Kids, Schools, Twitter, Profanity, WPRO And Gist
There’s so much to blog about in this WPRO story about how a Warwick high school suspended a couple kids for sending rude and profane tweets to Education Comissioner Deborah Gist about high stakes tests as a requirement of graduation. In no particular order: Say what you will about Gist’s education policies, she should be [...]
Schools Censor Internet From Students, Teachers
If a school administrator claimed the right to censor a teacher’s work plan on a regular basis, there would be an outcry over such a blatant attack on academic freedom. In fact, this scenario plays out in our public schools every day. The censorship occurs in the context of Internet access by students, and it [...]
New Open Records Law Needs Enforcement
Between 1999 and June 2012, the Attorney General’s office filed lawsuits against public bodies for violating the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA) on only six occasions, less than 4% of the time after finding that violations of the law had been committed. That is one of the findings of a report issued today [...]
Good Systems Sometimes Defend Bad People
A typically long and exhaustive profile on voter suppression in this week’s New Yorker starts with an anecdote of a middle-aged black woman from Ohio who had voted in every election since she was 18 having her registration questioned as a result of being flagged by right wing efforts to stifle poor people from voting. [...]
RI Medical Society Backs ACLU Marijuana Lawsuit
It’s not just the biggest backers of civil liberties in the state that are decrying the administrative changes to the Rhode Island’s medical marijuana law, the state’s medical society is now calling foul too. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health for administratively making it harder for patients to obtain medicinal [...]
Why High Stakes Tests Shouldn’t Grade Students
A broad coalition of education activists and defenders of the less fortunate will attend the Board of Regents meeting tonight to ask the public education oversight committee to reconsider a new rule that would require high school students to pass a standardized test – traditionally used for grading school performance, not student – in order [...]
Progress Report: Downside of High Stakes Testing; More WPRI Poll Results; Ann Coulter on RI Voter ID; Patch
Last week we reported that education activists plan to attend Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting to protest new graduation requirements tied to high stakes testing. Today, the Providence Journal reports that “If those rules were already in place, 44 percent of this year’s seniors would be in jeopardy of not receiving a diploma, based on [...]
Protest RIDE’s High-Stakes Testing Policy Thursday
Next Thursday youth, parents, and other advocates will be heading to the Board of Regents meeting to protest against the new high-stakes testing graduation requirements that Commission Gist and the Regents passed last year. This discriminatory policy, which is scheduled to be implemented in Rhode Island schools this October, is an absolute disaster. It uses [...]
Progress Report: Rent, Wages and Econ 101; Community Foreclosure Study, EG Ordinance Violates 1st Amendment
You don’t need to a degree in economics to understand why rent is skyrocketing while wages are stagnant. As the middle class is squeezed, fewer can afford the American dream of home ownership. So they rent instead. Demand then has its way with supply and the landlords win while the working class loses. Yet another [...]
ACLU: Same Sex Couples Say ‘I Don’t’ to Civil Union Law
Only 68 Rhode Islanders have applied for civil union licenses since the state passed a law allowing same sex couples to obtain these relationship licenses in lieu of full marriage equality in 2011, according to numbers the RI ACLU said it got from the Department of Health. When a similar law was passed in Hawaii, [...]
Progress Report: No Olympic Glory for Local Manufacturing
One of the main reasons our nation’s economy is failing is because people don’t buy stuff that Americans make anymore. Indeed, even the U.S. Olympic team has its uniforms made in China, by Ralph Lauren no less. Congressman David Cicilline, speaking at Northwest Woolen Mills in Woonsocket yesterday, said parts of those uniforms could be [...]
Chafee Should Veto Woonsocket Cross Bills
At 2:30 AM on the morning of June 13th, an hour before adjourning for the year, the General Assembly approved two outlandish companion bills, H-8143A and S 3035 as amended. In direct contrast to the principles that animated the founding of our state, these bills establish a government commission with the blatantly inappropriate and unconstitutional [...]
ACLU Questions Legality of Barrington Tuition Idea
The Barrington School Committee finally has a legal opinion on its idea to allow a small number of out-of-town students to to pay tuition to attend its high-performing public schools. It’s from the RI ACLU. “The Barrington School Department has no obligation to establish a special program to accept students from out-of-town, but once it [...]
ACLU Sues Over Wrongful Detention of US Citizen
Ada Morales, of North Providence, is a US citizen. But twice she has been detained by law enforcement officials who didn’t realize she she had become naturalized in 1995. In an effort to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen to her a third time – or someone else for the first time – the RI [...]
ACLU: Narragansett Violated Renters’ Rights
The town of Narragansett issued overnight parking passes to three URI grad students in September. But they still got parking tickets in January. Why? “It’s the latest in continuing series of petty attempts to make students feel as unwelcome as possible in the town,” said Steven Brown, of the RI ACLU. “It seems like such [...]
Legislature Considers Better Public Records Act
Rhode Island’s public records law may get some much-needed revisions if a bill heard by the House Judiciary Committee last night becomes law. The proposal, introduced by Rep. Michael Marcello, D-Scituate, would be the first amendment to the Access to Public Records Act in 15 years. It would: decrease the amount of time a public [...]
ACLU: Flanders Flouts Law By Delegating His Duties
The Rhode Island ACLU filed a lawsuit today against Central Falls receiver Bob Flanders saying he is improperly delegating authority to his chief of staff Gayle Corrigan. Flanders, ACLU attorney Jennifer Azevedo said, “is stepping in for the mayor and city council. If he is going to do that he should have to do what [...]
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