The Rhode Island Teach for America offices are located at 1 Western Exchange Center, Suite 101, 67 Cedar Street in Providence. Their impact on Providence schools is shown to be nothing but detrimental in a recent report filed by Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network wherein he speaks to education scholar and TFA alumnus T. Jameson Brewer, the co-editor of Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out who has just completed a study of TFA that was the subject of an interview by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report we previously referred to in our report on City Year Rhode Island. One quote that seems particularly relevant to the allegedly cash-strapped Providence is the following:

[I]n most cases if you have the prospect of filling a single teaching position with either a Teach For America corps member or equally experienced, or rather inexperienced, non-TFA teacher, it’s actually more expensive to fill that position with Teach For America on the front end, because TFA requires non-refundable finder’s fees, right, that range anywhere between $2,000-5,000 per corps member per year. And even if the corps member quits, the district is still obligated to pay the rest of that finder’s fee to Teach For America. [Emphasis added.]

Between Teach for America and City Year alone, we are talking about municipal expenditures that are costing the city millions of dollars that it allegedly does not have. At a time when the social safety net is most precarious why is Jorge Elorza giving away freebies?

The popular media narrative of the 2014 Providence mayoral election was that the East Side threw support behind Elorza and delivered him the vote to prevent a return to power for Vincent “Buddy” Cianci. But the point not raised is that the East Side is an enclave of private sector NGO-industrial complex policy wonks that support corporate school deform efforts, including the Democratic Party finishing school of neoliberalism known as Brown University’s School of Government. Perhaps the election narrative needs to be revisited.

A perusal of the new “RI Strategic Plan for Public Education: 2015-2020” (http://media.ride.ri.gov/BOE/BOE_Meeting_102815/Encl6a.pdf), recently approved by the RI Board of Education, turns up a number of appealing-sounding but troubling buzzwords: personalized instruction, one-to-one computer technology, blended learning, online learning, community partners outside of the school, and particularly, proficiency-based instruction and assessment. In an ideal world, these buzzwords could be a refreshing approach to teaching and learning in a dazzling world of opportunity through technological advances. Very unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.

We need only look as far as the state of Maine to see what the ugly reality of competency/proficiency based education looks like in real schools with real students and teachers. Maine has plunged ahead with this agenda, helped along with money from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation (a grantee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), though there is no research (peer-reviewed or otherwise) that justifies transforming teaching and learning into a digital/online enterprise. Emily Kennedy Talmage is a teacher in Maine who has researched the roots of this agenda and written extensively about it in her blog, and it is unnerving. (http://emilytalmage.com/2015/04/26/save-maine-schools/) My take is that the PR for so-called proficiency based, personalized learning is riddled with code words that translate into outsourcing education to ed-tech vendors and “community partners,” marginalizing classroom teachers, holding students accountable to pre-determined, inappropriate standards (Common Core or Core-like), not allowing them to progress until they have achieved “mastery” of these inappropriate standards, feeding them game-like academic programs that foster zombie cognitive processing rather than real learning, and using extrinsic motivation like rewards and badges, all the while scooping up reams of sensitive data that will go who knows where and be used for who knows what.

While co-opting the language of the Civil Rights Movement with terms such as Equity and Opportunity, those pushing this digital innovation agenda are not sending their children to this brave new educational world. Private school students will still have small classes valuing interaction between teachers and students and students with peers, and rich curricula with the arts, languages, history, and social studies. Other people’s children will be seated at computer terminals, isolated from each other, eyes focused (or not) on screens which will be adjusted second by second to their keystrokes, the data siphoned off into cyber-space. (By the way, the federal Department of Education, the supposedly secure place where all public school students’ personally identifiable information will be channeled via the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems, recently received a very poor grade for data security from the Office of the Inspector General.)

We need to ask Cui bono? Is this rush to digital learning truly for the benefit of the overwhelming majority of the children in America who attend public schools? Or is it a bonanza for the hedge funders and edtech entrepreneurs who will rake in an exorbitant amount of money directly or indirectly on learning modules of dubious quality?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Greater than $1,000,000:

• Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust
• Walton Family Foundation

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

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• GE Foundation
• News Corporation
• Charles & Helen Schwab Foundation

Between $250,0001 and $500,000:

• Laura and John Arnold Foundation
• Bloomberg Philanthropies

Between $100,001 and $250,000:

• Eli & Edythe Broad Foundatio
• Jeb Bush & Associates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Recruited by union-bashers, Gist came to Rhode Island to take on the so-called status quo. And took it on she did. She supported mass teacher firings, she pushed hard for more charter schools and a new teacher evaluation system and she defended rigorously high stakes testing. A protege of Michelle Rhee, a student of Eli Broad and a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, Gist is a card-carrying member of the anti-union, so-called education reform movement.

Early in her tenure she seemed somewhat unstoppable. In 2010, she was named to Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world list – how many Tulsa school district employees can say that? But while the world celebrated her, she never made many allies locally. Teachers, bureaucrats and colleagues – not just labor unions – never warmed up to her and even upper management at RIDE often complained quietly about her stern management style as rank and file teachers did so more publicly.

Ultimately, of these four ed reform objectives, only charter schools flourished under Gist. There were 13 in 2009 and now there are 24 in Rhode Island. Mass teacher firings, as Angel Taveras learned the hard way, became a third rail in Rhode Island politics. High stakes tests were slated to be implemented last year, an initiative put into place before Gist came to RI, and during her tenure they were delayed several more years in spite of her strong support. Her U Penn doctoral thesis was based on her efforts to implement a statewide teacher evaluation system in Rhode Island, but like high stakes graduation requirements, this too was blocked by the General Assembly.

On the issues that seemed to matter most to Gist, she did not fare well. But aside from these high-profile issues, public education got a lot better during Deborah Gist’s time in Rhode Island. As much as she bears responsibility for coming up short on the ed reform agenda, she presided over much positive progressive change during her tenure.

It was under her direction that Rhode Island implemented its first ever statewide education funding formula. This reduced dramatically the politics legislative leadership was able to place on state education aid and replaced it with a more need-based system. Providence, Pawtucket and Woonsocket all got significantly more money as a result, though not enough to stave off a lawsuit from Pawtucket and Woonsocket insisting that the formula still was not equitable. It is the lack of resources in urban schools districts that plague public education in Rhode Island, not a plethora of benefits for teachers. And a fair, needs-based funding formula is the single biggest thing that can be done to reverse this inequity.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest it’s working. Public education in Rhode Island became no less political under Gist’s leadership and organized labor didn’t seem to lose much power, but schooling did seem to become more effective for the poorest district’s in the state during her tenure.

Graduation rates increased by 25 percent in Central Falls and 24 percent in Pawtucket from 2009 to 2013; statewide all districts improved 5 percent during Gist’s time in Rhode Island. The percentage of new CCRI students who need remedial help because they didn’t know what they were supposed to have learned in high school dropped from 74 percent of all recent RI high school grads in the fall of 2009 to a much lower 62 percent in the fall of 2014.

The statewide graduation rate was 76 percent five years ago and last year 81 percent students graduated. The dropout rate was 14 percent five years ago and now its 8 percent. Both metrics – which ought be very important to progressive education activists, improved 5 percent during Gist’s tenure. The dropout rate among Black students fell 6.5 percent from 18 percent to 11.5 percent and the dropout rate for Latino students dropped 10 percent from 23 percent to 13 percent.

Deborah Gist failed at many of the ed reform initiatives she came to Rhode Island to accomplish. But in the process, she managed to preside over some successful progressive reform in that the state’s struggling urban school districts are doing better than they were before she got here.

Gist declined to be interviewed for this post, but the facts and figures were provided by RIDE.

Another difference between the two is that Raimondo has an expert coach in her corner. Her husband Andy Moffit is deeply involved in the business of education reform.

Moffit is a Senior Practice Expert and co-founder of the Global Education Practice at McKinsey & Company— consultants to CEOs, governments, companies, national foundations, and non-profits. He taught for Teach for America for two years, studied education law and policy at Oxford and Yale, and served on the board of Jonah Edelman’s Stand for Children.

In terms of corporate education reform, one prominent McKinsey-watcher and follow-the-money researcher puts the firm in a class by itself:

“They have been the leaders in crafting the dominant narrative of an education crisis for decades, and now deeply entrenched in education reform policies, they are reaping the financial and political benefits of marketing solutions to the problems they manufactured in the first place.”

Lacking a genuine crisis, various crisis-mongering claims about the failure of American schools will do, especially since these are generally supported by Arne Duncan’s Department of Education and widely publicized by the well-funded reform advocacy groups that promote charter school choice as an alternative to traditional public school education. McKinsey & Company are masters of packaging crises in high-profile reports, which they “launch” with prominent guest speakers and great fanfare. One education example is “How the world’s best school systems keep getting better” (2010) is focused on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test scores and what can be learned from the high scorers. Though not an author, Andy Moffit was credited for his work on this while Arne Duncan and Rhode Island’s Deborah Gist were panelists at its “launch.”

Along with Paul Kihn and Sir Michael Barber, Moffit was one of three authors of “Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for Educational Leaders” – a how-to-get-things-done manual for school districts and systems based on the management techniques Barber developed for British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997-2007). Barber, former McKinsey Partner and head of their Global Education Practice, is now the chief education advisor for Pearson’s—the international giant of testing and educational materials and the preeminent beneficiary of the current testing mania. Paul Kihn left McKinsey’s in 2012 to serve as William Hite’s deputy superintendent in the Philadelphia school district, a position he held during the recent tumult of school closings, draconian budget cuts, and union wars, while Moffit has remained with McKinsey.

As Raimondo and Fung speak of getting business and education together, it is clear to those of us with an eye on the corporate reform movement that they are already together. It is naïve or disingenuous to discuss educational policy without dealing with the profit motive. Big data and standardized tests are at the core of an ever-expanding industry rife with new start-ups, collaborations, and consultations involving tests, testing materials, hard-ware and soft-ware, real estate, no-bid contracts, tax benefits, and venture philanthropy. Budget cuts to public education, combined with privatization, union-busting and the deregulation of schools and teaching credentials are the order of the day.

It would be interesting to know specifically which consulting projects Moffit worked on for McKinsey over the years but there is surprisingly little about him on McKinsey sites. Although he was nominated to serve on the R.I. Board of Regents by ex-Governor Carcieri, that was when the General Assembly was no longer approving such nominations. He withdrew his name after Chafee was elected, apparently because of differences in views. He withdrew from the controversial Stand for Children board very quietly, without comment, and he has kept a low profile in both Raimondo campaigns.

We know more about Raimondo’s deceased father than her husband. Of course because Moffit makes a living as an education consultant/reformer, supporting various Obama/Duncan initiatives, reorganizing urban school systems, and developing sustainability plans for the new Common Core tests, does not mean that Raimondo has the same opinions. But how would we know? Has she ever been asked?

Even though her publishing company says she is free to share his U Penn dissertation on teacher evaluations in Rhode Island, Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist, who based her research on her work here, said she won’t lift the embargo on her research.

“I have already spent more time on this than I have or care to spend,” Gist told me in an email today. “Figuring out how and when the embargo will be lifted and then making changes to the paperwork that I submitted to the university and ProQuest two years ago is a distraction from the work of improving educational opportunities for children in Rhode Island, which is what matters to me. My dissertation will be public when it is made public by those who currently hold the embargo.”

ProQuest, the publishing company used by the University of Pennsylvania to publish dissertations, said Gist can release the embargo, or her own version, if she likes.

“If she wanted to lift it,” said ProQuest customer service representative Sara Schreiber, “we would gladly do that.”

Schreiber added, “It’s her work. We are just the publishing company. We don’t own it or have any copyright to it.”

Teachers and union leaders have renewed a call for Gist to release her dissertation – “An Ocean State Voyage: A Leadership Case Study of Creating an Evaluation System with, and for, Teachers” – which she based on her working relationship with teachers implementing performance evaluations.

Those evaluations were pared back legislatively this year and friction about the issue became public when this website published a heated email exchange between Gist and North Kingstown state Senator James Sheehan, a high school teacher, who has persistently called for her to release the dissertation.

“Assessments, such as NECAP, should not be used as a graduation requirement because such assessments have not been proven valid and reliable for high stakes purposes such as promotion and graduation decisions,” the Council said in a new report. “Research has also shown that these tests may narrow curriculum, and limit future educational opportunities, particularly for poor and minority students as well as English Language Learners and students with disabilities.”

The report says the NECAP test should not be used as a graduation requirement, and that its replacement – the PARCC – not be used either.

The group was created by the legislature last year to improve communications between public school teachers and the state Board of Education.

The NECAPS and high stakes testing have been a scorching political hot potato in Rhode Island for more than a year. Teachers have long been opposed and last year Tom Sgouros wrote a blistering critique of the NECAP tests ability to measure individual performance. The Providence Student Union gave voice to student concerns and their Take the Test action showed a wide swath of politically-engaged adults how difficult the test can be. The legislature is considering weighing in on high stakes testing this session.

Through it all the Board of Education has declined to address the issue, even being chided by a judge for deliberating a request by the ACLU to discuss the matter in public.

The Board meets tonight and is not expected to have a formal debate on NECAPs in particular or high stakes tests in general.