charter school – RI Future

June 29, 2015June 29, 2015

ProJo recycles teacher trash talk with classic dump on public schools

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Ed Achorn, Providence Journal editorial writer

On Tuesday, June 16, 2015, at precisely 2:01 AM, an unidentified editorial writer representing the flailing Providence Journal crapped the keyboard and hit the Post button. Did it ever occur to him or her that the headline “Assault on Charters” was an exceedingly poor choice of descriptor for a school-based opinion piece?

Did he or she realize that the word “assault” in conjunction with any discussion of schools forevermore evokes the stark imagery of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre?

Probably. To channel the late iconic musician Frank Zappa’s observations on the crass corporate commercialization of America’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration, “…not only that, they’ve been planning it for a long time.”

An image is worth a thousand words. And added to the 459 word, boilerplate anti-union screed Projo’s designated keyboard commander unleashed in his predawn barrage, it makes for a kilometer’s worth of column inches, meeting the expectations of the corporate watchdogs who sign the editors’ paychecks.

Rhode Island’s only major newspaper, wholly owned by out-of-state interests, seems doggedly determined to exploit the ongoing charter school discussion for the purpose of deconstructing public education in favor of privatized, investor-based marketing schemes.

The corporate roots of the school privatization movement can be traced to The Edison Project, the 1992 collaborative effort of educational media entrepreneur Chris Whittle and former Yale University President Benno Schmidt Jr. These links provide an essential starting point for any discussion of the school privatization industry, but they are secondary to the most intrinsic, gut-level concerns families have: the health, safety and welfare of their children.

The school privatization industry – its conceptualization, commercialization, and corruption – is a massive topic that commands major resources within America’s most prestigious think tanks, the progressive Brookings Institute and its conservative counterpart, the Heritage Foundation. Go ahead, Google yourself to the brink of insanity. Been there, done that.

There is wide ranging disagreement concerning both the reliability and validity of measuring academic achievement levels in comparative studies of charter schools and traditional public schools. Regardless of the perennial debate, it is no mystery to teachers why charter schools are universally embraced by their clientele: 100% of the families who choose a given charter school are there because they want to be.

In the vernacular of cyber-age social networking, the stakeholders are “all-in.”

Traditional public schools should be so lucky. Their playing field is perilously rocky and meanders uphill all the way from start to finish. For public school teachers entangled in the bureaucratic typhoon of Race to the Top – U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s mythical epic voyage their daily regimen is rife with the Scylla and Charybdis of Public Education – Disruption and Distraction.

Students in virtually every classroom in every public school in America bear daily witness to the turmoil washing over their teachers courtesy of the twin terrors Disruption and Distraction. The narratives that trickle down to students’ homes scare the bejezus out of every parent and guardian, and rightly so. Hello, Charter Schools.

Over the next couple of months, this series of articles will explore the state of public education from the point of view of classroom teachers at both the elementary and secondary levels. Unless you are a public school teacher, you probably cannot grasp the nature of the current state of affairs. It’s hard enough for teachers to sometimes believe what is happening to their profession. Ask one sometime.

Editorial boards of newspapers aligned with the school privatization industry, such as our own Providence Journal, will necessarily reflect the political goals of their corporate parents. Journalism jobs are hard to come by. The professionals comprising the ProJo editorial board are serious writers. But they too live between a rock and a hard place.

Welcome to the club, people.

Robert Yarnall is a retired teacher, union activist, superb fisherman and regular contributor to Progressive Charlestown where this article originally appeared.

February 9, 2015February 11, 2015

Coming soon: charter schools for the unvaccinated

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It’s inevitable. I am anticipating that one of the many shrewd companies in the “education reform” business will roll out a chain of charter schools for unvaccinated kids.

Why should parents have to produce proof of immunization before their little darlings are admitted to public school when they have the “freedom of choice” to send them to a school more consistent with their beliefs.

If ever there were two “movements” that are destined for merger, it’s the anti-vaxxers and the school choice mobs.

They are linked by the belief that personal “choice,” even when it is not justified by facts or logic, trumps the public interest. They are also linked by total indifference to the costs and consequences their choices have on everyone else.

Each group claims the moral high ground, flying the banner of “freedom of choice.” Yet what they really want is the privilege of making their choice without consequence or cost to themselves. They expect the rest of us to pick up the tab.

This is especially obvious in the so-called “school choice” issue being debated by some in Rhode Island right now. School choice adherents talk as if they don’t already have a choice when in fact they do. For as long as we have had public schools, we have also had private and religious schools.

When I was a child in the 1950s and 60s, my parents wanted me to go to Catholic school, and I did because they had the right to choose, doing twelve years of hard time under the tutelage of nuns and later, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

In those days, the parish school didn’t charge for the lower grades, but long-gone Sacred Heart Academy in Central Falls did charge tuition. Because of my parents’ choice, I ended up putting up my earnings from paper routes, bussing tables at local bingo halls and clerking at the local drugstore into my tuition.

I can’t say whether my parents’ choice was the right one or the wrong one, but I do know they made it. And they made it knowing there were going to be costs and consequences.

It’s no different today. Parents still have the same freedom of choice. They can even choose to home school their kids. But the real question behind “school choice” is not the choice itself, but who pays for it.

Chariho vs. charters

Where I live, the Chariho School District (Charlestown, Richmond and Hopkinton) has been in a long-running battle with the Kingston Hill Academy (KHA), refusing to pay to send Chariho students there because Chariho believes KHA cherry-picks students and sends special needs kids back to Chariho. Reliable sources have told me that this has been a long-standing problem at KHA.

Chariho Superintendent Barry Ricci escalated his battle when he sought new legislation in the General Assembly that would allow school districts to refuse to pay charter schools when those charter schools do not meet or exceed the standard of education provided at Chariho.

This attempt – which Superintendent Ricci told me in a January 6 e-mail he will not repeat – stirred up a firestorm from the “school choice” people, including the conservative Charlestown Citizens Alliance that has controlled Charlestown since 2008.

As amazing as it seems, these charter advocates were able to argue with a straight face that their “right to choose” should be honored with taxpayer money, even if it pays for an inferior education. After all, I suppose, “school choice” includes the right to make terrible choices.

Chariho’s fight with Kingston Hill goes back at least to 2009 when, according to a sworn statement by Superintendent Ricci, KHA’s principal admitted that KHA would not spend the money to hire a physical therapist and thus would not accept handicapped students whose education plan included physical therapy.

Later, Superintendent Ricci noted there is no sworn statement from KHA contradicting Ricci’s assertion. Click here to read the materials Superintendent Ricci submitted to the state.

Ricci got no sympathy or relief from soon-to-be ex-RI Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. In fact, Gist ruled in favor of Kingston Hill three times. Gist appointed her General Counsel David Abbott to the role of “special visitor” to examine the validity of Ricci’s charges against KHA.

Abbott’s report, submitted to Gist on October 27, 2014, went badly for Ricci. Click here to read that report.

Abbott reported no evidence to support the claims Ricci had made of earlier discrimination by KHA against disabled children, noting that even if he did, “none of the three allegations is dispositive,” given the age of the incidents. Abbott reports that he finds KHA to be currently in compliance with the law.

Having lost his fight with Kingston Hill, Superintendent Ricci asked to Chariho School Committee to add $53,745 to the upcoming year’s budget to pay for five more kids to go to Kingston Hill.

Even though Ricci lost his battle with KHA when charter school fan Deborah Gist ruled against him and when he couldn’t come up with parents willing to speak up about KHA discrimination.

But that is hardly a vindication for KHA – the verdict is not exactly one of “not guilty,” but more like “not proven.” Nor is it a vindication of charter schools.

Post-Gist public education

Public education is one of the cornerstones of our civil society. We need the best possible public schools we can create. Charter schools only distract attention and resources away from that critical mission. Casting the issue as “school choice” panders to the selfish few who want the rest of us to pay for their personal preferences.

Even though Gist will be leaving Rhode Island soon to take over as school chief in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the odds are that Gov. Gina Raimondo will appoint a new state education commissioner who is even more enraptured with charter schools.

I say that because Raimondo is married to one of the key corporate “education reform” national players, Andy Moffitt. Her campaign was funded in large part by corporate “reformers.” Her deputy, Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee, has been most famous for his fervent push for “mayoral academy” charter schools. Finally, Raimondo has appointed Stefan Pryor to head the state Commerce Department after Pryor’s disastrous tenure as Connecticut Education head where there were charter school scandals all across the state.

Yes, I’m afraid charter schools are about to undergo a boom in Rhode Island with such as cast of characters running the state.

Public school superintendents have made the point repeatedly that charter schools add an element of unpredictability that make it hard to create budgets, hire staff and maintain the proper infrastructure, and to do that knowing that you must serve all students, including all those who have special needs.

If “school choice” parents as these want a school that offers programs that tickle their fancy, then fine – send your kid there, but with your own money. If you want a school that doesn’t require you to present proof that your kids have had all their shots, then fine – send your kids to “Vaxless Academy” but with your own money, And keep those kids aways from everybody else.

November 6, 2013

Charter school grant: follow the money

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I’m opposed to corporate interests picking winners and losers in public education and that is exactly what happens when charter schools accept private sector grants for operating expenses.

Here’s how the ProJo put it in an article about a $2 million grant the Charter School Growth Fund gave to the Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy. “The national philanthropists include the Walton Family Foundation, which progressives accuse of trying to “privatize” public education by supporting charter school networks.”

It’s more than that. Here’s a list of the Charter School Growth Funds staff and Board of Directors, with a short description of what each person does when they aren’t deciding which public school in Rhode Island gets $2 million and which don’t.

Kevin Hall, president and CEO: Here’s how the Charter School Growth Fund describes him: “Before joining CSGF, Hall served as the Chief Operating Officer of The Broad Foundation for several years where he led various aspects of the Foundation’s grant investment strategy and work. Prior to Broad, he was a co-founder and ran business development for Chancellor Beacon Academies, a manager of charter and private schools across the U.S. Previously, Hall ran a division of infoUSA, and worked at McKinsey & Co., Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Teach For America.”

James C. Rahn: He runs the Kern Family Foundation, which donates to education reform issues and religious leaders. According to its website Kern’s goals for funding religious leaders include “Educate future and existing pastors about how the economy is a moral system in which people exchange their work, and that free enterprise grounded in moral character is the most effective way to promote dignity, lift people out of poverty, and produce human flourishing.”

Greg Penner: Also worked for Goldman Sachs, before going to work for Wal-Mart, where he now serves on the Board of Directors.

Mason Hawkins: He’s one of the richest mutual fund investors in America. Why? Maybe because he runs his mutual fund like it’s a hedge fund.

Michael W. Grebe: He ran Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign fundraising efforts, in addition to helping out with seemingly every other union-bashing, government-shrinking effort in Wisconsin.

Allan Golston: Works for Gates Foundation.

Stacy Schusterman: According to the Wall Street Journal, she inherited her family’s oil fortune and the family foundation also donates heavily to Jewish causes.

John Fisher: Worth more than $2 billion, his parents founded The Gap and he is majority owner of the Oakland A’s. He’s also chairman of the KIPP Foundation, the nation’s largest charter school management company.

May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

Charter school: site students on toxic waste

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Last year the General Assembly unanimously passed the “Environmental Cleanup Objectives for Schools” sponsored by Senator Juan Pichardo and representative Scott Slater. The bill, which took over three years to pass, was signed into law by Governor Chafee on June 6, 2012, nearly a year ago. Commonly referred to as the “School Siting Law,” this was an important and landmark piece of legislation that prohibits school construction on contaminated sites where there is ongoing potential for vapor intrusion.

This common sense piece of legislation, that keeps our children from attending schools where toxic gases can wreak havoc on their health, is doubly important because the bodies of children are still developing, and triply important in poorer communities where children already face greater levels of hazardous environmental poisons such as lead.

It’s therefore even more baffling that this legislation is being challenged and potentially weakened by two new bills that have been introduced to the General assembly, House Bill 5617 and Senate Bill 520. These bills would allow construction of schools on vapor intrusion sites, completely gutting the intent of the original bill. This legislation is being introduced on behalf of the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA),which wants to expand a charter school on potentially hazardous land.

RIMA wants to manage the contamination by leaving it in the ground, and then monitoring the vapor intrusion with sophisticated and largely untested technologies that they hope will protect children, teachers and staff from unhealthy levels of exposure to toxins. The technology and monitoring will be an additional expense that the school will have to manage, money that will not go towards education.

A press conference was held on the RI State House steps yesterday by Clean Water Action, the Childhood Lead Action Project and the Environmental Justice League of RI that featured Lois Gibbs, renowned toxics activist from Love Canal who famously helped kickstart the United States Superfund Program. Gibbs pointed out that the legislation RIMA wishes to undermine has become model legislation for similar laws across the country, from New York and Massachusetts to Michigan.

“The very thing that they are talking about changing in this bill is what happened at Love Canal,” said Gibbs. “It was vapor intrusion! So why would this group of people want to put Love Canal under the school of innocent children is beyond me.”

This would be a great question to pose to Senator Juan Pichardo, who helped shepherd the bill through the Senate last session and has now introduced the legislation to destroy it. Why Pichardo would stand up for students one year and then seek to allow RIMA the right to ignore sensible safety protocols and endanger our student’s health might be another reason to take a long look at corporately funded charter schools and the ways in which corporate money warps government.

Pichardo’s email is sen-pichardo@rilin.state.ri.us and his official phone number is (401) 461-2389 if you think this is an issue important enough to let him know how you feel.

Why would we want to undo such awesome legislation? Watch Lois Gibbs explain:

October 15, 2012October 15, 2012

Progress Report: Working Class Missing from Electoral Politics; URI Prof. Critiques Brown Poll; Saturday Night Live

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Ryans Pond NK — Ryan’s Pond, North Kingstown. (Photo by Bob Plain)

It’s little wonder that the United States and Rhode Island so often side with the wealthy when it comes to politics … after all, by and large that is who we elect to office, says .

About the Rhode Island State House, he writes, “The trend toward meager political representation by former blue-collar workers holds mostly true in Rhode Island – where the biggest General Assembly caucus is made of lawyers, not Democrats or Republicans.”

Donnis quotes a New York Times piece that says of this year’s presidential campaign, “If we want government for the people, we’ve got to start working toward government by the people. The 2012 election offers us a stark choice between two very different approaches to economic policy. But it’s still a choice between two Harvard-educated millionaires.”

Former Anthony Gemma spokesman Alex Morash says he’s supporting David Cicilline for Congress. So much for the nasty Democratic primary … amybe it was all just politics…

URI poly sci prof and pollster Victor Profughi has been taking issue with the methodology Brown’s Taubmann Center used in its recent poll. He took issue with another Brown Poll recently too … when we accused the Ivy League polling org with doing a push poll on pension politics. Here’s the comment he posted to RI Future.

Also in ProJo’s Political Scene column this morning, the Center for Free Market Anarchy and Punishing the Poor (or whatever it is Mike Stenhouse and Justin Katz call their kooky conservative “think” tank) said Rhode Island should do away with its sales tax and its still-being-created health care exchange as well as enact new laws to hurt organized labor … I don’t know Stenhouse but I know Katz and he is a good enough guy but he represents a kind of conservative that doesn’t really exist in this state to any significant degree, though he’d be in good company in southern Utah or northern Idaho. Stenhouse, for his part, is an ex-Red Sox … not really the best thing to have on your resume for why you can help RI’s economy…

But maybe I’m wrong … after all, another member of the Center pens a piece saying this state’s support for a voter ID law shows it’s not just for the ALEC crowd…

It’s worth watching Ted Nesi interview John Hazen-White Jr. … a local CEO who sticks up for the Occupy movement and holds a lot of other beliefs not always indicative of the 1 percent.

The scary future for charter schools: “Computer modules would replace the teacher in front of the classroom.”

On this day in Rhode Island history: Occupy Providence begins its occupation of Burnside Park.

We all know SNL does great (increasingly viral) political skits and you may have already seen its farce of the veep debate from Saturday night, which was super funny … but this one teasing spoiled American’s reliance on technology was my favorite:

August 16, 2012April 12, 2014

Corporate Agenda Behind Public Charter Schools

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This investor dude is making big dollars for himself and his rich clients by taking money out of your public school system. But no, the charter movement is totally progressive.

Here’s the setup. CNBC is interviewing David Brain, head of a major investment trust, about why charter schools are such phenomenal money-makers for investors like him. Here’s the transcript.

Anchor: Charter schools have become very popular as parents seek more choice in educating their children. But are charter schools a wise addition to your investment portfolio? Well let’s ask David Brain, President and CEO of Entertainment Properties Trust. David, why would I want to add charter schools into my portfolio?

DB: Well I think it’s a very stable business, very recession-resistant. It’s a high-demand product. There’s 400,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools, the industry’s growing about 12-14% a year. So it’s a high-growth, very stable, recession-resistant business. It’s a public payer, the state is the payer on this category, and if you do business with states with solid treasuries then it’s a very solid business.

Anchor: Well let me ask you about potential risks, here, to your charter school portfolio, because I understand that three of your nine “Imagine” schools are scheduled to actually lose their charters for the next school year. Does this pose a risk to investors?

DB: Well, occasionally—our Imagine arrangement’s on a master lease, so there’s no loss of rents to the company, although occasionally there are losses of charters in certain areas and they’re used to peculiar, particular circumstances. In this case it’s a combination of relationship with the supervisory authorities and educational quality; sometimes the educational quality is very difficult to change in one, two, or three years. It’s a long-term proposition, so there are some of these that occur, but we’ve structured our affairs so this is not going to impact our rent-roll and in fact you see this is maybe even a good experience as the industry thins out some of the less-performing schools and we move on to the best-performing schools.

Anchor: David there has been somewhat of a backlash to charter schools in some areas given their use of public money, as you noted. Any risk to the growth of charter schools generally?

DB: I don’t—there’s not a lost of risk, there’s probably risk to everything but the fact is this has bipartisan support. It’s part of the Republican platform and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, has been very high on it throughout their work in public education. So we have both political parties are solidly behind it, you have high demand, high growth, you have performance across the board, most studies have charter schools at even or better than district public education. So, I think it has some risk because it’s new and it’s emerging and it is a high-growth category. But at the same time I think much more’s going forward so it’s still a safe area for investment.

Anchor: You’ve invested in retail centers, ski parks, you’ve got charter schools, you’ve got movie theaters. If you could buy one thing right now, David, one type of asset in real estate, what would it be?

DB: Well, probably the charter school business. We said it’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set annually.

Two and a half billion dollar opportunity set annually.

August 15, 2012August 15, 2012

Progress Report: Saving a Failing Charter School; Baldelli-Hunt’s Fundraising Battle; Ciclline Manufacturing Plan

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greenwich cove dish — The other end of the #egriviera, the one not featured in the Projo today. (Photo by Bob Plain)

In its zeal to protect all things that could one day weaken Rhode Island’s working class, the Providence Journal argues that a failing charter school should be saved because “it would be wrong to put those special interests ahead of poor and minority students.” The Projo makes a fair argument, but its central logic could be applied either way. While charters help a small minority of inner city students, they also funnel resources away from the vast majority of them. In a way, inner city charters in Rhode Island cater to the 1 percent of the poor and minority students here.

Just look at the campaign fundraising comparison between Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and challenger Mike Morin to give you an indication of why I made an early election season prediction that she wouldn’t retain her House seat.

While Anthony Gemma has been the one touting the jobs plan, its Congressman Cicilline who is getting credited with an idea that could ignite Rhode Island’s economy. His “Make it in America” block grant proposal for manufactures won high praise from the Brookings Institute.

By the way, we’ll have more on Gemma’s job plan later today…

Who remembers when Black Point was hidden behind an unmarked footpath on Ocean Road? Here’s hoping DEM doesn’t find nearby Hazard Rocks…

Speaking of fun summertime spots … the Projo profiles the East Greenwich waterfront nightlife, figuring out why us locals call it the EG Riviera. And, thankfully, they didn’t mention either of the two waterfront watering holes the kids who grew up here like to frequent…

The most lasting effect of the down economy: we’re not making babies like we did during the good old days.

Today in 1969, nearly half a million people begin showing up to Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York for the most famous musical event of all time. It was likely even a bigger deal than that if you didn’t get the memo to avoid the brown acid…

Props to my family for putting up with my job: my mom lives next door to John DePetro and my brother represents the ACE charter school mentioned above. Thanks gang, for everything…

June 20, 2012

Progress Report: Celebrating Providence; Gist Wants to Close a Charter

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Happy birthday, Providence Biltmore – the downtown landmark celebrates its 90th birthday tonight. Flo Jonic of RINPR marks the occasion with a great feature story, reporting, among other gems, “In the early years, the chef grew vegetables and raised roosting hens on the roof of the hotel so that celebrities like Benny Goodman could have fresh eggs.”

Speaking of downtown landmarks, the New York Times had another RI story yesterday … this one, also written by a Rhode Islander (Elizabeth Abbott is a former Projo reporter and URI prof), was about the Superman building and the Arcade.

And still speaking of downtown landmarks, we’re looking forward to the movie about the history of Haven Brothers. It could be argued that the mobile diner is the godfather of the food truck trend sweeping Providence and other hip cities across the country. (Portland will be so mad if we try to lay claim to starting the food truck trend!)

One more point about downtown: whenever I walk around the Jewelry District I can’t help thinking of how lucky the city is that it gets to double the size of its urban core. It’s a once-in-a-millennium opportunity that every other city in America would relish. It’s too bad local headlines are so often about our local cities literally starving to death because there are worlds of potential within them.

Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, the godmother of charter schools in Rhode Island, is recommending closing a Providence charter school for failing to educate its students in math. The school was originally named Textron/Chamber of Commerce Academy. So much for the private sector being able to do it better…

Speaking of the 1 percent, we’re also looking forward to Ted Nesi’s new show “Executive Suite.” It’s sure to be interesting and insightful even if the name implies it won’t be geared to the working class.

Nurses picketed outside Women and Infants yesterday to call attention to the hospital’s use of temporary (read: scab) nurses.

Good, bad or indifferent, the Pew Center says Rhode Island has been the most aggressive (read: conservative) in paring back public sector pensions.

April 12, 2012April 12, 2012

Charter School Takes Issue with RI-CAN Report Cards

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Not everyone is thrilled with RI-CAN’s new report cards on Rhode Island public schools. Most notably, The Learning Community, a Central Falls charter school that serves students from there, Providence and Pawtucket.

“RI-CAN talks about putting kids and parents first, but their report card system seems to be primarily a public relations tool, not a source for accurate school data,” according to a response issued by the charter school to the report cards. “RI-CAN’s system undermines the school performance measures proposed by the Rhode Island Department of Education, and discredits the tremendous effort that Rhode Island students, teachers and administrators are devoting to improving student achievement based on accurate information.”

Kath Connelly, declined to elaborate on their analysis, but did give us permission to reprint their response:

One School’s Views on the RI-CAN Report Card System

As advocates for public education, The Learning Community has grave concerns about the RI-CAN school report cards that evaluate every Rhode Island public school based on faulty methodology. RI-CAN claims that their report cards “are designed to help families in Rhode Island access online information about their local schools” when in truth the report cards spread misinformation to concerned citizens. Instead of providing access to accurate data, RI-CAN summarizes a school’s performance by using only one grade level’s achievement on state standardized tests and mathematically incorrect calculations.

No efforts at holding schools accountable will succeed unless the measures used are fair and accurate. It is worth mentioning that we are expressing our strong opposition to the report cards despite the fact that The Learning Community ranked in the Top 10 schools in Rhode Island on 7 of the 14 indicators.

The methodological deficiencies of the RI-CAN report cards render them at best useless and, at worst, harmful to our state’s efforts to support the education of every child.

Every school’s “overall student performance” score is really based on the scores of only one grade level. For example, RI-CAN’s measure for an elementary school is based on the performance of the 5th grade only. This means that the scores of 40 students might represent a school where 300 students were actually tested. Investors would not judge the success of a business on one quarter of financial data. (Three of RI-CAN’s four report card scores are based on the performance of only one grade level.)

RI-CAN’s approach to measuring school performance is dated and has been discredited nationally as too narrow. RI-CAN’s report cards rely solely on state standardized test data and do nothing to portray the context of each of our state’s schools—even though these data are readily available through the state’s nationally recognized Information Works! system. Recognizing that excellent schools involve more than just a single test score, report card systems in Washington, DC, and New York City, while controversial, at least included a range of data points to evaluate schools.

RI-CAN misuses basic math. RI-CAN’s “student subgroup performance,” “achievement gap,” and “performance gains” measures rely on combining the performance of multiple groups of students into a single score. Instead of doing the basic math to determine an accurate score, RI-CAN took a short cut and averaged a series of averages into a composite score. Consider the following example:

Low-Income Students Black Students Hispanic Students
Number Tested
20 10 40
Proficiency Rate
50 75 25

RI-CAN’s report card simply averages the average proficiency rate of the groups above, for a “student subgroup performance” score of 50% (= (50+75+25)/3). Basic mathematics, however, requires us to weight the scores based on the number of students in each group, resulting in a score of 39% (= (20/70)x50 + (10/70)x75 + (40/70)x25). If 5 students scored 100%, and 50 students scored 15%, the size of those groups makes a big difference.

RI-CAN ranks schools on faulty numbers. When researchers release data, they identify a margin of error. NECAP data includes these ranges, to let us know that a school that scored a 54 might actually be within the same range as a school that scored a 52. RI-CAN, however, chose to rank schools based on a single number—identifying distinctions even when there is no statistically significant difference between the schools’ performance. (In the performance of subgroups, which have even smaller numbers of students, the lack of a margin of error is even more distressing.)

The RI-CAN system is unfair to urban schools. Because the RI-CAN report cards are based on a single grade level, schools with few students in that grade who are low-income or Black or Hispanic will not have a score for those subgroups. Many suburban schools are not given any score for “student subgroup performance,” whereas every urban school is. By contrast, the RI Department of Education, recognizing the unfairness of this approach, is preparing to hold nearly all schools accountable for subgroup performance.

We are also distressed that at a time of limited public resources, RI-CAN has chosen to create its own faulty system instead of working collaboratively with the state and other education advocates to get the real data about the real challenges and successes in our communities in the hands of citizens.

So what can you do to get more useful and accurate information about the public schools in your neighborhood? Here are few sources that are more reliable:
1.   Visit InformationWorks! which includes a range of data on every public school in Rhode Island. http://infoworks.ride.ri.gov/
2.   Read the complete NECAP scores for the schools you care about. More information here: http://www.ride.ri.gov/Assessment/Results.aspx.
3.   Visit the schools in your neighborhood. No score can capture the spirit of a school or the kindness of a teacher. Ask at your local school what you can do to learn more or how you can help.

If you are curious about the RI-CAN system but do not want to sign up to “be a member of RI-CAN,” feel free to log on as:
Username: thesetwohands Password: thesetwohands

RI-CAN talks about putting kids and parents first, but their report card system seems to be primarily a public relations tool, not a source for accurate school data. RI-CAN’s system undermines the school performance measures proposed by the Rhode Island Department of Education, and discredits the tremendous effort that Rhode Island students, teachers and administrators are devoting to improving student achievement based on accurate information.