Wendy Holmes – RI Future

August 3, 2015August 3, 2015

Searching for Dr. Wagner: How RI found a new education commissioner

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Deborah Gist’s Ocean State Voyage has ended and her replacement Dr. Ken Wagner begins his tenure as Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education today. The hiring process, with its “listening sessions” and its search for a gentler more accommodating commissioner, signals a departure from the Gist/Mancuso regime. It remains to be seen if this difference is substantive or merely cosmetic. Governor Raimondo promised an open and inclusive hiring process.

Students, teachers, parents, school committee representatives, board members, administrators, charter school advocates and union leaders known or recommended to the Governor were invited to attend so-called “listening sessions” and make their views known. Nine listening sessions were held with the Governor and the new Board of Education Chairwoman Barbara Cottam, among the listeners. Discussions focused on the desirable characteristics of a prospective commissioner. Participation was by invitation only.

Raimondo took charge of the search for Gist’s replacement with the blessing of the BOE and its new chairwoman. In May, Brad Inman, the governor’s Director of Constituent Services, wrote in response to my queries: “The Board of Education asked the Governor’s office to do the initial vetting and present the Board with a list of finalists for their consideration. It will then be the Board who selects the Commissioner.”

When I tried to find out who, in the Governor’s office, was doing the vetting (or had the educational expertise to do so) nobody was at liberty to tell me.

At a May 14 BOE Meeting, Chairwoman Cottam informed the board that “candidates are currently being interviewed and she expects a finalist(s) will be sent to the Board from the Governor’s office shortly.” The “finalist(s)” indicates that Cottam didn’t know whether a group of candidates or the one final choice was to be passed on to the Board for their approval. At the subsequent meeting, she reported that “interviews for the next Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education have continued and that there are many great candidates.” Who was doing the interviewing and who were the great candidates?

After the much touted “listening sessions” the search sank from public view. There was no BOE Search Committee and, as far as I can discover, no new job description that incorporated the findings of the listening sessions. The one that I received from Angela Teixeira, special assistant to the commissioner and liaison to the Board of Education, is dated September 2004.

As the Warwick Beacon reported, comments made by Kevin Gallagher, the governor’s deputy chief of staff, indicated why what he called a “help wanted ad” was rejected. From the Beacon: “Instead, the decision was made to define the characteristics the next leader of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) ought to possess. The administration, Gallagher said, intends to use that information to identify people who ‘fit that profile,’ rather than ‘sitting back passively’ and waiting for candidates to apply.”

Ken Wagner was recruited in much the same way that Deborah Gist was recruited by the Carcieri administration and his BOE (then the Board of Regents) in 2009. What Governor Carcieri wanted was a prominent “reformer” to head R.I.’s education establishment. This seems to be what Governor Raimondo wanted too, although she didn’t want Gist. I suppose that she also wants criticism of high-stakes testing to stop, parental and student opt-outs to end, the free proliferation of charter schools and no more complaints about the PARCC or the Common Core. I suppose, too, that she believes Dr. Wagner can help with these things.

The R.I. law governing the appointment of education commissioners specifies that they be chosen by the (gubernatorially appointed) Board of Education, whereas other positions at the same level–directors, for example–are straight-forward gubernatorial appointments. This discrepancy caught the attention of East Side Senator Gayle Goldin, who introduced the bill to change it which was passed by the R.I. Senate last session. The Senate voted that in the future the Governor alone should select Commissioners of Education, although this will not become law until it is also passed by the R.I. House. The Governor’s choice would then be subject to the advice and consent of the R.I. Senate.

The advice and consent of the Senate versus the approval of the board of education may seem insignificant, no great improvement to the selection process. But it is, I think, in involving democratically elected representatives who are responsive to their constituents and familiar with the schools in their districts. Having witnessed both board meetings and meetings of legislative education committees, I’d say the senators are often better informed, more independent of the RIDE bureaucracy, and certainly more approachable than appointed board members.

The framework for discussion may soon change radically, depending on the terms of the reauthorized federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) which remain to be finalized. Policies in effect now will have to be reworked and renegotiated in every state. U.S. senators and representatives listened and heard the widespread dissatisfaction with the Bush /Obama reform agenda promoted by Secretary Duncan and enthusiastically endorsed by former Commissioner Gist. Dr. Wagner seems to share many of Gist’s reformist enthusiasms. We’ll soon find out if he fits the profile of a better listener and one who will act on what he hears.

November 30, 2014December 1, 2014

Will Deborah Gist keep her job?

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“School systems that have successfully ignited reforms and sustained their momentum have all relied on at least one of three events to get them started: they have either taken advantage of a political or economic crisis, or commissioned a high-profile report critical of the system’s performance, or have appointed a new, energetic and visionary political or strategic leader.”

Rhode Island’s “energetic and visionary” leader, Commissioner Deborah Gist, wants to keep her job when Gina Raimondo takes office next year. The Board of Education meets tonight and it’s not on their agenda, but you can bet it’s on their minds.

The passage above is from an influential McKinsey & Company report, quoted by Gist in her doctoral dissertation. Although she was not initially interested in being our education commissioner, she recounts in her research, she was actively recruited by Angus Davis, who painted a rosy picture of Rhode Island as a reform-ready state.

In many respects she found this to be true and she is generous in her praise for the work of ex-Commissioner McWalters and ex-Governor Carcieri’s Board of Regents for creating a base she could build on. A founding member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and a graduate of the Broad Academy, Gist was warmly welcomed by Rhode Island’s business community and its Republican governor.

RIDE ‘s development and implementation of a new teacher evaluation system is the focus of her self-study dissertation: “An Ocean State Voyage: A Leadership Case Study of Creating an Evaluation System With and For Teachers”. Most teachers are not with and for Gist. Her dissertation discusses her difficult relationship with teachers through the firings in Central Falls and Providence and teachers’ strong resistance to the use of student standardized test scores in their own evaluations.

Now that the Common Core has arrived in the suburbs, there is growing discontent with her leadership among parents as well, which is likely to flare up with the the first administration of the PAARC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test in the spring of this school year.

Gist regarded Carcieri as “reform-minded and open to taking aggressive steps to bring about the necessary changes to Rhode Island’s education system” and, although she didn’t have the same rapport with Governor Chafee, she made her peace with him after a difficult start.

Given Governor-elect Raimondo’s celebrity as a pension reformer, some assume that she is committed to the entire union-busting privatizing program of corporate reform. The Fordham Institute’s Michael J. Petrilli, for example: “Of particular note is Rhode Island—Rhode Island!—which just elected a pro-education reform, pro-pension reform Democrat as governor and a bona fide charter school hero as lieutenant governor. All while voters in Providence rejected a union-backed convicted felon in favor of a charter supporter. Remarkable!”

Governor-elect Gina Raimondo and her husband, Andy Moffit, are parents of children attending school in Providence and Raimondo has said positive things about public schools and public school teachers. Moffit is a senior consultant in education with McKinsey & Co. He had a hand in the report, “How the world’s best school systems keep getting better,” that introduces these comments and that Gist quoted in her dissertation.

He was a principle author of Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for Educational Leaders, which Gist admires. After Governor Chafee’s election, the Board of Regents changed significantly which worried Gist. It must also have dismayed Moffit, who was nominated to the Board by Carcieri but decided not to serve under Chafee. Both Gist and Moffit have interests in large-scale change of school systems and educational organizations. Like Gist, Moffit has serious corporate-reform credentials. If the two don’t know each other well, at the very least they are professional acquaintances with common contacts.

I don’t know if this connection will work for or against Gist and I’m not even going to guess how the next lieutenant governor’s opinion might figure into the decision. Certainly Raimondo will not want to add to the the anger and distrust that Rhode Island educators feel over pension issues by retaining an unpopular Commissioner. Nor will she wish to create the impression that her husband’s career has undue influence on her decision. On the other hand , her sensitivity to the business community, the input of pro-corporate reform campaign contributors, and a shout-out from Washington could work for Gist.

October 26, 2014October 28, 2014

About Andy Moffit

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Both candidates for governor are enthusiastic about the union of education and business. One of Republican Allan Fung’s proposals is to have a “Jobs and Education Cabinet” in which business and education leaders would work together to make sure that graduating students are employable, while Democrat Gina Raimondo would work from a different angle, concentrating on community college job training programs.

Another difference between the two is that Raimondo has an expert coach in her corner. Her husband Andy Moffit is deeply involved in the business of education reform.

Moffit is a Senior Practice Expert and co-founder of the Global Education Practice at McKinsey & Company— consultants to CEOs, governments, companies, national foundations, and non-profits. He taught for Teach for America for two years, studied education law and policy at Oxford and Yale, and served on the board of Jonah Edelman’s Stand for Children.

In terms of corporate education reform, one prominent McKinsey-watcher and follow-the-money researcher puts the firm in a class by itself:

“They have been the leaders in crafting the dominant narrative of an education crisis for decades, and now deeply entrenched in education reform policies, they are reaping the financial and political benefits of marketing solutions to the problems they manufactured in the first place.”

Lacking a genuine crisis, various crisis-mongering claims about the failure of American schools will do, especially since these are generally supported by Arne Duncan’s Department of Education and widely publicized by the well-funded reform advocacy groups that promote charter school choice as an alternative to traditional public school education. McKinsey & Company are masters of packaging crises in high-profile reports, which they “launch” with prominent guest speakers and great fanfare. One education example is “How the world’s best school systems keep getting better” (2010) is focused on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test scores and what can be learned from the high scorers. Though not an author, Andy Moffit was credited for his work on this while Arne Duncan and Rhode Island’s Deborah Gist were panelists at its “launch.”

Along with Paul Kihn and Sir Michael Barber, Moffit was one of three authors of “Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for Educational Leaders” – a how-to-get-things-done manual for school districts and systems based on the management techniques Barber developed for British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997-2007). Barber, former McKinsey Partner and head of their Global Education Practice, is now the chief education advisor for Pearson’s—the international giant of testing and educational materials and the preeminent beneficiary of the current testing mania. Paul Kihn left McKinsey’s in 2012 to serve as William Hite’s deputy superintendent in the Philadelphia school district, a position he held during the recent tumult of school closings, draconian budget cuts, and union wars, while Moffit has remained with McKinsey.

As Raimondo and Fung speak of getting business and education together, it is clear to those of us with an eye on the corporate reform movement that they are already together. It is naïve or disingenuous to discuss educational policy without dealing with the profit motive. Big data and standardized tests are at the core of an ever-expanding industry rife with new start-ups, collaborations, and consultations involving tests, testing materials, hard-ware and soft-ware, real estate, no-bid contracts, tax benefits, and venture philanthropy. Budget cuts to public education, combined with privatization, union-busting and the deregulation of schools and teaching credentials are the order of the day.

It would be interesting to know specifically which consulting projects Moffit worked on for McKinsey over the years but there is surprisingly little about him on McKinsey sites. Although he was nominated to serve on the R.I. Board of Regents by ex-Governor Carcieri, that was when the General Assembly was no longer approving such nominations. He withdrew his name after Chafee was elected, apparently because of differences in views. He withdrew from the controversial Stand for Children board very quietly, without comment, and he has kept a low profile in both Raimondo campaigns.

We know more about Raimondo’s deceased father than her husband. Of course because Moffit makes a living as an education consultant/reformer, supporting various Obama/Duncan initiatives, reorganizing urban school systems, and developing sustainability plans for the new Common Core tests, does not mean that Raimondo has the same opinions. But how would we know? Has she ever been asked?

September 17, 2014October 25, 2014

Scotland votes on independence

EDINBURG, SCOTLAND — Taking the tram into Edinburgh from the airport earlier this week, I saw the YES and NO signs in many apartment windows. Some were more detailed: “Proud to be Scots, Delighted to be united.” I saw a young man in a kilt with a big beautifully painted YES sign and a middle-aged woman striding along Princess Street, with a contraption on her belt and an attached NO sign bobbing along above and beside her. Seeing this, the elderly couple seated behind me on the tram said “Good for her.”

YES signs adorn apartment windows in Edinburg, Scotland. (Photo by Wendy Holmes)

The signs are advocating for – or against – independence from England. This will be determined today by the vote of Scottish residents of 16 and older – even if they’re English or American. The ballot will read, “Should Scotland be an independent nation?”

I grew up in the Scottish Borders, known for their wonderful sheep-herding collies, their fighting regiment (KOSB, King’s Own Scottish Borderers), and their Reivers, historical tough guys who made frequent forays over the hills to England to steal sheep, cattle, and whatever else they could get their hands on, knocking some English heads in the process. In spite of the proximity to England or maybe because of it, Scottish Nationalism is alive and well in the borders.

But today’s vote is not just a matter of national pride or approval/disapproval of the Scottish Nationalist Party.

Some of my Scottish relatives were annoyed at me for timing a visit to coincide with the Independence Vote, saying I was giving the vote more credence than it deserved. There were too many unknowns, they said. No sensible person would vote YES without knowing what would happen to the currency, how much North Sea oil was really left, and how much of the British national debt an independent Scotland would be forced to assume. One cousin, over 70 and long retired, had just moved into a newly built bungalow constructed on part of the garden of his big stone house, now up for sale. The old house had to be sold and his property agent was telling him that a YES on independence would make this more complicated.

“My heart says YES but my head says NO,” my cousin said. Many Scots must be thinking the same thing because I’ve also read this in the newspapers. He’s worried about young voters who think it their patriotic duty to vote YES and he thought it unfair that the voting age was reduced by two years, from 18 to 16, for this poll only.

Another branch of the family has strong nationalist credentials, though maybe not of the Alex Salmond variety. One of my aunts was a friend of Wendy Wood (died 1981) who was an artist and prominent Scottish nationalist. She designed postage stamps that were used illegally all over Scotland and she was suspected of stealing William Wallace’s sword from Stirling Castle in the 1970s. My Aunt’s house was searched for the sword because of her connection with Wood. My aunt’s son, of the same age as my NO-voting, is an enthusiastic YES-vot for independence, as are his wife and daughters. They emphasize the fear-mongering of English politicians in an all-out effort to get Scots to refuse independence, as well as significant differences between Scotland and England (in law, in education, in religion, and in politics) that have always existed.

It’s like this all over Scotland.

Later in the evening, my husband saw a NO demonstration taking place around a statue of Wellington with a YES hat on that NO demonstrators apparently couldn’t reach to remove. The demonstrators were older, not unlike like the guard at the National Gallery of Scotland who told me that he was ex-British Navy and worried about his pension under a new regime.

Many think the vote for independence will break on largely ageist, the young voting YES and the old saying NO. It hasn’t looked that way to me. There was a demonstration outside, with two aging NOers wearing Union Jack hats being lambasted by an eloquent and vehement YES lady of about the same years. I gave her a thumbs up.

I have no idea of how the vote will go but, if I were able, I’d vote for an independent Scotland.