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Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387 ACLU – Page 4 – RI Future Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387
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“They have to act on our petition,” said Steve Brown, executive director of the RI ACLU. “They can deny it, but they have to address it and they have not.”
According to the lawsuit, the Board of Education missed the deadline to address a petition raised by the public. The Board met last week, but did not discuss the issue or have it listed in its agenda. Many members of the public showed up to speak on the issue, and several were not allowed to be heard during the open forum section of the meeting.
“There is tremendous uncertainty regarding the NECAP test that is causing extraordinary stress and anxiety among thousands of families in the state,” Brown said. “It’s perhaps the major issue out there and the Board needs to grapple with it.”
Board Chairwoman Eva Mancuso has told reporters that the Board plans to address the matter in private at its August retreat. Brown thinks the issue should be discussed publicly as well. “This is precisely what the open meetings law is all about,” he said. “This is an extremely critical public issue.”
Numerous questions have been raised about the validity of the NECAP test (and others) as a high stakes testing tool. When the NECAP was introduced in Rhode Island, the Department of Education specifically acknowledged that it should not be used for making graduation decisions. A comprehensive 2011 study by the National Research Council concluded more generally that “high school exit exam programs, as currently implemented in the United States, decrease the rate of high school graduation without increasing achievement.”
Last month, the General Assembly entered the fray by approving a resolution calling on the BOE to delay implementation of the high stakes requirement. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras made a similar request a month earlier. In a letter accompanying the petition in June, the organizations argued that, rather than educating students, the requirement has led to too much time being spent teaching to the test. In fact, last month, RIDE supported legislation that explicitly authorized school districts to yank students out of core classroom activities to prep for the test if that was deemed to be in the student’s “best interest.”
ACLU attorney Wiens noted today: “While we ultimately hope that the Board adopts our proposed amendments to the NECAP graduation requirements, at this juncture, we are simply asking the Board to consider our petition as the law requires.”
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The stakes are being raised if the state wants to push ahead with using the NECAP test as a high stakes graduation requirement. The policy of using the school assessment test to assess individual students used to just be unpopular, but it will soon also be the subject of lawsuit brought by the RI ACLU.
Executive Director Steve Brown said this morning that the public would have to wait for a event later this morning to learn about the specifics of the lawsuit. We’ll post more information on this as it is available.
The ACLU and others have said using the NECAP test as a high-stakes graduation requirement violates the civil rights of special education and English language learners.
In May, Education Board Chairwoman Eva Mancuso told RI Future that the Board would reconsider using the NECAP as a graduation requirement.
The NECAP test as a high-stakes graduation requirement has become a flashpoint in public education politics in Rhode Island, as many of the arguments against the test have gained traction during Deborah Gist’s high-profile contract debate. Here’s how the ProJo described the flashpoint in an article published this morning:
Opposition to the testing requirement has gained momentum over the past six months, with students, parents and teachers arguing that the test is unfair, especially for urban and minority students who they say haven’t been adequately prepared, especially for the math portion of the test.
Educators have faulted the test because they say it was not designed to be used as a so-called high-stakes test.
The General Assembly recently passed a non-binding resolution expressing its objection to linking the NECAP to a high school diploma.
State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist has come under heavy criticism for her refusal to back down on the testing mandate, and, at one point, her fate in Rhode Island appeared tied to the NECAP. She recently received a two-year extension of her contract after a protracted closed-door discussion by the Rhode Island Board of Education, which oversees K-12 and the state’s three public colleges.
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“The passage of marriage equality legislation was not only the highlight of this year’s General Assembly session, it was about the only light,” it reads. Bills to restrict sex discrimination and racial profiling were ignored while “the legislature instead approved in the closing hours of the session a diverse anti-civil liberties agenda, which included bills promoting sex discrimination in school extracurricular activities, providing funding to an anti-abortion religious organization, weakening the state’s open records law, and subjecting teenagers to felony penalties for committing graffiti offenses.”
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The Providence Student Union, the ACLU, the RI Disability Law Center and 14 other organizations with a vested interest in equitable public education in the Ocean State are formally asking RIDE to stop using the NECAP test as a graduation requirement.
“The new Board of Education has never had the opportunity to fully discuss, much less take a position on, the actions of its predecessor – the Board of Regents – in approving high stakes testing,” said RI ACLU Executive Director Steve Brown, a frequent contributor to RI Future. “Through this petition, we are hopeful that the Board will take a stand and agree with the many organizations signing this petition that high stakes testing is bad policy.”
“I think that’s an important issue to come before the board,” she told me in May. “I certainly want to look at that issue.”
She also said: “I don’t think it’s the best test.” And added, “40 percent of kids are not going to not graduate from high school if I have anything to do about it.”
Using the NECAP test as a graduation requirement has emerged as one of the most controversial initiatives of Deborah Gist’s embattled tenure as education commission of Rhode Island.
Not only has using high stakes tests as a graduation requirement become more controversial across the country, the issue is further strained in Rhode Island because there are unanswered questions about the validity of the NECAP test in particular to measure individual student performance.
Here’s the full press release sent from the Providence Student Union today:
A coalition of 17 organizations representing youth, parents, the disability community, civil rights activists, college access organizations and other constituencies have filed a formal petition with the state Board of Education to initiate a public rule-making process over a proposal to rescind Rhode Island’s controversial new high-stakes testing graduation requirement. Under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Board will have 30 days to respond to the petition.
“The clock is ticking, and the futures of literally thousands of Rhode Island teens are hanging in the balance,” said Steven Brown, ACLU of RI Executive Director. “The new Board of Education has never had the opportunity to fully discuss, much less take a position on, the actions of its predecessor – the Board of Regents – in approving high stakes testing. Through this petition, we are hopeful that the Board will take a stand and agree with the many organizations signing this petition that high stakes testing is bad policy.”
Questions about the validity of high stakes testing as a graduation requirement have been a source of great concern and debate in recent months. In a cover letter accompanying the petition, the organizations echoed the views of many students and teachers that, rather than educating students, the policy has led to too much time being spent teaching to the test. In fact, earlier this month RIDE supported legislation that explicitly authorizes school districts to pull students out of core classroom instruction to prep for the test, if doing so is deemed to be in the student’s “best interest.” The groups also point to RIDE’s own failure to meet 32 of 33 goals it set for itself in improving achievement for traditionally vulnerable students as “ample proof of the validity of our concerns.”
RIDE has repeatedly assured worried parents that many students at risk of not graduating need not fear the testing requirement. But the signatories, like many citizens across the state, remain concerned – especially for the significant cohort of ELL and special education students.
“Use of high-stakes testing has a disproportionate impact on students with disabilities and is counter to what we know works best for these students,” said Anne Mulready, supervising attorney at the RI Disability Law Center. “Our state and school districts have made significant investments in building the capacity to provide individualized instruction for students with disabilities that focuses on individual student strengths and learning styles, as required by federal and state law. But these investments are being needlessly squandered by the use of a high-stakes test to determine who gets a high school diploma.”
The Board of Education has been in existence for six months, but has never formally discussed or voted on this controversial requirement, despite the extensive public comment the subject has received at Board meetings. Under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Board has thirty days to initially respond to the petition, either by denying or it by initiating a public rule-making process, where testimony will be accepted and the Board can, as the groups note, “consider in a timely but deliberate manner whether to accept, modify, or reject this proposal.”
As Hector Perea, a member of the Providence Student Union noted, “The petition does not make the Board take a stand on high-stakes testing. It just pushes the Board to start a public process where they have to, at the very least, think about whether to debate the issue. We think the thousands of concerned students and parents of Rhode Island deserve at least that.”
Among the groups signing the petition are The Autism Project, Children’s Policy Coalition, College Visions, NAACP Providence Chapter, Providence Student Union, ACLU of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Disability Law Center, Rhode Island Teachers Of English Language Learners, Urban League of Rhode Island, and Youth in Action.
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Yesterday, the ACLU filed a major federal lawsuit in response to last week’s chilling disclosure that the federal government obtained millions of phone call information records from Verizon as a routine matter. Despite the enormous privacy concerns raised by this unprecedented data-mining collaboration, the General Assembly is poised to pass a bill that would specifically allow both federal and state officials to similarly obtain the location tracking information of any Rhode Island cell phone subscriber for any reason and at any time.
The authorization to do so is contained in an otherwise non-controversial bill known as the “Kelsey Smith Act,” which is designed to help police more quickly locate individuals who are missing or are being kidnapped. (H-5456, S-284)
Although the bill provides for the release of cell phone tracking information to police upon request in certain emergency situations, a separate section of the bill goes further to broadly provide that:
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, nothing in this section prohibits a wireless telecommunications carrier from establishing protocols by which the carrier could voluntarily disclose device location information.”
In other words, voluntary disclosure of tracking information is not, in fact, limited to emergencies.
The geographic location of cell phones is tracked whenever the devices are turned on, and the information is often retained by phone companies for at least a year. This can reveal strikingly personal information. As a federal judge wrote, a person’s location data might disclose “whether he is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.” In short, phone metadata can sometimes reveal almost as much as the content of the phone calls themselves.
The goal of the Kelsey Smith bill is a laudable one. But it is one thing for phone companies and police to share private location tracking information when an individual is at risk of serious harm, and another matter entirely to give them carte blanche authority to share that information about anyone for any reason. Yet this bill is quietly making its way through the legislative process with virtually no objection.
The revelations this past week about the secret tracking of phone calls by the federal government should give us all pause. It would be extremely unfortunate if, despite these revelations, Rhode Island actually gave the government the formal authority to do the same thing for cell phone tracking records. General Assembly members should be strongly urged to eliminate this dangerous provision from the bill before its passage.
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The General Assembly is poised to pass a series of very troubling bills that will keep parents, teachers and the public in total darkness when it comes to issues surrounding school safety. The proposed legislation (S-369A, S-801A, H-5941A), supported by the Governor and legislative leaders, would make secret all school committee discussions, and all school district documents, regarding school safety plans.
The enactment of these bills – which has been vigorously opposed by the ACLU, the R.I. Press Association, the New England First Amendment Coalition, and Common Cause Rhode Island – would be a major step backward for parental involvement in critical school matters and for the public’s right to know.
To appreciate just how far-reaching this legislation is, consider the following:
A school committee could discuss and decide in complete secrecy whether to have armed guards or other armed staff in their schools.
Parents wishing to learn a school’s plans for contacting them in the event of an emergency would be denied the ability their ability to get that information.
A concerned PTO interested in finding out how well the school district has complied with state department of education school safety standards would be told they have no right to know.
This extraordinary legislative response to tragedies like Newtown is likely to have precisely the opposite effect of what is intended. Rather than making parents feel safer, this blanket secrecy can only make parents feel more insecure and anxious about whether their children will be safe during an emergency.
Ultimately, the legislation is based on an element of hubris — that only school officials know the best way to protect students. The bills eliminate the ability of parents and the community to respond to the appropriateness of a school district’s safety plan, or to point out possible flaws that could be corrected or strengthened, or to hold school officials accountable if their standards, or implementation of those standards, fall short.
Just as we have seen on so many other matters post-9/11, governmental concerns about the need for secrecy in order to promote “security” or “safety” often serve no purpose other to prevent any meaningful public oversight.
In fact, there have recently been unrelated lockdowns in various schools around the state. It is becoming common for parents and the public to be given vague, and ultimately useless, hints about the reasons for these lockdowns, and thus no reason to know whether the threat was serious, or whether schools are engaging in vast, routine and unnecessary over-reactions that only perpetuate a climate of fear detracting from schools’ educational mission.
Obviously, specific types of security-related school information deserve confidentiality, but a complete ban on accessing any school safety policies, or being able to hear the reasons for their adoption, promotes the sort of secrecy that is truly harmful in a democratic society.
In other contexts, the Governor has talked about his administration’s efforts “to provide the public with an increased level of information regarding the operation and management of government.” Passage of this legislation does the opposite and, more ominously, sets the stage for further government attempts to keep all of us in the dark on important matters, all in the guise of doing it for our own good.
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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 that the mandate is poor policy and will likely have devastating effects for thousands of students who deserve a diploma.
“As a result of that high-stakes test requirement, 40% of the Class of 2014 — more than 4,000 students — are at risk of not graduating next year. Immediate action is critical in order to address the uncertainty and anxiety facing these students and their families.”
“Before the fate of these students is sealed, we wanted to make sure you were aware of the impact of high stakes testing, and urge you to find more effective strategies for education reform. Your newly constituted Board has not had the opportunity to consider the full consequences of this previously adopted mandate but, in light of its potentially devastating impact, we believe it is incumbent upon you to do so.”
“…There are other research-proven strategies to improve student outcomes that should be the focus of educational reform efforts. We also take issue with the notion that retests and ‘alternative’ testing will adequately address this problem. In addition, last-minute attempts at remediation by school districts are ‘too little, too late.’ We strongly urge you to reexamine this issue at the earliest possible opportunity before too much more damage is done to our students and our educational system.”
Other signatories to the letter include The Autism Project, College Visions, the George Wiley Center, the NAACP, Providence Student Union, Providence Youth Student Movement, Rhode Island Legal Services, Tides Family Services, and the Urban League of Rhode Island.
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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 commended for engaging with the people – and especially her critics – through social media. I think it’s her best attribute as a public official and she deserves tons of credit for it.
But we don’t need all adults to agree with Gist’s ideas, as she suggested in the ProJo this morning. In fact, we need a debate about this and the Providence Student Union found a way to engage in it.
Say what you will about the tweeting students’ thoughts on high stakes testing, or their effectiveness in communicating them, they should be commended for being politically active and engaged.
Rhode Island is seeing a trend of local high school students organizing and speaking out against high stakes testing as a graduation requirement. I wonder if the offending tweeters were familiar with the Providence Student Union’s Take the Test event this weekend? There’s also this story from GoLocal about honor roll students in Coventry who are opposed to the high stakes test.
I’m not certain that students have a free speech right to swear at education officials, either on school time or off. But here’s what the ACLU of RI said about it in a statement released yesterday:
“…the school superintendent’s involvement with the families of students who tweeted off school property and during non-school hours is a different matter. It is simply not the school’s business what students tweet on their own time where the messages had nothing to do with the Warwick schools, or with students or adults at those schools. Local school officials are not 24 hour a day nannies or Twitter etiquette enforcers.”
Pot calling the kettle black: Who better than John DePetro to break a story about ridiculous and legally-questionable speech about education professionals.
Prediction for today: DePetro will blame the student’s actions on the ACLU and the teachers’ union, and will be equally as foolish as the teenagers he is chiding!
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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 should be no more tolerated than it would be for a teacher’s offline lessons.
Every school uses Internet filtering software to bar student access to a wide range of websites. A report the ACLU of RI has just issued demonstrates just how pervasive, flawed and inappropriate the use of that software is. It’s not just that students – and teachers – find themselves barred from accessing. To give just a few examples, the websites of PBS Kids and National Stop Bullying Day, or a video clip of the Nutcracker ballet, or a website on global warming, or sites that include information about “anti-government groups.” That is bad enough.
What is worse is that when a teacher seeks to have one of these websites unblocked so their students can make use of it during a lesson plan, administrators often exercise unbridled discretion in deciding whether to accede to the teacher’s request. The effect of this regime of censorship is to significantly hinder teachers from making full use of the Internet to educate students, and to significantly hamper students from accessing relevant information in the classroom.
The ACLU report recommends a number of actions to address the serious impact that use of these filters has on students and teachers’ First Amendment rights and on their right to access information at school. Once they recognize how problematic the use of this software is, we are sure those concerned about education will demand changes in school policies and help free both students and teachers from the shackles that this privately-created software imposes. I encourage everybody to read our findings and help us take action.
Link to news release and report: http://www.riaclu.org/20130311.htm
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Mike Field, of the Attorney General’s office, testifies at a hearing on a proposal to update Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act in 2012. (Photo by Bob Plain)
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 by the ACLU of Rhode Island, which examines past enforcement of the open records law by the AG’s office and urges stronger enforcement in the future.
In June 2012, the General Assembly enacted comprehensive amendments to APRA, and expanded the circumstances for imposing penalties against public bodies that violate the Act. This prompted the ACLU to examine how APRA had been enforced by the Attorney General’s office, the state agency explicitly given enforcement powers under APRA, prior to those amendments.
In addition to the lack of litigation by that office to address violations, we found other discouraging patterns. Among them:
Violations of uncomplicated aspects of the law — such as responding to an open records request within the required time period, notifying requesters of their appeal rights, and not charging unreasonable fees for the inspection and copying of records — occurred repeatedly.
Even the most blatant violations of the statute rarely led to legal action by the Attorney General. In one recent instance, the same public body – the Town of North Providence – was found to have violated APRA six separate times within a two-year period, yet even after the sixth violation, the Attorney General refused to find that the Town had engaged in a “knowing and willful” violation that warranted seeking penalties under the law.
It should be noted that the AG’s failure to pursue vigorous APRA enforcement occurred regardless of who had been in office during the time period studied. And it must be acknowledged that until the 2012 amendments were adopted, the Attorney General faced a high standard – a finding of a “knowing and willful” violation of the law – in order to obtain financial penalties against a public body. But since so many of the violations have been so clear, even this standard should have led to a much stronger track record in pursuing legal action and thereby helping to deter future violations by public bodies.
Under last year’s amendments to the law, a public body can now be subject to financial penalties for “reckless” violations of the law as well as “knowing and willful” ones, which means the complainant need no longer prove that the violation was done with deliberate knowledge of its illegality. In order to promote respect for, and compliance with, the law, it is essential that the AG make use of the statute’s strengthened penalty provisions to seek fines against public bodies that engage in clear violations of APRA’s requirements. It is insufficient to issue findings of APRA violations with no further repercussions when the violations should never have occurred in the first place. A more vigorous response is necessary in order to help reverse a culture of secrecy that seems to pervade too many government agencies.
If little changes, however, the General Assembly should further strengthen the penalty sections of the law by significantly increasing the fines that can be imposed to encourage enforcement by private parties. The General Assembly should also consider whether another state agency should be tasked with the responsibility of enforcing the statute if the AG’s office does not increase its pursuit of violations against recalcitrant agencies. The public’s right to know demands nothing less.
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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.
This is when voter suppression is easy to identify.
It’s not so easy when to notice, or to defend, when the voter in question is a convicted child murderer and accused cannibal who lives in a mental institution. But such is the case with Michael Woodmansee, who killed an eight-year-old boy in 1975 and was released early from prison last year and applied for an absentee ballot this year.
Rhode Island, like 35 other states, allows felons to vote after they have served out their debt to society, according to ProCon.org.
In Alabama, Delaware and Mississippi, murders permanently lose the right to vote, and in Florida a convicted murderer can petition the state for the right to vote after seven years. Only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow felons to vote while incarcerated (by absentee ballot, of course).
Setting aside the larger philosophical dilemma of whether a murderer should be allowed to vote, because the law allows them to vote – no matter how heinous his crime – we’re obliged to let them do so. The state Board of Elections and the ACLU deserve credit for recognizing the sometimes unpleasant reality to living in a civilized society: you gotta play by the rules even when it feels yucky to do so.
Last week’s unlawful decision by the chair of the Cranston Board of Canvassers to deny an absentee ballot application simply because he personally opposed that person’s right to vote was an egregious violation of the democratic process. That he would do so only four years after unsuccessfully trying to bar two other residents at the Eleanor Slater Hospital from voting amounted to a flagrant case of malfeasance.
People who are institutionalized for mental illness do not lose the right to vote under the law. Nor do people who have committed heinous crimes but have served their prison time. No election official has the authority to prevent a person from voting simply because he doesn’t believe they deserve to exercise that right. Allowing this undermining of the electoral process to stand unchallenged would have established an unconscionable precedent.
While DeLorenzo (who was on Dan Yorke Monday) and Robert Muksian are certainly within their right to resign, they were also certainly not well-suited for the positions they were appointed to. Their job was to administer and oversee elections, not to determine whose crimes were atrocious enough to warrant disenfranchisement. The General Assembly, through 17.9.2-3, had already done so.
In fact, that law reads to me like Woodmansee should have been given the option of re-registering upon his release from jail.
Michael Woodmansee is the worst type of criminal, and there’s a part of me that feels like he doesn’t deserve to participate in the democratic process … but I’m pretty sure it’s better to have a good system defending a bad person than to have a good person defending a bad system.
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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 marijuana by stripping nurse practitioners and physicians assistants from being able to recommend medical cannabis. And today, the Rhode Island Medical Society has joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff, according to a press release from the ACLU.
Here’s the press release:
Adding more weight to the seriousness of the issues involved in the case, the Rhode Island Medical Society (RIMS) has joined as a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit filed earlier this week, challenging the state Department of Health (DOH) for making it more difficult for patients with debilitating medical conditions to participate in the state’s medical marijuana program.
The suit challenges a new DOH policy that no longer allows registered nurse practitioners and physician assistants to certify that a patient has a debilitating medical condition that qualifies him or her for participation in the medical marijuana program. Under the new policy, only certifications signed by physicians are accepted. The new policy was implemented without any public notice or input, and was applied to deny applications that had been pending for months. It reversed a contrary policy that had been in effect for over six years.
The original plaintiffs in the suit, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney John Dineen, were the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, the Rhode Island Academy of Physician Assistants, and Peter Nunes, Sr., an individual whose application to participate in the medical marijuana program was denied by the DOH under the new policy. The ACLU and the plaintiffs argue that the new restriction on the number of medical professionals who can make certifications has serious consequences for some patients. The lawsuit raises both procedural and substantive issues with the policy.
Steven R. DeToy, Director of Public and Government Affairs for RIMS, said today: “Patients know that medical offices are busy places, and the last thing we want to do is impede the workflow in those offices, which is the only practical effect the Health Department’s rule would have. Patients’ time with their doctor is precious, as we all know. Doctors need to be able to delegate to other members of the health care team so as to have more time with patients. Physician Assistants and nurse practitioners are critical members of the health care delivery team in many doctors’ offices. This arbitrary change by the Department of Health cannot go unchallenged.”
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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 to graduate.
“The proposed revisions have been described to the public as an abandonment of the universally decried three-tier diploma system,” said a letter sent to the Regents by the coalition. “However, the public is largely unaware that they propose to substitute a two-tier system through a Regent’s endorsement which would, for all intents and purposes, yet again effectively label as ‘not proficient’ those students with unendorsed diplomas based on their standardized testing score.”
The letter goes on to read:
According to 2010 NECAP scores, this group would once again include the overwhelming majority of students who are non-white, poor, have disabilities or are English language learners.
Given the significance of these changes and their potential impact on the most vulnerable youth of Rhode Island, it is critical that the public have further opportunity to comment on the new proposal through public hearings so that the intended and unintended consequences of these regulations are fully understood and addressed.
Writing in GoLocalProv, Aaron Regunberg describes why using high-stakes testing for a graduation requirement is such a bad idea:
Last year, 71% of African American students and 70% of Latino students in Rhode Island scored less than partially proficient on one of the NECAP tests and so would not have graduated. And the effects would have been even more serious among other student subgroups—86% of students with IEPs (special education students) and a full 94% of students with Current Limited English Proficiencies would have failed to graduate. It should be clear to most readers that any regulation that puts this many students at risk for failure to graduate is beyond unfair. It puts the entire weight of educational accountability and responsibility on the shoulders of individual students, many of whom have been academically underserved since elementary school and have not been provided with the resources necessary to address their weaknesses in test-taking.
While the statewide proficiency improved, the NECAP results showed that achievement gaps separating many groups of students widened. Gaps between black and white students, Hispanic and white students, English and non-English learners and the gaps between economically disadvantaged students and non-economically disadvantaged students widened at all three grade levels.
“Although I am pleased by the statewide improvements on the 2012 NECAP Science assessments, the persistent achievement gaps across all grade levels remain a significant concern that we will work to address,” David V. Abbott, acting commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said in prepared remarks.
The Regents meet today at 4 p.m. at the Department of Education headquarters at 255 Westminster Street in room 501.
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Downtown Providence from the Providence River. (Photo by Bob Plain)
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 their poor math performance last year on the [NECAPs].”
Proponents of the change say it will help raise the level of education in the Ocean State, while opponents, according to ProJo education writer Jennifer Jordan “say education officials are forcing students to bear the consequences of a failed education system — with disastrous consequences. Without a diploma, young people cannot join the Army, participate in programs such as City Year, or apply to college.”
Speaking of high stakes testing, the Journal also runs this AP story about the El Paso, Texas school district that “was trying to push out hundreds of low-performing sophomores to prevent them from taking accountability tests.”
More WPRI poll results: Gov. Chafee is still unpopular but his approval rating is improving, while Angel Taveras and Gina Raimondo are deadlocked each with 58 percent approval ratings … it’s gonna be an interesting gubernatorial campaign in 2014!!
Did you know conservative pundit Ann Coulter uses Rhode Island as an example when she advocates for voter ID laws. According to Politifact, she told “The View” on Thursday, “One of the first states in the union to pass voter-ID bills was Rhode Island, 85 percent Democratic legislature,” she said. “And who pushed it? A black Democrat in the House, a black Democrat in the Senate. That’s a fact.” It’s true our voter ID law was supported by minority legislators in both chambers but it’s not true that our law was among the first in the country.
I mentioned Patch in yesterday’s Progress Report and it attracted some interesting comments. It’s true that Patch is slashing editorial budgets while increasing the workload on the local editors. It’s also true that many of the local editors don’t place a high value on hard news. One Patch editor told me they don’t even cover their local school committee!! Cranston Patch, on the other hand, does a great job doing real journalism on the community it covers.
Best correction of the day: “The tortoise won its race with the hare in Aesop’s fable about those animals. A clue in Sunday’s crossword puzzle inaccurately described the race’s outcome.”
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How could this not lead to higher standards and higher expectations?
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 a test, the NECAP, that was not designed to evaluate individual achievement, and it will undoubtedly keep many Rhode Island youth from receiving their diplomas (and will have a disproportionate impact on students of color, students with IEPs, and English as a Second Language students).
We need to delay or halt the implementation of this discriminatory testing requirement. Next Thursday is the Board of Regents’ second to last meeting before disbanding in November, so it’s imperative we get them to add this issue to their agenda and let them know, loud and clear, that our focus should be on improving our school systems, not on punishing young people.
To do this, we need a big turnout on Thursday. I’ll be there with youth from the Providence Student Union and a number of other youth organizations and advocacy groups, such as the ACLU. Can you join us?
Details: Thursday, October 4th, at 4:00 pm at the Shepard Building (URI’s Downtown Campus, 5th floor), located at 80 Washington Street in Providence.
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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 failure of the trickle down theory.
Meanwhile one constantly hears, from Republicans and Democrats alike, that something needs to be done about our outrageously high unemployment rate. But no one really said much when the state Department of Labor and training laid off 65 employees earlier this year. Their jobs, by the way, were to help unemployed people get back into the workforce. Now, thanks to a federal grant, we’ll hire back about 20 percent of the laid-off DLT employees. It’s not enough.
And speaking of GoLocal, Dan McGowan makes a great point about former Governor Don Carcieri: “…the fact that URI’s funding was nearly cut in half between 2002 and 2010 is a black eye for the former Governor. One of the biggest complaints from business owners is that the state’s doesn’t have a prepared workforce and cutting funding to the state’s largest college certainly doesn’t help matters.”
The irony in Scott Brown attacking Elizabeth Warren for her Native American heritage is he accuses her of using her roots for professional advancement … while the Washington Post refutes that claim, Brown is pretty clearly using Warren’s Native American heritage to advance his career!
No one should ever want to see another Supreme Court, state or federal, determine another election but there are so many reasons to doubt the veracity of the results in the William San Bento vs. Carlos Tobon Pawtucket Democratic primary for a House seat that we’re glad the ACLU stepped in. San Bento is a solid liberal on economic issues but he isn’t all that healthy and some doubt he can successfully fulfill his commitment to the district.
Today in 1960, Ted Williams hits a home run in his final at bat at that “lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.” Here’s on the event aptly titled “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.”
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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, 106 same sex couples applied for civil union licenses, and in Deleware 85 applied in the first month, according to the ACLU.
From the ACLU press release:
There are a number of explanations for why Rhode Island’s statute has been shunned so thoroughly by couples. A major reason was the adoption of an extremely broad “religious” exemption in the law, known as the “Corvese Amendment,” that significantly undercuts the law’s purpose. The amendment essentially allows any religiously affiliated institutions or employees of those institutions to disregard the validity of a couple’s civil union. In addition, four of the five other New England states authorize same-sex marriage, highlighting the second-class status of civil unions for Rhode Islanders.
House Speaker Gordon Fox said he intends to get a marriage equality bill passed through the House during the next session but it’s still unclear if a same sex marriage bill would pass in the Senate.
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An egret takes off from a cedar tree in Scalloptown Park and flies across Greenwich Cove.
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 made right here. The company said they could get the uniforms to the athletes before the start of the games, but the US Olympic Committee said maybe next time. Thus, China gets to thrill of victory and American manufacturing the agony of defeat.
You’d think the Rhode Island Republican Party would be sympathetic to the plight of the poor, being how they are the most cash-strapped GOP in the nation.
Like Mitt Romney, I’d like to retain the right to retire retroactively … therefore if RI Future happens to do or say anything that, in hindsight, I might second guess, I can just say it has nothing to do with me.
Speaking of Romney, one of the myriad of reasons that his success at Bain Capital doesn’t translate into good experience for public service is the rules are different … as president, you can’t improve the economy by outsourcing jobs overseas, like Romney did at Bain.
Get ready for a hot and humid one today … any maybe do like this egret did and get on the water:
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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 role of deciding for religious faiths which symbols of theirs are religious and which ones aren’t. As a long-time and staunch supporter of separation of church and state, Governor Chafee should veto this ill- advised legislation.
The bills were prompted by the on-going controversy surrounding a town-maintained Latin cross in front of a Woonsocket fire station. But whatever one’s views of that monument’s constitutional validity, this legislation crosses a line that the First Amendment cannot tolerate. It not only extensively entangles government in religious matters, it epitomizes the worst fears of the founders of the Constitution, who believed that separation of church and state was needed as much, if not more, to protect religion from the state as to protect the state from religion. This bill would allow government officials to declare that even a sacred religious symbol, icon, inscription, or statue has attained a secular value. Thus, government could attack religion in the guise of protecting it, by degrading, minimizing and politicizing the sacred nature of religious symbols in order to “protect” them from those advocating separation of church and state. No government commission should be permitted to decree that a religious symbol no longer has a religious meaning or that it has become predominantly secular.
Further, rather than resolve disputes over government sponsorship of religious symbols, the establishment of a commission like this will only magnify them and politicize religion to an extremely uncomfortable degree. It is ironic that those who claim a desire to protect religion would promote a bill that essentially gives a state commission the power to strip religious symbols of their sectarian meaning.
Passage of this bill is even more ironic when one considers the attacks that Governor Chafee was subjected to from the right last December when, in line with his Republican predecessor, he referred to the State House “holiday tree” instead of calling it a Christmas tree. Yet many of those same people have rallied around a bill that now establishes a government commission whose stated purpose is to declare religious symbols secular! We are hopeful that Governor Chafee will see this legislation for the politically mischievous and constitutionally problematic bill it is and give it a well-deserved veto.
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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 does so, it cannot simply declare students with disabilities off-limits,” wrote Steven Brown, the executive director of the local affiliate of the ACLU. “While in some circumstances schools may have some leeway in dealing with special-needs students, such as when significant problems might arise in providing them necessary accommodations, we are not aware of any basis whatsoever for a school to have a policy of automatically and categorically excluding special education students from an enrollment policy. Such blatant discrimination flies in the face of the numerous laws designed to treat such students equally, not segregate or stigmatize them.”
Brown’s letter assumed Barrington would not accept students with special needs, which was the initial idea. But after School Committee President Patrick Guida had a conversation with RIDE officials, he said they would likely accommodate for a percentage of students with special needs so long as they could pay the cost of their education there.
Brown wrote, “I realize that this policy is still a work in progress, but I would appreciate learning the basis behind the decision, however tentative, to exclude special education students.”
The Barrington School Committee will discuss the matter at its meeting on Thursday night.
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