Deborah Gist discusses her contract situation
Deborah Gist told me she hasn’t considered if she would accept a one year contract extension, but also that she isn’t ruling out signing something other than a three year agreement. A one year deal would expire as the 2014 campaign begins to heat up, which could make Gist and the so-called education reform movement [...]
Gist distances herself from ed reform movement
After numerous teachers, parents and activists criticized Deborah Gist to the state Board of Education for the heavy-handed ways in which she has brought the so-called education reform to Rhode Island, the embattled education commissioner told me she doesn’t consider herself a member of that movement. Gist was trained by Michelle Rhee, who is the [...]
Gist, education reform blasted at BoE meeting
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 [...]
Angel Taveras reaffirms NECAP concerns
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 [...]
Former Gist supporter is now anti-NECAP activist
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 [...]
Teacher: Keep Gist and state will see civil disobedience
“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 [...]
WaPost: Gist controversial on national level too
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 [...]
Charter school: site students on toxic waste
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 [...]
Board of Ed begins to debate Gist contract tonight
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 [...]
ACLU, others highly opposed to high stakes tests
More than two dozen community organizations, including the ACLU of Rhode Island, have this week formally asked the Rhode Island Board of Education to rescind the regulation that conditions the receipt of a high school diploma on passing a “high stakes test.” Although the groups have diverse reasons for opposing the measure, they all agree [...]
With Gist, it’s public sector enemies against the rest of RI
There’s something – if not good, at the very least honest – in getting to see the politics of public education play out publicly this week. As educators, activists and parents across the state are deriding Deborah Gist, the business community has her back. The so-often-called education reform movement – what progressives know as education [...]
Do you care about the show or about results?
There was apparently quite a party in Cranston yesterday, with several hundred teachers coming together to, well, you wouldn’t say they were there to praise the state Education Commissioner, Deborah Gist. In a poll out a couple of weeks ago, 85% of teachers say they don’t approve of the commissioner or the current policies of [...]
Teacher: RI biz community is ‘below proficient’
This was one of the more interesting statements made at the teacher rally last night – and not because it shows why Deborah Gist isn’t an effective education leader. Rather, because it shows the inherent hypocrisy in our political debate and how varying interests can employ widely divergent logic depending on the situation and where [...]
Rhode Island teachers speak out: Dump Gist
Public school teachers from around Rhode Island spoke out against their boss – embattled Education Commissioner Deborah Gist – at a public forum at Cranston High West today. They came to implore the state Board of Education not to renew Gist’s contract, a discussion that begins on Thursday night. Here’s the highlights of the teachers’ [...]
PSU students challenge Gist to debate
With public school teachers organizing to Dump Gist (they meet today at 4:30 at Cranston West High School) as her continued employment is debated later this week, students from Providence are applying some pressure as well. Following up on the Providence Student Union‘s high-profile action in which adults took the NECAP test, they now want [...]
What are we racing to the top of?
With all the fuss about high stakes testing, the biggest shame is that the Department of Education is telling us that the measure is the answer. A ruler never helped anyone grow an inch. Something other than the test needs to be looked at when 64 percent of the Hispanic or Latino population will not [...]
Report shows education reform isn’t working
A new Economic Policy Institute report that is highly critical of the so-called “education reform” movement reads like an indictment of Deborah Gist’s tenure as commissioner of public schools in Rhode Island. The report compares large urban school districts with New York, Chicago and Washington DC – three cities that have implemented strategies almost identical [...]
Dump Deborah Gist
Deborah Gist is nothing if not polarizing. Nearly 90 percent of local teachers want a new leader. But the Chamber of Commerce supports her. She backed the firing of Central Falls teachers, but she has the backing of the East Greenwich School Committee. Tom Sgouros and the Providence Student Union have twisted her in knots [...]
Our schools and the truth about policy
The commissioner of education has an op-ed in the Providence Journal this morning. Entitled “Our Schools and the Truth about Testing” it painted a rosy picture of what high performance in schools means: “Every high-performing school I have ever visited has been a vibrant, rich educational environment where learning is fun and well-rounded, and where [...]
Arming URI Campus Police: Bullet Points
On April 4, the URI campus was locked down for a couple of hours after, as the Providence Journal states it “people in a lecture hall said they heard someone say they had a gun. Police found no gun or a shooter.” Today, there was a forum at URI about arming campus police. In his [...]
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