of vast charter-school expansion, have not brought about significant improvements in student performance. Tellingly, no nation, state, or district that has gone from mediocre to world-class in the past twenty years — including Ontario, Canada; Massachusetts; Finland; Singapore; and even the Aspire charter schools — has followed this strategy. Successful schools and districts have supported the development of professional teamwork, and have completely revamped how they attract, train, and support teachers. Building the teaching profession around what is known about quality teaching, and allowing teachers the time and giving them the support to continually get better at what they do, has been the secret of educational success around the world.

Bill Honig, Chair, Instructional Quality Commission, California Department of Education, Mill Valley, Calif.

On an historical note, the New York Times columnist Gail Collins has written in her recent book ( “As Texas Goes….,” Liveright Publishing, 2012) about the origins and history of “No Child Left Behind.” That is/was former President George W. Bush’s signature education reform program that is the major source of all of the fuss today. Bush actually started an equivalent program in Texas when he was governor there, before becoming president. Going on to Washington he foisted his miracle cure onto the entire nation. Unfortunately, back in Texas they discovered that the program didn’t work. Somehow that never visibly appeared in the national conversation. And the bad idea spread throughout the land.

May 23, 2013

Angel Taveras reaffirms NECAP concerns

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Providence Mayor Angel Taveras delivering his 2012 State of the City address. (Photo by Bob Plain)

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras reaffirmed his opposition to using the NECAP test as a graduation requirement, Dan McGowan of WPRI reported this morning. Taveras sent a letter to the state Board of Education he wrote:

“I worry that state leaders have imposed a graduation requirement on our students that is tied to a questionable measurement of individual proficiency and graduation readiness,” Taveras wrote. “Unlike tests designed to measure student achievement, such as the Regents exam in New York, the NECAP test was not designed to say whether students achieved mastery of a body of knowledge.

You can read the entire letter here. (Taveras sent an identical letter to the state Senate Education Committee)

McGowan reported the issue is of particular concern to Providence: “In Providence, more than 80% of students at four of city’s largest high schools—Alvarez, Central, Hope and Mount Pleasant— will have to improve their NECAP score by next year in order to graduate.”

May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

Former Gist supporter is now anti-NECAP activist

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Jean Ann Guliano is the Robert McNamara of the Rhode Island ed reform movement, said our mutual friend Bob Houghtaling. It’s a good analogy. Diane Ravitch works too.

Guliano is a former school committee chairwoman from East Greenwich who ran for Lt. Gov. on the Moderate Party ticket. As chairwoman, she was very fiscally conservative – at one time she tried to outsource school custodians. She was also a big fan Deborah Gist fan and Race to the Top supporter. (who in East Greenwich wouldn’t want to race the likes of Central Falls and Woonsocket to the top).

She also has a son with autism. He’s one of those kids who might not fare so well on a standardized test. But he’s certainly smart enough to warrant a high school diploma. And Guliano is far and away smart enough to help him through that situation. The issue, as I see it, is not every kid with autism has a smart, politically connected and hard-working mom like Guliano.

Here’s how she put it in a recent GoLocal post:

As a former school committee member, business person and interested parent, I was an early supporter of Race to the Top and Commissioner Gist when she came on board in 2009. I also signed off for my district on the RTTT application. The goals sounded promising. Who wouldn’t want every child to receive an excellent education? Many of the numerous high profile goals of RTTT, especially those that have appealed to the business and political community, have been vigorously addressed. These include areas such as funding reliability, increase in charter schools, elimination of seniority-based promotion, teacher evaluation systems, data gathering, progress monitoring, accountability, etc.

However, with all of these accomplishments, the one thing that has not improved is the outcomes for our most vulnerable students. The original goals of both No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were not about turning schools into businesses or testing companies into a cottage industry. They were about improving the educational outcomes for those students on the fringe – those who are economically disadvantaged, have limited English proficiency and special needs. These students generally don’t have powerful lobbyists. Businesses don’t necessarily line up to hire these students, and even schools even know that these are the students who bring down their test scores.

Read the whole thing here.

May 23, 2013May 24, 2013

Teacher: Keep Gist and state will see civil disobedience

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“If you want mass civil disobedience from your teachers, go ahead and renew Gist’s contract,” said Brian Chidester, a teacher in the Bristol Warren school district during an impassioned speech at a teacher rally Monday. The state Board of Education begins debating the embattled education commissioner’s contract tonight.

Chidester said he is prepared to lead such an action, if the Board and Governor Chafee renew Gist’s contract. He cited the recent victory for Seattle teachers whose successful boycott of standardized tests led the district to allow high schools to choose whether or not to use the test.

Note that he got some pretty good applause.

He also posted to his blog an ‘Open Letter to Chafee and Mancuso: Dump Gist‘ which was was cross-posted to SocialistWorker.org.

May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

WaPost: Gist controversial on national level too

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Deborah Gist is not only raising hackles with the education community here in Rhode Island, she’s doing it on a national level too! On Tuesday, Chiefs for Change released a letter attacking labor leader Randi Weingarten for opposing high stakes testing. Gist is on the board for Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change group and she co-signed the letter.

Only problem is, according to the Washington Post, Gist and the letter criticized Weingarten for something she didn’t say.

How’s this for a trick? Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change,” a group of former and current state education superintendents, have attacked American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten for something she didn’t say — without even mentioning her name!

That’s right, a Washington Post education blogger – a fairly well-credentialed one, at that – says Gist and Chiefs for Change were being tricky. Valerie Strauss goes on to explain:

Let’s get this straight: Weingarten didn’t argue (as testing experts do) that using student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers and principals is wrong because the results are not reliable. She didn’t call for a permanent ban. She asked for a moratorium to make sure everyone is ready. Given that teachers are being evaluated on the student test scores, it seems only fair to give them enough time to actually learn the standards, develop lessons around the standards, and give students time to absorb them.

I don’t know if she was referring to Tom Sgouros specifically when she wrote that TESTING EXPERTS DO NOT THINK HIGH STAKES TEST RESULTS ARE RELIABLE, but she did give a shout to to the states that are struggling through the politics of it (emphasis mine):

Students in some states this spring started taking standardized tests supposedly aligned with the Common Core and there have been enormous problems reported by teachers and principals.

It’s well worth noting that Sgouros’ loudest criticism’s of Gist have been that the NECAP test isn’t aligned with Common Core. And like this Washington Post blogger, he’s also called her out for being disingenuous, too.

May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

Charter school: site students on toxic waste

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Last year the General Assembly unanimously passed the “Environmental Cleanup Objectives for Schools” sponsored by Senator Juan Pichardo and representative Scott Slater. The bill, which took over three years to pass, was signed into law by Governor Chafee on June 6, 2012, nearly a year ago. Commonly referred to as the “School Siting Law,” this was an important and landmark piece of legislation that prohibits school construction on contaminated sites where there is ongoing potential for vapor intrusion.

This common sense piece of legislation, that keeps our children from attending schools where toxic gases can wreak havoc on their health, is doubly important because the bodies of children are still developing, and triply important in poorer communities where children already face greater levels of hazardous environmental poisons such as lead.

It’s therefore even more baffling that this legislation is being challenged and potentially weakened by two new bills that have been introduced to the General assembly, House Bill 5617 and Senate Bill 520. These bills would allow construction of schools on vapor intrusion sites, completely gutting the intent of the original bill. This legislation is being introduced on behalf of the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA),which wants to expand a charter school on potentially hazardous land.

RIMA wants to manage the contamination by leaving it in the ground, and then monitoring the vapor intrusion with sophisticated and largely untested technologies that they hope will protect children, teachers and staff from unhealthy levels of exposure to toxins. The technology and monitoring will be an additional expense that the school will have to manage, money that will not go towards education.

A press conference was held on the RI State House steps yesterday by Clean Water Action, the Childhood Lead Action Project and the Environmental Justice League of RI that featured Lois Gibbs, renowned toxics activist from Love Canal who famously helped kickstart the United States Superfund Program. Gibbs pointed out that the legislation RIMA wishes to undermine has become model legislation for similar laws across the country, from New York and Massachusetts to Michigan.

“The very thing that they are talking about changing in this bill is what happened at Love Canal,” said Gibbs. “It was vapor intrusion! So why would this group of people want to put Love Canal under the school of innocent children is beyond me.”

This would be a great question to pose to Senator Juan Pichardo, who helped shepherd the bill through the Senate last session and has now introduced the legislation to destroy it. Why Pichardo would stand up for students one year and then seek to allow RIMA the right to ignore sensible safety protocols and endanger our student’s health might be another reason to take a long look at corporately funded charter schools and the ways in which corporate money warps government.

Pichardo’s email is sen-pichardo@rilin.state.ri.us and his official phone number is (401) 461-2389 if you think this is an issue important enough to let him know how you feel.

Why would we want to undo such awesome legislation? Watch Lois Gibbs explain:

May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

Board of Ed begins to debate Gist contract tonight

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Former CVS CEO Tom Ryan envisioned the arena that bears his name at URI hosting high profile sporting events. Tonight at 5:30 the Ryan Center plays host to a high profile political event as the new state Board of Education begins the process of debating Deborah Gist’s future employment in Rhode Island.

The Board may or may not discuss Gist publicly, but it scheduled an executive session to have its first discussion as a group on whether or not Gist should continue as the commissioner of education. The board, according to its agenda, will also review a report from its personnel committee.

The personnel committee consists of Colleen Callahan, Bill Maaia, Michael Bernstein and Board Chairwoman Eva Mancuso. The personnel committee will make a recommendation to the full board. Gist’s future should be decided in less than a month, people familiar with the process tell me.

Callahan is a former teacher and a current officer with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Care Professionals, one of the two state teacher unions vociferously opposed to a contract extension for Gist. Both she and fellow Board of Education member Larry Purtill, the elected president of the National Education Association of RI, both attended an educator rally against Gist on Monday at Cranston West. They sat on stage with Bob Walsh and Frank Flynn as teachers and other educators voiced their opposition.

Bernstein, according to his bio, is a former caseworker and director for the state Department of Human Services. Maaia, according to his bio, is a local lawyer and a former labor relations officer with the Department of Education.

Mancuso has said she and Gov. Chafee continue to support Gist.

When Chafee appointed Mancuso to the Board, he said in a statement, “She agrees with me that our public education system is the key to a stronger economy and brighter future for Rhode Island, and she has both the vision and the dedication to ably lead the new Board of Education on behalf of the students of our state.”

Chafee is expected to play a role in whether Gist stays on, and members of his staff has said he feels a sense of loyalty to Gist. But he must also feel a sense of loyalty to the teachers’ unions who helped to elect him and whose pensions he worked to reduce. Organized labor will of course play a big role in the 2014 governor’s race, and Chafee could mend a rift with organized labor by replacing Gist. Interestingly, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, Chafee’s chief competition for progressive support in 2014, is hosting a high profile fundraiser tonight as well.

Gist is seeking a three-year contract extension. A one year extension would put her employment in the spotlight again prior to the 2014 election.

May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

Rev. Don Anderson: payday loans are an ‘evil’ product

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The reality is that [a payday loan] targets people at their most vulnerable. It’s reckless lending. This product at its core is evil.

Gina 2 — General Treasurer Gina Raimondo

So said the Reverend Don Anderson, who co-chairs the Rhode Island Coalition for Payday Lending Reform along with Margeaux Morrison, director at NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley. Anderson said this at the end of an information filled press conference held yesterday at the Center for Women and Enterprise that featured General Treasurer and putative candidate for governor Gina Raimondo.

All the speakers at the conference made no secret of the fact that in their view payday loans, with current interest rates as high as 260% or more, are harming our state by targeting the poorest members of our community.

Gina Raimondo, to her credit, has taken a very strong, proactive stand against payday loans, saying, “Rhode Island is trying to grow, there is no place for predatory lending, period. Full stop.” Raimondo went on to compare payday lending to the bank practices that triggered the 2009 financial collapse, and said that if the payday lending companies in Rhode Island determine that they cannot sustain their business at a 36% interest rate then, “Fine. Let them go. We don’t need them in Rhode Island.”

Treasurer Raimondo reached out to Navigant Credit Union to try and develop some alternatives to the usurious payday loans and Fred Reinhardt, chief lending officer of Navigant, was on hand to explain what they developed in response. The timing of the treasurer’s request was good, said Reinhardt, because Navigant was starting to see the electronic debits that payday lenders were hitting customer checking accounts with and even saw some of their own employees becoming victims to predatory loans.

In response, Navigant has developed a $200-$600 loan product that can be paid off over thirteen weeks and requires no credit checks. Unlike payday loan companies, Navigant reports the loans to credit bureaus, something payday loaners do only when the customer is in default, preventing customers from establishing better credit.

Reinhardt finds that a lot of the customers coming in for the new program are doing so in an effort to pay off and get out of the payday loan debts they already have. This new loan program is not a money maker for Navigant, but it’s not being run at a loss either. Reinhardt sees this as a way of serving a need in the community.

Jacky Beshar, Vice President of Groov-Pin, a manufacturer in Smithfield that makes pins and such, knows that many of her employees are only “two paychecks away from trouble. It happens and awful lot.” She sees financial education as a partial solution to the issue, pointing out that financial hardship is as likely to sink a family’s fortunes as a serious health issue. Her company worked with the Capital Good Fund to provide free financial education to those of her employees who want it, and works to help her employees avoid the need for payday loans.

Christopher Lefebvre, a consumer bankruptcy attorney, finds that many people are financially illiterate, whether they are white collar doctors or blue collar workers and many become overwhelmed by debt and seek bankruptcy relief. Payday loans are the “final domino” that brings these people into bankruptcy.

Having dealt with many people Lefebvre is very aware of the collection practices of payday lenders, which he describes as “ruthless.” He has yet to see a client who has had a positive experience with payday loans.

As Don Anderson pointed out at the conclusion of the presentation, the effort to reform payday loans is different this year because “we now have third party data that shows the claims of payday loan companies are a bunch of baloney.” Statistical evidence gathered by Tara Roche, a consumer finance researcher for the Pew Charitable Trust was presented at the conference.

Roche presented data from two recent Pew polls, one conducted in July 2012 and the other in February of this year. Though payday lenders claim that their customers use payday loans for short term emergencies, Pew’s research indicates that 70% of these loans are taken to cover recurring expenses like rent, bills and food. Using payday loans in this way does nothing to get at the customer’s underlying economic difficulties, and payday loans too commonly become traps that burden customers with additional and unnecessary debt.

Other things Pew revealed that payday loan companies are loathe to admit are that, on average, borrowers remain indebted for five months and seldom pay off the loan inside of two weeks. Further, two thirds of borrowers want changes in payday loan legislation. They realize they are getting a terrible deal.

Despite this mountain of evidence, word is that Speaker of the House Gordon Fox is still somehow undecided on whether or not to support H5019, Frank Ferri’s bill to reform payday loans. Fox, who is my representative, replied to an email I sent saying simply that he will keep my thoughts in mind as he reviews the testimony given at a recent hearing. One wonders what he’s waiting to hear.

When I called his office on Tuesday the woman answering the phone told me he was getting a lot of calls on the issue. I found out today that his office received over a hundred calls yesterday.

Will Fox budge on this issue? Payday loans target our poorest communities, and the Hispanic community and people of color are more often victims of this deceptive, dangerous and let’s face it, evil practice. Representative Fox needs to find it within himself to stand up for these communities.