It’s unlikely Binder will knock Fox out of office, but he could help move him back toward the left side of the political spectrum. Or he could do just enough political damage to make it hard for him to retain the Speaker’s gavel, which might not be a good thing for progressives…
—Bob Plain, RI Progress ReportFox is more conservative than we’d like in a Speaker and Binder is less experienced than we’d like in a state Representative. Practically speaking, wheen factoring in both of these circumstances, the House of Representatives probably moves to the right if Binder were to upset Fox.
—Bob Plain, RI Progress Report
This logic remind me of what a Mt. Hope voter said to me recently:
“I don’t think the government is broken. I think it’s working just fine for those who are in charge.”
Unlikely?
As I’ve been knocking on doors throughout my district, the reception I have been getting is warm and congratulatory. People smile and thank me for running, especially against Gordon Fox. Then they say, “Do you think you have a chance?” I answer quite honestly, “If you and all the people you know vote for me, then I will win.”
Fox moves left?
- 38 Studios: A deal brokered by Michael Corso, a Fox business associate who profited at the expense of the taxpayers. Shoved through in a typical late night session with little debate. Representatives on the floor of the house deny that they knew that the $75 million was slated for a baseball players dream team. Even now, Gordon Fox flip flops on whether he knew/didn’t know before ramming the bill through.
- Payday Lending Reform: 50 State Reps co-sponsored a bill to reduce payday lending from 260% to about 36%. Bill Murphy, a former Speaker, was paid $50,000 by an out-of-state payday lending company. The bill died in committee. Fox said that the bill had been watered down. Why didn’t he just put the straight bill on the table?
- Marriage Equality: Civil unions are not enough. Maybe when Fox made his great compromise he thought that they were. If so, why have only 52 couples opted for the watered-down civil union option in the past two years? Since then Fox has promised to pass marriage equality but continued to duck his responsibility and avoid wielding his power to bring this black and white issue to a vote. Why? Because it protects Conservative Democrats, and it might fail. Boo hoo.
- The Midnight Education Merger: At the beginning of 2012, Fox promised no last minute votes. He broke that promise, and one of the results was the mashup of the Board of Regents and the Office of Higher Education. Asked in a debate why, he shrugged and said, “We have to try something.” No public discussion, no debate. From the folk I’ve talked with one in the elementary schools or universities want to be under the thumb of the same organization. George D. Caruolo, another former Speaker, will have a good job.
Where is the Progressive in these issues?
Political Damage?
Our legislature is dominated by fear. The Reps and Senators give away their power at the beginning of the session to the “leaders” and then beg for crumbs.
They cower in fear in the halls of the legislature and then crow when the leaders give them a line item in the budget or let one of their proposals rise from the black hole of committee. They whisper and confer and suspend the rules and vote on bills that most of them haven’t read. This is called “hardball politics.”
How’s that working for our state? The other day at the gym, a guy on a treadmill joked that every year the legislature passes lots of election bills because they always seems to benefit the legislators.
What else benefits the legislators? They get campaign contributions from special interests, and then submit bills, vote on bills and push bills through that benefit those special interests.
And it’s all out there in the public record.
- Gordon Fox collected $7,200 in contributions from auto repair shops, just 90 days before he pushed through a controversial auto insurance bill that benefitted those shops at the expense of consumers. Thankfully, the Governor vetoed the bill.
- The law firm Adler Pollack and Sheehan raised $7,300 for the Speaker. Shortly after that, they got the contract from the Joint Committee on Legislative Services to defend the gerrymandering in the legislative redistricting plan in court.
- And as recently as September 5th, the Speaker hauled in $5,900 from the lobbyist for the car wash industry and a number of car washes. That came just months after the Speaker rammed through a last minute budget proposal to exempt car washes—an only car washes—from the Governor’s expanded sales tax.
Are these really all coincidences? Who benefits from contributions to Gordon Fox’s $200,000+ campaign slush fund? Voters? Taxpayers?
Was this a move to the right or the right move?
Meanwhile, Fox has bought into the Conservative dogma that raising taxes is bad for business and good for government. And he’s given the Casinos a sweetheart deal that means taxpayers will have to loose three times as much at table games as they do at the slots just for the State to break even on what it gets now.
How’s that all going for us?
Is Speaker Fox retaining the gavel really doing the Progressives any benefit? Is having Gordon Fox in the House benefitting the people in District Four?
I think it’s clear that our “representatives” haven’t been working for us. They have been working for each other and for their special interests.
In Gordon Fox’s case, he’s been working hard for his business associates, former Speakers, and for the campaign contributors. For the people in his district? Not so much.
I will be honored if you vote for me, and help knock them out.
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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.
And Providence Business News reported recently that the gap between the haves and the have-nots in high-stakes testing results is increasing:
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.
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.
Even the gas is better in Massachusetts, or at least cheaper.
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.”
The first presidential debate is tonight … here’s how the candidates will try to dodge the tough questions.
Today in 1967, the legendary Woodie Guthrie died.
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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.
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/353281238092356/
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Perhaps the biggest policy proposal in the draft budget is the idea to merge to board of regents, which currently oversees elementary and secondary public schools, and the board of governors, which oversees public higher education, into one board of education.
The nine member board would be appointed by the governor and would employ a chancellor of education whose responsibilities would be “determined by the board of education,” according to Article 4 of the proposed budget bill. The current commissioners of education “shall be subject to the direction and control of the board of education.”
House Finance Committee Chairman Helio Melo said the idea is to “make the education system in the state more efficient and effective.” Because of Rhode Island’s small size, he said, the two current education boards should be able to merge into one sort-of super committee that would oversee all public education in the state.
Melo and others said the proposal is in the nascient stages.
“Is it a plan to combine the staffs of the two [education] organizations, I don’t know,” said Tim Duffy, the executive director of the Rhode Island Assocation of School Committees. “There’s a lot that still needs to be straightened out.”
According to the bill, the change would take place in 2014.
Rep. Frank Ferri, a progressive Democrat from Warwick, said, “I don’t disagree that we need to see if we can make the system more efficient and responsive, but I’m concerned about the time limit. In Vermont and Florida it took five to seven years to create.
Melo said, “I don’t think it will take years but it will take months. It’s going to be very long process.”
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