Education – Page 5

June 3, 2015June 3, 2015

School voucher bill wording lifted from ALEC model legislation

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Before the ink was dry on the highlights of the conference Transforming and Democratizing Public Education: An Activist Summit, Rhode Islanders concerned about the survival of public education were confronted with a threat from the General Assembly.

Senate bill 607, benignly titled THE BRIGHT TODAY SCHOLARSHIP AND OPEN ENROLLMENT EDUCATION ACT, was heard in the Senate Education Committee on May 20, and the companion bill (H 5790) was heard in the House Finance Committee on May 27. This egregious bill would provide state education tax dollars to any family in Rhode Island that believes their child would benefit from any other school than the one designated by their residence—any other public school in or out of their district, a private school, religious school, online virtual school, or home school. The scholarship that the family could obtain would have a cap of $6,000 (except for special needs students), but would be awarded according to a sliding scale of family income.

All families deserve fully funded and resourced neighborhood public schools with well-prepared and experienced teachers who make teaching their career. Families who choose to do so certainly have the option to send their children to private schools, religious schools, or to home school their children. But the overwhelming number of children attend public schools. Public schooling, though beset with many problems, is the foundation of a just and civil society. Public schools are overseen by local school boards, whose actions and decisions are accountable to the public. It is antithetical to our shared values to have public money siphoned off to private schools, particularly if the schools are religious in nature. Providing “scholarships” for students to attend non-public schools will wreak havoc on the public system, particularly at a time when public schools are already under assault from the neoliberal, free-market approach to schooling, with the expansion of charter schools, incessant standardized testing, and evaluating and sanctioning students, teachers, and schools by test scores on invalid standardized tests such as the PARCC.

The bill includes “scholarships” for students to participate in virtual, online schools, which have had an abysmal record in other states. This bill also includes “scholarships” for students with special needs. These students are entitled to a free and appropriate PUBLIC education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Unfortunately, under-resourced public schools have not always provided the full range of supports that these students need and deserve. Sending them to private schools that likely do not have the resources to meet the plethora of diverse needs of students with learning challenges will make this situation worse.

This bill is being heavily supported and promoted by the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity. This group has made a number of rosy claims about the bill’s benefits not only to families but also to taxpayers and to public schools. I have read some of their reports and did not see any evidence that they have been peer-reviewed or critiqued by qualified authorities. The impetus stems from the Milton Friedman ideology of free-market/privatization reforms that have been devastating to education in other countries. Further, a few minutes of Googling turns up the undeniable fact that parts of this bill have been lifted almost word for word from “model bills” from the playbook of the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC.

For those who are unaware of ALEC, this insidious group promotes the collusion of legislators and corporate moguls to write model legislation to be stealthily introduced into state houses across the country. This goes against the most fundamental rights of Americans to live in a country of the people, by the people, and for the people. Please see this great clip from an Atlanta, GA TV station that exposes how ALEC operates:

As evidence of ALEC’s influence on the wording of this bill, please check this link. If you scroll down the list of “Bills Affecting Americans’ Rights to a Public Education,” you will see two bills that are represented in the language of the RI bills. The first is 2D16 The Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act Part 1 Exposed. The second is 2D21 The Special Needs Scholarship Program Act Exposed. The yellow highlights that you will see are in the original from ALEC Exposed, provided by the Center for Media and Democracy.

During the Senate Hearing, Senator Sheehan clearly stated the reason that I believe proves that this bill needs to die in committee: This bill is for the purpose of the privatization of public schools, he said.

June 2, 2015June 2, 2015

Providence school busing routes require rethinking

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Last week, more than 60 local students marched in circles around City Hall holding signs that read, “Keep Your Promise,” and “My Feet Hurt.”

The Providence Student Union (PSU) organized the action in protest of Mayor Elorza’s failure to follow through on his campaign promise regarding school transportation to “bring the walking limit to 2 miles, and to grant bus passes to anyone who lives beyond that.” Currently, Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) passes only extend to students living farther than 2.5 miles from school. This 2.5 mile radius came after a reduction from a 3 mile radius by former Mayor Angel Taveras via the inclusion of additional funding in the 2014-15 budget, with plans for further reduction of the radius in the 2015-2016 school year. As WPRI reports, as “Elorza and school officials scrambled to close a projected $34.7-million shortfall in the budget year that begins July 1, the $680,000 needed to reduce the distance to two miles was deemed too steep.”

PSU organizer Roselin Trinidad, in an interview with NBC 10’s Bill Rappleye, stated, “Kids have actually told me I’d rather stay at home than walk in the snow because I’m safe. I know I’m not going to slip on the sidewalk. I know I’m not going to get frostbite because I’m home.” And she continued, “the sidewalks are not well plowed, so it forces me to walk on the street. I’ve been lucky so far.” Indeed, the need for a solution to this massive lack of transportation for students who live substantial distances from their schools is incredibly palpable after this past winter, when the unplowed and unsalted sidewalks became dangerous.

It’s a predicament that I myself can relate to: while I don’t attend public school in town, I live exactly 2.5 miles from Brown’s campus where I go to teach and attend classes, and I often walk the distance. Here is the crucial difference: if I get a blister, or my feet hurt, or I’m just exhausted, or there has been a blizzard, I have the option of either taking the bus (which is paid for), getting a ride from my partner, taking a Brown-provided safeRIDE, or driving in my sometimes-functional car. When the streets were at their worst this winter, I walked to campus as little as possible, because I didn’t feel safe walking down the slippery sidewalks, or, worse, down the middle of the street because the sidewalks were too icy or completely unshoveled. Again, I live 2.5 miles from campus, which is relatively far, regardless of whether the city thinks this is a reasonable distance for high school students to walk. I fell one of the few times I did walk this winter, and I heard many stories of fellow students, a number of whom lived much closer to campus, who fell multiple times, often getting injured or bruised in the the process. If Brown students with access to multiple forms of transportation are having trouble getting to school, it is absurd that high school students being asked to make such long treks without access to public transit.

Indeed, the 2 mile mark is not enough, and this seems especially true when the weather turns sour. I say this not solely as a Brown student, but as someone who has attended 8 different public institutions across the grade spectrum, including several public colleges, all of which provided better access to transportation than Providence currently provides its students.

As Elorza himself said while campaigning, “denying students who live between 2-3 miles away from school bus passes impacts learning, impacts health, and impacts safety, and our low-income communities are disproportionately affected.”

Roselin Trinidad’s response as quoted in Bob Plain’s recent RIFuture article seems apt: “Mayor Elorza pledged that the City would put money in next year’s budget to lower the walking distance for Providence high school students down to 2 miles. Yet his proposed budget does not direct a single dollar toward keeping this promise. It is unacceptable for Mayor Elorza to value our ability to access education before an election, but not after, and we will not quiet down until this wrong has been righted.”

Is there a way to make bussing more sustainable? Can bus passes have some form of nominal fee attached to them that is tiered much like many free or reduced price student meal programs in order to make the program budget-friendly in a way that opens it to students up to the 1.5 or 1 mile mark (according to an RIFuture article from 2014, over half of Rhode Island school districts provide transportation for students living within 1.5 miles, and almost a third of districts provide transportation to students living beyond the 1 mile mark)? Is there a way to expand this program to more students when the weather turns sour for months on end? Can schools do anything in the interim to help students get to their classes like school organized car-pooling?

I think this issue needs to be looked at seriously, and just reducing the limit to 2 miles, while a necessary first step, also leaves many other students still in precarious positions, especially if the city experiences another winter like this last one. Providence’s utter neglect evokes one of those “back in my day” stories where a grandparent describes walking uphill, through the snow both ways, to school. Except the city’s current students experience such ridiculous slogs on a daily basis. Except now, when the the students do get to school, the buildings are often crumbling. Seriously, Providence can do better.

June 1, 2015June 1, 2015

NBC10 Wingmen: Debating Deborah Gist

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During her six years in Rhode Island, Deborah Gist said she never once went digging for quahogs. This is just one of the ways the embattled commissioner of education, who is leaving at the end of June to become superintendent of her hometown school district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, never really warmed up to the Ocean State.

I’ve already graded Gist’s tenure in Rhode Island, but Jon Brien and I debated her legacy on NBC10 News Conference this weekend. Brien says organized labor was too powerful for her to fully implement her anti-teacher agenda, while I say overall public education improved even though Gist’s focus on more tests for students and teachers weren’t the areas the state needed the most help.

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

May 28, 2015

An activist summit for children and public schools

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Earlier this month I wrote about an event that would address the shameful state of public education caused not by bad teachers and low expectations as often claimed, but by a decades long, relentless regime of standardized curricula and incessant testing in order to measure, rank, and sort children for a new world order amenable to manipulation by corporate interests.

The event was held as planned– TRANSFORMING & DEMOCRATIZING PUBLIC EDUCATION: An Activist Summit, at the Southside Cultural Center on Broad Street in Providence, sponsored by the Coalition to Defend Public Education (Providence) and the Southeast MA/RI Coalition to Save Our Schools.

This event was planned as a participatory conference. As each of the topics was presented, people discussed the issues in small groups, and then reported back to the larger group. Much of value was shared, and many ideas were proposed for next steps.

Each of the participants had their own expertise, experience, and passion to share. Dannie Ritchie, MD, Founder of Community Health Innovations of Rhode Island and a member of CDPE opened the day with a powerpoint overview of the harm to public education from the privatization agenda.

Here are some of the highlights:

Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), and a long-time advocate for valid alternatives to high stakes testing spoke of the long history of sorting children for the work force with the use of standardized tests. He also discussed positive examples of public schools that are truly successful without resorting to the use of standardized tests to measure achievement. He informed the group about schools in NYC and New York state that are performance based schools. (website: performanceassessment.org) The students in these schools, demographically similar to other public schools in their areas, do significantly better than the typical public schools. They build community, students have a real say in their education, and they depend on the professionalism of the teachers and engagement of the community.

Jose Soler, director, UMass Dartmouth Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center and a member of the SE MA/RI Coalition to Save our Schools, said the corporate reform/privatization agenda is also an attack on public sector unions, which is an attack on African Americans, other people of color, and all women. This includes the attacks on public education where teachers of color have been hit the hardest by school closings in urban areas, such as Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans (AFT local majority Black teachers).

My daughter Hannah Resseger, site coordinator at the Mount Hope Learning Center in Providence, along with Allyiah Benford, a member of the After School staff there, presented a short documentary they had made interviewing elementary and high school students about their experiences taking the PARCC (or Refusing). Most of the students had negative reactions to the length and boring/”stupid” nature of the tests.

Barbara Walton-Faria, a teacher in Newport, a former RI Teacher of the Year, and chair of the RI Teacher Advisory Council, discussed the charge of RITAC: to report to the RI Board of Education, informing them how their policies are affecting students and teachers. Despite the fact that this group was created by the RI General Assembly and was required to report to the Board quarterly, the former chair of the BoE, Eva Mancuso, was dismissive of the Council after their first presentation, which had provided evidence against the use of high stakes testing. Barbara is hopeful that the group will have a better relationship with the new chair of the BoE and the new Commissioner of Education.

Jean Patricia Lehane, a parent from Portsmouth, RI and administrator of the Stop Common Core in RI facebook page spoke of the effective efforts of parents in many RI communities to inform others of the harm of the Common Core standards, curricula, and PARCC testing, and the power that parents have to Opt Out their children.

I spoke on the failings of the Common Core Standards themselves, and PARCC testing, explaining that they claim to foster critical thinking, but that the type of neuro-cognitive processing that is required for performing well on this type of assessment is a caricature of critical thinking, and ignores the valuable human proficiencies of perceptiveness in human interaction, aesthetic sensibility, empathy, and authentic voice.

Hillary Davis, Policy Associate at the RI ACLU discussed the bills on school suspensions that are currently in the General Assembly. She explained that suspensions have dire consequences for the students themselves and the community at large. She encouraged people to write and call their representatives and senators to support these bills: H 5383 in the House Health, Education, and Welfare Committee and S 299 in the Senate Education Committee.

Ruth Rodriguez, a United Opt Out National Leader, Save Our Schools leader, and member of the SE MA/RI Coalition to Save Our Schools talked about the attitude toward schools and teachers in the Hispanic community. These parents hold the schools in very high esteem, value the teacher’s pronouncements about their children, and have high hopes for their children. For these reasons, it has been relatively easy for the corporate reformers to exploit this community’s goals for their children by convincing them that charter schools are the best option, rather than neighborhood public schools.

Many more vital issues were discussed, and much energy was created to continue the struggle on behalf of a quality public education that meets the needs of all children and their communities.

May 27, 2015May 28, 2015

Elorza on students’ insistence he keep campaign promise about school busing

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Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza says he hasn’t broken a campaign promise to provide bus passes for local students who live more than two miles from school. He just hasn’t made good on it yet.

“I remain committed to reducing the walk-to-school radius and fixing the school assignment process so fewer students are facing long commutes,” Elorza said in a statement. “I have walked with these kids, I understand the difficulty they face, and I look forward to working together to address this issue.”

The Providence Student Union and other local high school students held a rally at City Hall Tuesday to hold Mayor Elorza accountable for a campaign pledge he made to provide bus passes for students who live more than 2 miles from school.

“This is a matter of priorities, not cash,” Elorza said in February, according to to RI Future, when he was first running for office.

But now that he is mayor, it seems to have become a matter of cash. The roughly $1 million expenditure to expand the number of students who get bus passes for their school commute was not included in his budget. As a candidate, Elorza said, “With a total city budget of $662 million, we must make it a priority to find the $1.35 million to fund passes for the 2,100 students who live between 2 and 3 miles from school.”

Elorza spokesman Evan England said today, “It’s not something we don’t want to do. There are a lot of difficult decisions right now.”

England added, “It’s not necessarily off the table for next school year,” noting the mayor may approach RIPTA about partnering on the costs, and looks forward to meeting with PSU members to talk about other potential solutions.

But when asked if the issue was an imperative to solve before next school year, England said, “I don’t know. I know it’s something the mayor feels very strongly about and something he wants to see get done.”

Most Rhode Island and many regional urban school districts provide public transportation to school when students live greater than two miles from school, according to this RI Future post. Providence provides public transportation when students live greater than 2.5 miles from school, reduced from 3 miles in September.

“Last year, a clear and simple promise was made by the City, the School Department and most of all by then-candidate for mayor Jorge Elorza to set this issue right,” said PSU member Roselin Trinidad, a senior at Central High School, in a statement about the group’s rally yesterday at City Hall. “Mayor Elorza pledged that the City would put money in next year’s budget to lower the walking distance for Providence high school students down to 2 miles. Yet his proposed budget does not direct a single dollar toward keeping this promise. It is unacceptable for Mayor Elorza to value our ability to access education before an election, but not after, and we will not quiet down until this wrong has been righted.”

Said PSU member Diane Gonzalez, a junior at Central High, “I am here today because I live 2.4 miles away from my school. That means I don’t qualify for a free monthly bus pass. My family cannot afford to spare $60 each month for a pass, so I have to walk halfway across the city every single day just to get to school, and then back again to get home. While that walk can be a pain in any weather, it can be downright dangerous when the poorly plowed streets are covered in ice or when the temperature hits 95 degrees. That’s why I hope Mayor Elorza is listening, and why I plan to come back here every day until he does.”

PSU created this video (which utilizes RI Future footage of Elorza pledging to address the situation) to draw attention to the matter.

Update: the original version of this post said Providence provides school busing at 3 miles. Last year, the city reduced that to 2.5 miles. The post was corrected.

May 7, 2015

How to end corporate education reform

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Mark your calendars! An event May 16 will address the shameful state of public education that is due not to bad teachers and low expectations, but to a decades long, relentless regime of standardized curricula and incessant testing in order to measure, rank, and sort children for a new world order amenable to manipulation by corporate interests.

The struggle to wrestle power out of the hands of the billionaire technocrats who have a dystopian vision for public schools is ongoing and gaining steam. Those who are determined to transform and democratize public education for the benefit of our children, our schools, our communities, and our democracy have a herculean task ahead of us.

The maxim attributed to Gandhi comes to mind: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win! True public education advocates are now engaged in fighting against the faux-reformers, those who use their money, power, and influence to make the lives of children and teachers miserable in the name of lifting all boats and preparing all children for their slot in the glorious technocratic future – a future that exacerbates the obscene wealth inequality in the United States of America.

Rhode Island as well as states across the country have been witnessing the awakening of the group of people who have the most personal stake in the outcome of public education—the parents. As parents become informed about the true nature of the education reforms of the Common Core State (sic) [Stealth] Standards and the incessant testing (PARCC here in RI, SBAC in other states), as they see the poor quality of the class work and home assignments that their children come home with, compared to the enriching materials and activities their older children had in the past, they know something is terribly amiss. Opting their children out of the PARCC is the first and best strategy for now to bring attention to the flaws with the Common Core/PARCC agenda, as well as to deny the state and numerous ed tech companies the data that would flow from this test.

Now that Opting Out/Refusing is catching on, thanks to the tremendous work of many education activists doing the research and informing the public, the federal DoE and RIDE are scratching their heads and figuring out vindictive ways to squash this rebellion that after all, upsets their apple cart and stands to lose money for global corporations like Pear$on. Imagine—threatening to lower the rating of a school because more than 5% of the parents determine that the PARCC is counter-productive for their children and Opt them out. These parents should be applauded for engaging in their child’s education and using the means at their disposal to make a strong statement about a policy that is wrong for children, wrong for teachers, and wrong for communities.

The Coalition to Defend Public Education (Providence) and the SouthEast MA/RI Coalition to Save Our Schools will be hosting an education activist summit: Transforming and Democratizing Public Education on May 16 at the Southside Cultural Center, 393 Broad Street in Providence from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (lunch included!) There will be no expert presentations, though the activists in attendance will come with tremendous expertise and drive. This event will begin with a sharing of struggles and successes among parent, teacher, and community activists discussing the following topics:

Testing refusal – empowering curriculum
Parent Organizing/ Communities of Color
Charter schools
Teachers unions
Student organizing
Higher education

The afternoon session will focus on a vision for the future—brainstorming on strategies to transform and democratize our public education system so that it truly provides the well-rounded, well-researched curriculum and inspiring environment that our children so desperately need and deserve, and our democracy depends upon. Come join us and be a part of those bravely standing up to the corporate education juggernaut that reduces and dehumanizes unique human beings to a single digit.

April 30, 2015

Providence Student Union calls on legislature to fix broken schools

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The Providence Student Union (PSU) called on the General Assembly to “Rebuild Our Schools” in a rally held at the State House. Joining the students was Representative Aaron Regunberg, a co-founder of the group, along with teachers, parents and community members and many elected legislators seeking to, “increase funding to repair the state’s deteriorating school buildings.”

Speakers stood next to pictures projected on a screen that showed rotting ceilings, damaged floors and walls and infrastructure in serious need of repair or replacement. Many of the students at the rally wore yellow construction hats “to reflect the danger of attending public schools.”

Jeremiah Ledesma, a student at Mt. Pleasant High School, spoke about a “very serious rat and roach problem” at his school.

“There’s a rat living in a classroom on the first floor,” said Ledesma. “It pops out every once in a while when it’s looking for food. I’ve seen cockroaches walk across the lunchroom floor.”

Laura Maxwell, a teacher at Hope High School, recalled a classroom she taught in that shared a wall with a student bathroom. “One morning,” said Maxwell, “I smelled something… not so nice… I finally went to the bathroom and saw a stream of human waste coming down the wall from the floor above.”

These stories are shocking, and they serve to highlight the sad state of our schools. The average age of schools in Rhode Island is about 60 years. Only 10 percent of the schools are under 25 years old. The PSU estimates that repairing only the worst schools will cost more than $300 million. Bringing all schools into good condition will cost $1.8 billion.

PSU has “called for an end to the state’s school housing aid moratorium, and for an increase in school facilities funding in the state budget.” They are supporting Governor Gina Raimondo’s addition of $20 million in school housing aid in her state budget.

Participants also support House Bill 5434, sponsored by Representative Regunberg, “to create a $70 million trust to continually generate funding for school repairs.”

According to a press release, the legislation “would establish the Rhode Island Health and Educational Building Corporation, which would oversee distribution of funds generated by the trust for school construction and would be responsible for developing and implementing a formula for borrowing and issuing loans and grants to districts.”

The night before the rally, Brendan Caprio, a student at Hope High School, testified before the House Finance Committee on the importance of properly funding our schools. You can watch that here, followed by video from the rally itself.

April 19, 2015

Colorado’s funding formula for school construction

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If you can believe it, until 1998 school building construction was a local matter in Colorado. Functionally speaking, with the current moratorium on state aid for school construction and rehabilitation, this is the case in Rhode Island right now. In Colorado in the 1990s, and in Rhode Island today, young people in low-income, politically-weak areas are less likely to attend high-quality public school buildings than those in wealthier, politically-networked areas.

Since 2008, however, Colorado has administered a competitive grant application for districts based on diverse state funding streams, including, since 2012, a small percent of taxes from marijuana sales.

“The state’s voters in 2012 legalized pot sales – and taxed them heavily – in part because the constitutional amendment promised that $40 million a year would go toward school construction across the state,” according to USA Today. “In the first full year of sales, however, the state expects to collect only about $17 million in special school taxes levied on the marijuana industry. Still, it’s better than what the state collected the year before: nothing.”

Colorado’s current state funding stream has its origins in a 1998 class action lawsuit (Giardino v Colorado State Board of Education), says Kori Donaldson s. “The lawsuit alleged that the state had not fulfilled its constitutional responsibility to establish and maintain a thorough and uniform system of public schools because of the deteriorating condition of many public schools and issues of overcrowding.”

In response, “Senate Bill 00-181 implemented the terms of a settlement, which required the General Assembly to appropriate $190 million for public school capital construction over a period of 11 years. In 2008, the General Assembly enacted the BEST act [Building Excellent Schools Today].

The BEST program distributes approximately $40 million a year. Yet, the demand for better schools in Colorado outpaces the funding supply, even with the BEST program. Colorado’s challenges include overcrowded classrooms and overstretched buildings (one principal, Melanie Moreno, noted, “Even if we hired more teachers, we wouldn’t have anywhere to put them.”)

Todd Engdahl argues, “The BEST selection process is unique in that the construction board has a certain amount of discretion in making its recommendations and because it makes its decisions request-by-request in an open meeting where applicants are allowed to make brief in-person pitches to the board, in addition to the voluminous applications they filed months ago…

The board uses a complicated process to cull the applicants. Projects require a majority roll-call vote to advance to a short list, but projects die if they don’t gain a majority, don’t get a second or fail to spark a motion at all.”

The Massachusetts model remains superior in that its application process has an emphasis on “urgency and need” in making decisions for construction, and provides a steady, consistent, and much larger funding stream. That said, Colorado shows a willingness to organize a formal, transparent grant process to make funding decisions, and the possibility of including new revenues.

Massachusetts and Colorado both have consistent funding streams to rehabilitate and construct school buildings. Rhode Island’s leaders have a great chance to be innovative and do right by students, families, and teachers.

April 13, 2015April 13, 2015

Pro PARCC post in Gist memo is propaganda piece

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In her recent field memo of April 3, 2015 Commissioner Gist took the unusual step of quoting an entire blog post.

“I’m a mom,” it begins. “And the happiness of my children, now and in the future as they go on to start careers and families of their own, is on my mind all the time.”

The post was written by a mother from Florida who is in support of the Common Core State Standards and the accompanying testing. She is also an attorney and president & CEO of the Multicultural Education Alliance.

The blog on which it appeared is put out by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a Jeb Bush creation, which states on its website: “The 21st century economy is the most competitive in world history. It is an economy that requires a growing number of educated and skilled workers. Yet, on international assessments, American students rank 21st in science and 26th in math, behind their peers in countries like Singapore, Japan and Canada. We need to reverse this trend if America is to continue its dominant role.”

In other words, the goal of education is to provide a workforce with the skills to meet the needs of the global corporate economy and maintain America in a dominant world position. Does this goal resonate with most parents of preK-12 students?

The website for the EdFly blog has as its web address ExcelinEd.org. According to the 2014 donor page for ExcelinEd, those at the top of the donor list include (no surprises here):

Greater than $1,000,000:

Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust

Walton Family Foundation

Between $500,001 and $1,000,000:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

GE Foundation

News Corporation

Charles & Helen Schwab Foundation

Between $250,0001 and $500,000:

Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Between $100,001 and $250,000:

Eli & Edythe Broad Foundatio

Jeb Bush & Associates

It is no coincidence that Commissioner Gist herself as a Chief for Change, a group also created by Jeb Bush, would choose this particular blog post to send to all RI superintendents. That she has used her position of authority to single out this one blog post, which can reasonably be assumed to be propaganda for the position she has espoused since assuming the role of commissioner, is very unfortunate and does a disservice to the hundreds of RI parents and other concerned citizens who have researched the Common Core and PARCC testing in depth and decided they are not in the best interests of our children.

While it is true that many prominent civil rights groups, including the National Council of La Raza, do support the allegedly “rigorous” Common Core Standards and testing for accountability of students, teachers, and schools, one can only wonder whether the members of these groups have confronted the reality of the harm this agenda is actually having on traditionally under-served children and youth. It is understandable that those concerned about children of color, children from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, children with special learning needs, and children living in poverty, should be alarmed by the very real lack of advancement of many of these children in the public schools.

This is a complex issue and needs to be addressed comprehensively. The starving of financial resources to the schools that serve these children is one culprit. The steady diet of reading and math test prep for the past dozen years of NCLB is another. For an excellent and thorough explanation of why civil rights advocates should reject market-based (i.e. corporate pushed) reforms, please read “Why People of Color Must Reject Market- oriented Education Reforms: A Compilation of the Evidence” by United Opt Out National.

Commissioner Gist continues to defend her stance on the Common Core Standards and PARCC testing, and chooses not to truly listen to the voluminous concerns that have been raised by parents, teachers, and administrators both here in RI and across the country.

Even so, the Opt Out movement is growing. Parents who have become aware of the big picture of the ramifications of the full corporate agenda for public education in America will continue to stand up for their children and their children’s future by rejecting the scripted learning of the Common Core and the meaningless accountability of the PARCC testing that drain public funds and jeopardize children’s full flowering as unique members of a diverse society.

America does not need cohorts of test-takers to march into corporate slots for the sake of global competitiveness. America needs self-actualized adults with civic-mindedness and the knowledge and ingenuity to tackle the very real challenges we all face. The Common Core rhetoric of fostering critical thinking and problem-solving is Orwellian double-speak, not reality.

Hopefully the general public will wake up to this before it is too late. Will the Commissioner take the time from her double duties in RI and in Tulsa to respond?

April 7, 2015April 13, 2015

State spends $5 million on private school transportation, textbooks

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Rhode Island spent more than $5.4 million in 2014 on transportation and textbooks for students who attend private and parochial schools, according to the Department of Education.

“The textbook law has been in the books since the 19^th century,” said RIDE spokesman Elliot Krieger. “The transport law on books since the 1970s.”

Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed budget calls for cuts to this public subsidy to private schools. The state paid $4,873,473 in transportation costs and $554,974 for textbooks in 2014 and Raimondo proposed cutting each expenditure in half.

“Some tough choices needed to be made,” said spokeswoman Marie Aberger, and Raimondo instead proposed a “record investments in K-12 education; the full implementation of all-day kindergarten across the state; and funding for dual enrollment, last dollar scholarships, loan forgiveness and workforce development.”

But it seems like legislative leaders will seek to have the private school funding put back into the budget.

Said House Speaker Mattiello, in a statement, “The tax-paying parents who make the choice to send their children to private schools are lessening the burden on municipalities because the cities and towns do not have to pay to educate these students. The least we can do for these parents is to provide textbooks and bus transportation when necessary. Without transportation, some parents would be unable to make the choice to send their children to private schools, and a greater burden would then be placed on municipalities to educate them.”

Senate President Paiva Weed, who more often finds common ground with Raimondo than Mattiello, agrees with the speaker on this one.

“The Senate supports restoration of the funding for textbooks and transportation services for private schools. Parents of children in private schools pay their taxes just like other parents in the community,” she said. “Collectively, their decision to send their children to private schools saves valuable public resources. For many years, the Senate has chosen to support the funding of transportation services and textbooks for private school students despite previous attempts to cut the funding.”

Aberger, Raimondo’s spokeswoman, seemed to understand that subsidizing private school education was sacrosanct to legislative leaders. “The Governor respects the legislative process and knows the General Assembly will make adjustments as her jobs budget moves forward,” she said.

The Senate Finance Committee will discuss the issue at a hearing on Thursday.

April 6, 2015April 20, 2015

Massive student support helps end RISD Tech strike

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Before the the student led march in support of the striking RISD Techs started, union president Tucker Houlihan was approached by RISD adminsitrators eager to negotiate a quick end to the strike that began Thursday.

“You sons of bitches are so powerful,” Houlihan said to the cheering crowd outside the RISD administrative offices downtown, “and there’s so many of you, that the administration wanted to talk, and not just talk this time, they wanted to negotiate.”

According to Houlihan, RISD signed a memorandum of agreement that maintains the tech union member’s 8 percent retirement contribution. “And they did this before you even arrived here. That is how powerful you are,” said Houlihan.

Hundreds of students and supporters marched down South Main St in support of the 44 unionized RISD Techs, members of NEARI Local 806. The crowd was so large that marchers completely encircled the administrative offices. Student Danica Mitchell was one of the organizers of the support march. Mitchell told the crowd that this effort was about more than the specifics of the demands of the striking workers.

“It’s more about promoting transparency in big institutions,” said Mitchell. She added that she hopes RISD will be more open in the future.

Today’s efforts mark a successful end to the strike. “When the technicians leave here,” said Houlihan, to the ecstatic crowd, “we’re going back to the studios that we love and they’re open!”

April 2, 2015April 3, 2015

Amore bill would guarantee opt-out process for PARCC test

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The RI House Health, Education, and Welfare Committee took testimony last night on legislation that would mandate the Department of Education to provide uniform guidance across the districts that would guarantee parents the right to opt their children out of the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) assessment.

Parents have always had that right, but the recent guidance from RIDE to superintendents has been misleading and resulted in confusion and turmoil for parents across the state. The bill also stipulates that no student shall face disciplinary action for not participating in the testing and that no student shall have his or her academic record adversely affected for not participating.

RIDE’s Mary Ann Snider, and others, tried to defend the necessity of this testing, though even Ms. Snider admitted that students are being over-tested. Parents, retired teachers, and concerned citizens rebutted the value of this particular test and its ramifications.

Sponsored by Representative Gregg Amore, along with reps Canario, Regunberg, Keable and O’Brien, the bill is one step in the right direction to bring to light a situation that is menacing our public schools in the name of the “civil rights issue of our time.”

Our children, our families, our neighborhoods, our public schools, and our democracy itself have become pawns in a vast and inter-connected scheme to undermine public institutions for private profit. The vehicle for this travesty in public education is the Common Core State (sic) [Stealth] Standards and their accompanying high-stakes standardized testing—PARCC. This incessant test prepping and testing, orchestrated to be taken on computers, intensifies the myth that 21st century teaching depends on the innovation of software programs that “personalize” education for each child. Nothing could be further from the truth. The entrenched belief that accounting/accountability, i.e. data collection, is the answer to lagging scores on standardized tests as compared to other nations is a travesty.

Human beings learn from other human beings. Human beings are inspired to learn in trusted relationships. The factory model of standardization and culling of the defective is antithetical to a diverse, democratic society. This is a travesty of the extreme right wing (e.g. ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council), the Democrats for Education Reform and the White House, the Chamber of Commerce, ed tech entrepreneurs/corporatists like Bill Gates, and mega-corporations like Microsoft and Pearson, which have the willing collusion of the federal Department of Education. The critics of this so-called “innovative” strategy come from across the political spectrum – from libertarians to liberals, progressives, and socialists.

Critics of these reforms are accused of perpetuating the status quo. It is true that the status quo is unacceptable in important ways, but the remedies of the corporatists and their ilk are making the situation infinitely worse. And “cui bono” (for whose benefit)? For the benefit of edupreneurs, hedge fund managers, global corporations, and those bent on the gentrification of trodden down neighborhoods.

Consider the stealthy way the drafters of the Common Core standards were selected. Why were primarily representatives from the college testing industry, like the SAT and ACT, included when k-12 classroom teachers, specialists in early childhood education, teachers of special needs students, and authorities on students learning English as a second language were excluded? These standards and accompanying curricula have been developed with blinders on.

They reflect a narrow, technocratic vision of teaching and learning, which is at odds with decades of authentic research into children’s cognitive development, first and second language development, and literacy development. They ignore all aspects of education that promote healthy psychosocial development, and even physical health. They ignore or downplay the significance of the humanities—history, literature, drama, music, art, dance, philosophy—all of the attributes that contribute to a humane society.

Why has a monolithic curriculum in English Language Arts and Math been created to align with these ill-begotten standards, to then be aligned with the incessant testing that accompanies them? Why have state departments of education been essentially bribed by Race to the Top money and then waivers to the failed No Child Left Behind law to swallow these poorly constructed standards, curricula, and tests? Who will benefit from the massive amounts of personal student data being collected not only from the testing process, but from every keystroke of every student on every Chrome book stocked with every poor quality but snazzy program, adjusted by algorithm to the individual student’s responses?

These are questions that are serious in the extreme. They must be confronted by all segments of our society. Instead, school administrators and teachers are asked by PARCC to sign security agreements that hearken back to the McCarthy era under the guise of test security and “fairness.” Teachers, under pain of losing their jobs and even their teaching licenses, are being intimidated into not expressing their concerns about the inappropriateness of the Common Core and PARCC testing to the parents of the children in their classrooms. This is unacceptable and must be challenged.

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

Public school students and inmates need more vocational training

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Parents, politicians, teachers and taxpayers must better prepare people for life after an institution. This holds true for both ACI inmates and Rhode Island high school students.

Public high schools no longer stress hands on training. Instead, they focus on English, math, science, history, though these subjects are hard pressed to hold a teenagers’ attention for four years. One alternative could be to include more vocational electives within our public schools. This elective – think: autobody repair, cooking, hairstyling, barbering, etc. – would help encourage students to stay in school, because with the completion of the recommended hours in that elective, a student could earn a license as well as a high school diploma.

A trade elective could be mandatory for all students, so long as it granted them choice in choosing what elective to pursue, thereby giving them the hours and experience to obtain their license, to be able to go straight to work upon completion of high school.

Such a program is even more needed for young men who are incarcerated.

Many 18 to 22-year-olds are being released back into society with stable minds but no valid work opportunities to release their positive and renewed energy. So instead they return to their old neighborhoods or life of crime, mostly because there’s not a system in place to reintegrate them back into society. Here in medium security at the ACI, there are 16-20 people released every month. That is a total of about 200 people a year just from this facility alone.

There needs to be more job placement workshops and skills building opportunities for inmates being released. This would especially help the lower class communities because it would also revitalize those depressed economies and rebuild the local infrastructure. It would help rebuild the communities themselves.

There should be more communication between the probation officers and community leaders to develop new programs and ways to keep these kids from returning back to the life of crime that put them behind bars in the first place.

Believe me, kids today, whether in traditional public school or prison, aren’t bad kids. I help teach, encourage, and talk with them daily, and as I listen to what went wrong in their lives and what could have helped them. Most say they didn’t have that father figure, teacher, or leader to guide them, so they committed a crime to get attention. That’s it!

We need to band together to help our youth, regardless of their ethnicity, neighborhood, or criminal history. When it’s all said and done, that could be our son or daughter, nephew or niece, and they’ll end up growing up in a world that we had the chance to change, but neglected to do so.

I pray this op/ed is received with clarity, and that the reader will act upon these issues concerning our youth. Regardless of their past, all children deserve the same opportunity for a better tomorrow. Let us parents, taxpayers, and public officials stay vigilant to solutions for a better tomorrow.

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:

‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz

March 23, 2015

Raimondo meets with students to discuss next commissioner

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Governor Gina Raimondo has been hosting “listening sessions” with different constituencies among the education community in hopes of gleaning a better sense of what is expected from the next commissioner of education. In February, she met with teachers and principals in Providence. In early March, she met with parents and administrators in Cranston. And last week she met with labor officials in Warwick.

“This process was established to engage with Rhode Islanders who have already committed their lives to this issue,” said Raimondo spokeswoman Ashley Gingerella O’Shea. “The Governor values public input and particularly, those community groups who are explicitly engaged in education.”

And so on Tuesday, she will meet with a group of Providence students.

The Providence Youth Caucus – made up of the Providence Student Union, Young Voices and others – will spend about an hour and a half with Raimondo tomorrow night, starting at 5pm at Highlander Charter School in Providence.

While the forum is an opportunity for the governor to glean the student’s thoughts on the next education commission, the students want to also discuss their platform for education reform in Rhode Island.

The Schools Providence Students Deserve
An education platform by and for the students of Providence, Rhode Island

Our Goals

We all agree that our school system needs some big changes. But we have noticed that, through every new wave of education reforms and solutions, one thing always remains the same: students’ voices and priorities are regularly left out of the process.

We are the people in the classroom, and we are the people with the most at stake in our education system. As such, we know as well as anyone what really needs to happen to make our schools powerful places of youth learning and growth. Involving our voices is not only the fair and just thing to do; it is also the smartest way to actually design reforms that will positively impact our schools.

We—students from the Providence Student Union and Young Voices, in partnership with other student groups and youth across the city—have drafted this platform to establish a path towards the school system Providence students deserve.

We call on each of the candidates for Mayor of Providence to sign this platform and thereby commit to:

Creating a More “Student-Centered” Education System, including:

Introducing a more engaging curriculum and promoting hands-on learning

Developing strategies to better personalize learning around students’ needs

Prioritizing interpersonal skills and technological proficiency that prepare us for the 21st century

Changing from a dependence on standardized testing to a system of performance-based assessments that can show the student as a whole

Allowing students to have more ownership over their own learning and understanding that learning can happen anytime, anywhere

.
Increasing Equity and Access, including:

Improving climate and culture by moving away from punitive disciplinary measures and toward restorative practices that address the root causes of behavior issue

Designing a safer and fairer approach to school transportation, including the reduction of Providence’s walking distance to a maximum of two miles

Focusing not just on achievement gaps, but also on opportunity gaps. A student’s race and class should not affect their ability to receive an empowering education Ensuring Adequate and Up-to-Date Resources, including:

Significantly improving our physical learning environment, especially with major investments in school infrastructure

Guaranteeing sufficient staffing for schools, including full-time teachers for subjects like math, science and arts, and important full-time staff like a school nurse and trained counselors in every school building

Ensuring access to useful technology in school buildings to give students the tools to meet 21st century standards

Prioritizing and funding arts, music, and elective classes, and recognizing that these disciplines are just as essential as math and reading

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015

Providence’s secretive PARCC opt-out process

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In an effort to stymie parents interested in opting their children out of PARCC, Providence Public Schools created a secret permission form.

Not all schools even know about the form. There was confusion at the front offices of several schools. At one, I was told, the guidance department hadn’t heard anything about an opt-out program. Another administrator said that they would “talk to the parent and find out why… and then contact my supervisor.”

At other schools, workers were specifically told NOT to publicize it. However, in order to make sure that all the paperwork is handled, they were told to have parents sign the forms to release their children. While I understand the CYA attitude, keeping the forms secret is yet another signal that there is something seriously wrong with the testing industry. If nothing else, the form is designed to slow and intimidate parents who might otherwise opt-out.

PARCC testing will be running for five days between 85 and 120 minutes per day at the Middle School level. Not only does this eat up at least 7.5 teaching hours. Additionally, the lengths of each tests are irregular, making planning and logistics nearly unmanageable.

At Classical High School, although only ninth and tenth graders will be taking the PARCC tests, eleventh and twelfth graders have a late arrival time of 10:30, losing each of those students a total of 10 hours of class time. Hope and Mt. Pleasant High Schools will be operating on a regular schedule.

In a YouTube video, Lori B. McEwen, Ph.D., Chief of Instruction, Leadership and Equity for PPSD said that PARCC was important for students to graduate college-ready. She also said that parents will be informed about the testing schedule. As a parent with students in the schools, I haven’t received information in a timely or useable fashion.

Yes, there are fundamental problems with public education, and demonizing standardized testing isn’t going to solve them.

However the diversion of millions of Rhode Island tax dollars to private companies combined with the abusive amount of time spent on testing students leads me to believe that it is our duty as parents and citizens to oppose them.

Civil disobedience is simple, even though Providence made it more challenging.

As it says in the form itself, “…I have the fundamental and legal right to direct the upbringing and education of my child.”

Print this out and send in with your child tomorrow. –> CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

March 20, 2015March 20, 2015

Mass. has a better way to fund school construction than Raimondo

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“I’ve been scared and battered,
My hopes the wind done scattered.”
– Langston Hughes, ‘I’m still here’

Too many Rhode Island children and teachers, particularly in low-income communities, work in schools that are decrepit.

Governor Raimondo recognizes the need to invest in our schools. In fact, she’s proposed $20 million to do so. A very important step and yet insignificant compared to other state and city infrastructure investments – the $22 million East Bay bike path renovations, the $43 million proposed Garrahy Parking Garage, and the $40 million 2012 road bond in the City of Providence.

Nevertheless, Raimondo’s plan is based – too loosely, I would say – on the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

“The bottom line is that the MSBA [Massachusetts School Building Authority] funding activity not only leaves the Commonwealth with better schools for our children, but continues to play a not insignificant role in boosting the economy of the state, providing jobs for thousands and thousands of our workers,” says the 2o14 report: The Economic Impact of MSBA Investments on the Massachusetts Economy.

Prior to the creation of the MSBA in 2004, the Bay State likewise had a complicated history with adequate supports for school buildings.

Clayton-Matthews and Bluestone note, “By the early 2000’s, the ‘temporary’ (Massachusetts school building assistance) program had become unsustainable, accumulating more than $11 billion in unfunded promises to local districts. By 2003, there were 428 projects on a waiting list to begin construction, and communities that actually broke ground, routinely waited years – sometimes decades – to receive their first reimbursement payment from the state.”

Our current predicament sounds similar. Over at WPRI, Dan McGowan reveals Rhode Island has “$600 million in [school] facility maintenance deferred since 2011.”

According to Clayton-Matthew and Bluestone, here’s the low down on the Massachusetts School Building Authority:

“Since 2004, the MSBA has made over $10.5 billion in payments to cities, towns and regional school districts, including full or partial payments to all of the eligible Waiting List Projects. In addition, the MSBA has completed 784 of the 788 backlogged audits inherited from the former program, saving the taxpayers of Massachusetts more than $1 billion in project costs and $2.9 million in local interest costs.

The MSBA’s grant program places tremendous emphasis on planning, due diligence and prioritization of scarce MSBA resources. The MSBA approves new projects through a competitive process that stresses need and urgency, and reimbursement can range from 31 to 80 percent of eligible project costs.

There are currently more than 300 construction, renovation and repair projects in the MSBA’s Capital Pipeline. The MSBA, which has a designated revenue stream of one penny of the state sales tax, collaborates with municipalities to invest approximately $500 million per year in schools across the Commonwealth.”

By contrast, Governor Raimondo’s proposed $20 million cannot simultaneously restore Mt Pleasant High School, bring modern science labs and a renovated auditorium to Gilbert Stuart Middle School, fix the pipes at Roger Williams Middle School – let alone spruce up additional schools in Pawtucket and North Kingston.

Discussion is in the air. Cumberland Senator Ryan Pearson has a bill more like Massachusetts’ successful system than Raimondo’s proposal. Providence Representative Aaron Regunburg wrote to his constituents, “while this is just a start and is not enough to solve our school infrastructure needs – I will do everything in my power to ensure that the final budget includes at least this level of additional funds.”

More delayed maintenance in Rhode Island won’t make future rehabs any cheaper or allow Rhode Islanders to benefit from the Massachusetts model of economic investment through school rebuilding and construction.

Unless Governor Raimondo’s plan is to let several thousand more children over the next few years learn in decaying structures, it’s time to start talking to leaders in Massachusetts. Rhody can learn their game plan – and then do it better!

March 16, 2015

Pawtucket students demand return of beloved English teacher

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Students at Jacqueline Walsh Arts School for the Performing and Visual Arts (JMW) in Pawtucket are protesting the suspension of William Ashton, a favorite English teacher. About 30 students gathered on the sidewalk before and after school to demand Ashton’s immediate reinstatement. Spokespersons Hope Norton and Maggie Roberts vow that the protests will continue until Ashton is back.

According to students, William Ashton was escorted off the school premises by “people in suits” after he told students that school funding will not be affected by student’s opting out of the controversial PARCC testing. Another teacher had informed the students that if 95 percent of the students did not take the test, funding would be cut and the school would be closed. After telling his students that this wasn’t the case, Ashton was escorted from the school grounds halfway through the next period.

Calls and emails to the office of Pawtucket School Superintendent Patti DiCenso have gone unanswered.

The kids have shown a real talent for organizing and utilizing online social networks. The BRING BACK MR. ASHTON Facebook page has 2,300+ likes as of this writing and an online petition has 600+ signatures. The kids have developed a Twitter hashtag, #‎BringBackAshton and have collected hundreds of dollars on GoFundMe for tee shirts.

From everyone I talked to I got the impression that William Ashton is exactly the kind of teacher you want in your school. After watching the video, consider contacting Superintendent DiCenso (401-729-6332 / dicensop@psdri.net) and supporting these kids.

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015

Students say school suspension bill reduces racist results

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A bill that seeks to interrupt the school to prison pipeline seemed to be initially met with some resistance among lawmakers in the House Health, Education and Welfare Committee. After all, this same committee, under the leadership of Joseph McNamara and Grace Diaz, shepherded legislation to deal with student suspensions four years ago.

“This is an area where we have been successful,” said Rep. McNamara with justifiable pride, pointing out that he and Rep. Diaz successfully passed legislation affecting students that were truant.

“Passing that bill,” continued McNamara, “decreased the suspension rate in Rhode Island by, I believe, 30 percent.” Students can only be suspended, under this law, if they are a threat to other student’s safety, or engage in persistent behavior that impedes the ability of others to learn.

Though overall suspensions may be down, racial bias in meting out suspensions is still a problem. A recent report by the RI ACLU has shown that black students are “suspended from school with record high disparity” while Hispanic students “remain severely over-suspended at some of the highest rates observed over nine years.”

In response to this data, Hilary Davis, of the RI ACLU has outlined a series of actions to help combat this alarming trend, and Rep John Lombardi, has advanced House bill 5383.

Lombardi’s bill is a good start in that it “directs school superintendents to review and respond to discipline data where there is an unequal impact on students based on race, ethnicity, or disability,” and would prevent “out of school suspensions unless student’s conduct meets certain standards.”

The data alone might not have been enough to convince the General Assembly to act on Lombardi’s bill. That’s why the testimony of four students representing Young Voices was so important and persuasive. One after another these young students reported to the committee members what they had personally witnessed.

Grace, a junior at Classical High School in Providence, knows from her own experience that students are routinely suspended for “non-violent behaviors or even for simply being late to school,” actions prohibited under the law passed four years ago. She told of a student who was suspended for being disruptive in class, even though he never presented any threat to the other students. “We all felt sorry for him,” she says, “but there was nothing we could do.”

Students, say the representatives of Young Voices, are routinely suspended for using cell phones, coming late to class, disrespecting the teachers, or swearing. Kendall, a junior at Juanita Sanchez, made an excellent point when she said, “When kids see that their punishment does no correlate with their offense, they become angry, knowing that kids who do egregious acts are held to the same punishment. It is simply unfair. The fact is that schools are not following the law and are finding loopholes around it.”

March 11, 2015

ACLU: RI elementary schools promote gender stereotypes

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Despite decades of progress toward gender equality, in Rhode Island today gender-exclusive student events that are specifically held for girls or boys with the active support of elementary schools help to perpetuate blatant gender stereotypes. Almost invariably, the girls’ events, organized by parent-teacher groups and publicized by the schools, are dances, with another gender-stereotyped event, like a pajama party, occasionally taking their place. By contrast, and just as invariably, the events arranged for boys involve almost anything but dancing, are wide-ranging, and focus on purportedly male-friendly activities like sports and arcade games.

That’s the finding of a report issued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, based on a survey of 40 elementary schools in 16 school districts. The report, “Girls Just Wanna Darn Socks,” states that the schools’ promotion of these parent teacher association (PTA) and parent teacher organization (PTO) activities reinforces outdated stereotypes of gender roles in Rhode Island’s youngest residents.

“Rhode Island girls, routinely sent to dances, are fed the same tired stereotype that they must look pretty and be social, while boys are given access to magic and science shows and physical activities – their own and others – like PawSox games and trampoline parks,” the report stated. Through open records requests, the ACLU found that during the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years, 80% of “girls’ events” at the 40 elementary schools studied were dances. The few other events held for girls generally encompassed pajama parties, yoga nights, and blanket sewing. The activities for boys, on the other hand, were much more diverse, and included attendance at baseball and hockey games, science and magic shows, and outings for laser tag, bowling, and arcade games.

Although these extracurricular activities are hosted by PTAs and PTOs, the ACLU’s investigation found that the schools regularly promote these events in various ways, through posting on school websites, use of school listservs, and by otherwise offering the parent-teacher groups special access to school resources to promote the events. The report argues that the use of these school resources to support such stereotypical and discriminatory events undermines Title IX, the landmark anti-discrimination law that has helped break down the barriers between girls’ and boys’ education over the past four decades.

Great progress has been made by women in education in the years since Title IX’s passage, but girls and women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. By supporting these gender-exclusive events, the ACLU report argues, “Rhode Island’s schools, however unintentionally, support the sort of stereotyping that helped discourage girls from those fields for so long.”

The report concludes:

In the 21st Century, however, it should be simply unacceptable for public schools to be fostering the notion that girls belong at formal dances, yoga or sewing while boys should be offered baseball games, bowling and science. Not every girl today is interested in growing up to be Cinderella; many enjoy participating in and attending sports events and playing arcade games. Similarly, not every boy makes sports his obsessive pastime or cringes at the thought of going to a dance. Such gender-segregated programming – based on gender stereotypes about the talents, capacities and preferences of children – is harmful to boys and girls alike, and fails in any meaningful way to provide “reasonably comparable” experiences.

The report called on school equal opportunity officers to halt school support of these types of discriminatory extracurricular events, and instead discuss with PTO/PTAs the need to promote gender-inclusive activities. The ACLU also called on the state Department of Education to intervene by providing guidance to school districts on the illegal nature of their promotion of these gender-discriminatory activities. The General Assembly enacted a law in 2013 authorizing gender-exclusive extracurricular activities, but required them to be “reasonably comparable.” The ACLU and numerous women’s rights groups opposed the legislation.

March 4, 2015

PARCC as a high stakes test will spell disaster

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It is heartening to see a robust discussion on the imminent use of the PARCC test in Rhode Island’s public schools, but the state Department of Education seems to have made up its mind before the test has even gotten off the ground. It is already actively encouraging school districts to use the PARCC to penalize students as early as next year.

Before having any chance to meaningfully examine how this untried test is working, or to determine whether, like the NECAP, it will have a disproportionate and devastating impact on poor and minority children, English Language Learners and students with disabilities, Commissioner Deborah Gist has already advised school districts they may “use PARCC results as a component in determining students’ grades” beginning as early as the upcoming 2015-16 school year. The Commissioner, with the backing of the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, has also encouraged school districts to consider using the PARCC as a high stakes graduation requirement for the Class of 2017.

In light of this push by RIDE, the biggest concern isn’t necessarily whether testing should be delayed for a year or even whether children should be able to opt out – it is whether the test results should be used punitively against students rather than as a supportive accountability tool to help them and their schools succeed. RIDE likes to claim its goal is the latter, but as we know from the NECAP debacle, it operates more like the former.

RIDE’s desire to punish kids by allowing the test to be used in this high stakes fashion so quickly is extremely troubling, especially since education officials know full well the importance of time in getting a new test like this off the ground. Last August, before changing course, the Commissioner gave good reasons why PARCC should be used as a high stakes test beginning in 2020, not 2017. As she noted then:

“We need to make sure that everyone has adequate time to prepare for the implementation. That means students having adequate support and time, families and teachers and school and district leaders need adequate time to make the changes to their support and interventions for individual students.”

By instead giving school districts the option to use the test results against students a year from now, RIDE is actually doing everything it can to make sure students are not fully prepared. To make matters worse, the local implementation of such testing places pressures on students of particular school districts who embrace PARCC in this fashion, while protecting students who happen to live in more skeptical school districts.

We all want students to succeed, but this approach spells disaster and will inevitably lead to a repeat of the fiasco surrounding the NECAP. Opting out of the PARCC test means little if students face a reduction in grades or denial of a diploma in a few years for failing to take it. Nor is it fair if students who opt in find their grades lowered because of their scores on the test. Whether one agrees or disagrees that PARCC can be a useful support tool, parents and others concerned about punitive standardized testing should be demanding first and foremost that this test not be used for high stakes graduation or grading decisions in the way that RIDE is, sadly, so hastily determined to use it.

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