Students, teachers, parents, school committee representatives, board members, administrators, charter school advocates and union leaders known or recommended to the Governor were invited to attend so-called “listening sessions” and make their views known.   Nine listening sessions were held with the Governor and the new Board of Education Chairwoman Barbara Cottam, among the listeners.  Discussions focused on the desirable characteristics of a prospective commissioner. Participation was by invitation only.

Raimondo took charge of the search for Gist’s replacement with the blessing of the BOE and its new chairwoman.  In May, Brad Inman, the governor’s Director of Constituent Services, wrote  in response to my queries: “The  Board of Education asked the Governor’s office to do the initial vetting and present the Board with a list of finalists for their consideration. It will then be the Board who selects the Commissioner.”

When I tried to find out who, in the Governor’s office, was doing the vetting (or had the educational expertise to do so) nobody was at liberty to tell me.

At a May 14 BOE Meeting, Chairwoman Cottam informed the board  that “candidates are currently being interviewed and she expects a finalist(s) will be sent to the Board from the Governor’s office shortly.” The “finalist(s)” indicates that Cottam didn’t know whether a group of candidates or the one final choice was to be passed on to the Board for their approval. At the subsequent meeting, she reported that “interviews for the next Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education have continued and that there are many great candidates.” Who was doing the interviewing and who were the great candidates?

After the much touted “listening sessions” the search sank from public view. There was no BOE Search Committee and, as far as I can discover, no new job description that incorporated the findings of the listening sessions. The one that I received from Angela Teixeira, special assistant to the commissioner and liaison to the Board of Education, is dated September 2004.

As the Warwick Beacon reported, comments made by Kevin Gallagher, the governor’s deputy chief of staff, indicated why what he called a “help wanted ad” was rejected. From the Beacon: “Instead, the decision was made to define the characteristics the next leader of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) ought to possess.  The administration, Gallagher said, intends to use that information to identify people who ‘fit that profile,’ rather than ‘sitting back passively’ and waiting for candidates to apply.”

Ken Wagner was recruited in much the same way that Deborah Gist was recruited by the Carcieri administration and his BOE (then the Board of Regents) in 2009.  What Governor Carcieri wanted was a prominent “reformer” to head R.I.’s education establishment. This seems to be what Governor Raimondo wanted too, although she didn’t want Gist.  I suppose that she also wants criticism of high-stakes testing to stop, parental and student opt-outs to end, the free proliferation of charter schools and no more complaints about the PARCC or the Common Core. I suppose, too, that she believes Dr. Wagner can help with these things.

The R.I. law governing the appointment of education commissioners specifies that they be chosen by the (gubernatorially appointed) Board of Education, whereas other positions at the same level–directors, for example–are straight-forward gubernatorial appointments. This discrepancy caught the attention of East Side Senator Gayle Goldin, who introduced the bill to change it which was passed by the R.I. Senate last session. The Senate voted that in the future the Governor alone should select Commissioners of Education, although this will not become law until  it is also passed by the R.I. House. The Governor’s choice  would then be subject to the advice and consent of the R.I. Senate.

The advice and consent of the Senate versus the approval of the board of education may seem insignificant, no great improvement to the selection process.  But it is, I think, in involving democratically elected representatives who are responsive to their constituents and familiar with the schools in their districts.  Having witnessed both board meetings and meetings of legislative education committees, I’d say the senators are often better informed, more independent of the RIDE bureaucracy, and certainly more approachable than appointed board members.

I’ve already graded Gist’s tenure in Rhode Island, but Jon Brien and I debated her legacy on NBC10 News Conference this weekend. Brien says organized labor was too powerful for her to fully implement her anti-teacher agenda, while I say overall public education improved even though Gist’s focus on more tests for students and teachers weren’t the areas the state needed the most help.

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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?

It is heartening to see a robust discussion on the imminent use of the PARCC test in Rhode Island’s public schools, but the state Department of Education seems to have made up its mind before the test has even gotten off the ground. It is already actively encouraging school districts to use the PARCC to penalize students as early as next year.

Before having any chance to meaningfully examine how this untried test is working, or to determine whether, like the NECAP, it will have a disproportionate and devastating impact on poor and minority children, English Language Learners and students with disabilities, Commissioner Deborah Gist has already advised school districts they may “use PARCC results as a component in determining students’ grades” beginning as early as the upcoming 2015-16 school year. The Commissioner, with the backing of the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, has also encouraged school districts to consider using the PARCC as a high stakes graduation requirement for the Class of 2017.

In light of this push by RIDE, the biggest concern isn’t necessarily whether testing should be delayed for a year or even whether children should be able to opt out – it is whether the test results should be used punitively against students rather than as a supportive accountability tool to help them and their schools succeed. RIDE likes to claim its goal is the latter, but as we know from the NECAP debacle, it operates more like the former.

RIDE’s desire to punish kids by allowing the test to be used in this high stakes fashion so quickly is extremely troubling, especially since education officials know full well the importance of time in getting a new test like this off the ground. Last August, before changing course, the Commissioner gave good reasons why PARCC should be used as a high stakes test beginning in 2020, not 2017. As she noted then:

“We need to make sure that everyone has adequate time to prepare for the implementation.  That means students having adequate support and time, families and teachers and school and district leaders need adequate time to make the changes to their support and interventions for individual students.”

By instead giving school districts the option to use the test results against students a year from now, RIDE is actually doing everything it can to make sure students are not fully prepared. To make matters worse, the local implementation of such testing places pressures on students of particular school districts who embrace PARCC in this fashion, while protecting students who happen to live in more skeptical school districts.

We all want students to succeed, but this approach spells disaster and will inevitably lead to a repeat of the fiasco surrounding the NECAP. Opting out of the PARCC test means little if students face a reduction in grades or denial of a diploma in a few years for failing to take it. Nor is it fair if students who opt in find their grades lowered because of their scores on the test. Whether one agrees or disagrees that PARCC can be a useful support tool, parents and others concerned about punitive standardized testing should be demanding first and foremost that this test not be used for high stakes graduation or grading decisions in the way that RIDE is, sadly, so hastily determined to use it.

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.

Blaming organized labor for getting rid of Gist is like blaming vaccines for getting rid of the measles. There’s always a few that think the solution to a problem is a bigger problem than the problem.

As Brien, a Woonsocket native, a lawyer and a parent, blames teachers and their unions, his hometown school district sued Gist and the state for not ensuring an adequate education. Meanwhile, during Gist’s tenure in Rhode Island, the graduation rate in Woonsocket dropped 6 percent – from 64 percent of high school seniors in 2009 to 58 percent of high school seniors in 2013.

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

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.

The grant, Krieger explained, will seed the creation of more than 40 new public pre-K classrooms by 2020, serving more than 1,000 students in Providence, Central Falls, Woonsocket, Pawtucket, West Warwick, East Providence, Newport and Cranston. There are currently only 17 public pre-K classrooms in Rhode Island.

“As an educator with a background in early-childhood education, I know it is essential that all children, regardless of the economic status of their family or their community, have opportunities to enroll in high-quality early-learning programs,” said state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. “This federal grant will accelerate our progress in opening more state-funded prekindergarten programs across the state, and we will also continue increasing high-quality early-learning opportunities through our many important on-going initiatives, including our Quality Improvement Grants for early-learning programs and efforts to expand access to full-day kindergarten.”

Rhode Island supports 17 pre-K classes in 8 cities. The federal Preschool Expansion Grant, if fully funded for $19 million over four years, will create 36 new pre-K classrooms. State education aid will fund seven additional classrooms, according to the grant application and Krieger.

Elizabeth Burke-Bryant, of KidsCountRI and co-chair of the Early Learning Council, helped the state Department of Education, write the grant application. She said, “This exciting grant award means that more of Rhode Island’s young children will benefit from high-quality preschool that will improve school readiness and help to close achievement gaps that appear well before kindergarten entry.”

Governor-elect Gina Raimondo said early childhood learning a priority.

“Rhode Island has made progress in recent years in improving access to preschool programs, and, as governor, I will continue to be an advocate for high-quality early childhood education for our youngest learners,” she said in a press release from the Department of Education. “I look forward to working with local school districts and community partners on the successful implementation of this grant to improve the school readiness and educational outcomes of our kids.”

House Speaker Nick Mattiello said investing in early childhood education is an investment in Rhode Island’s economy.

“This Preschool Expansion Grant will enable many more Rhode Island students to have access to high-quality early learning,” Mattiello said. “I am confident that this grant, along with the early-learning investments we have made as a state, will help us ensure the academic success of more Rhode Island schoolchildren, improve the lives of Rhode Island families, and bolster the economy of our state in future years.”

Rhode Island’s “energetic and visionary” leader, Commissioner Deborah Gist, wants to keep her job when Gina Raimondo takes office next year. The Board of Education meets tonight and it’s not on their agenda, but you can bet it’s on their minds.

The passage above is from an influential McKinsey & Company report, quoted by Gist in her doctoral dissertation. Although she was not initially interested in being our education commissioner, she recounts in her research, she was actively recruited by Angus Davis, who painted a rosy picture of Rhode Island as a reform-ready state.

In many respects she found this to be true and she is generous in her praise for the work of ex-Commissioner McWalters and ex-Governor Carcieri’s Board of Regents for creating a base she could build on. A founding member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and a graduate of the Broad Academy, Gist was warmly welcomed by Rhode Island’s business community and its Republican governor.

RIDE ‘s development and implementation of a new teacher evaluation system is the focus of her self-study dissertation: “An Ocean State Voyage: A Leadership Case Study of Creating an Evaluation System With and For Teachers”.  Most teachers are not with and for Gist.  Her dissertation discusses her difficult relationship with teachers through the firings in Central Falls and Providence and teachers’ strong resistance to the use of student standardized test scores in their own evaluations.

Now that the Common Core has arrived in the suburbs, there is growing discontent with her leadership among parents as well, which is likely to flare up with the the first administration of the PAARC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test in the spring of this school year.

Gist regarded Carcieri as “reform-minded and open to taking aggressive steps to bring about the necessary changes to Rhode Island’s education system” and, although she didn’t  have the same rapport with Governor Chafee, she made her peace with him after a difficult start.

Given Governor-elect Raimondo’s celebrity as a pension reformer, some assume that she is committed to the entire union-busting privatizing program of corporate reform. The Fordham Institute’s Michael J. Petrilli, for example: “Of particular note is Rhode Island—Rhode Island!—which just elected a pro-education reform, pro-pension reform Democrat as governor and a bona fide charter school hero as lieutenant governor. All while voters in Providence rejected a union-backed convicted felon in favor of a charter supporter. Remarkable!”

Governor-elect Gina Raimondo and her husband, Andy Moffit, are parents of children attending school in Providence and Raimondo has said positive things about public schools and public school teachers.  Moffit is a senior consultant in education with McKinsey & Co. He had a hand in the report, “How the world’s best school systems keep getting better,” that introduces these comments and that Gist quoted in her dissertation.

He was a principle author of Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for Educational Leaders, which Gist admires. After Governor Chafee’s election, the Board of Regents changed significantly which worried Gist.  It must also have dismayed Moffit, who was nominated to the Board by Carcieri but decided not to serve under Chafee. Both Gist and Moffit have interests in large-scale change of school systems and educational organizations. Like Gist, Moffit has serious corporate-reform credentials.  If the two don’t know each other well, at the very least they are professional acquaintances with common contacts.

I don’t know if this connection will work for or against Gist and I’m not even going to guess how the next lieutenant governor’s opinion might figure into the decision.  Certainly Raimondo will not want to add to the the anger and distrust that Rhode Island educators feel over pension issues by retaining an unpopular Commissioner.  Nor will she wish to create the impression that her husband’s career has undue influence on her decision.  On the other hand , her sensitivity to the business community, the input of pro-corporate reform campaign contributors, and a shout-out from Washington could work for Gist.

My interest in her paper grew after reading an online article about the difficulty one URI professor was having obtaining a copy. As a member of the Senate’s Education Committee, I requested a copy from the commissioner, who replied that her dissertation had been “embargoed” until June 2014. This July, I again asked Gist to allow me to view her dissertation. She declined, again. Her reluctance to disclose her dissertation fed speculation that it contained some controversial issue(s). Others thought it might contain some insightful material reserved for future publication. Recently, a copy of Dr. Gist’s dissertation was obtained by a reporter who permitted me to review it.

I now believe I know why she chose to keep her work out of the public eye for as long as possible. To guide her efforts to develop and implement a teacher evaluation system, Gist embraced a theory or model of good leadership which eluded her in professional practice.

Gist employed a leadership theory called adaptive change, which involves changing people’s hearts and minds to transform a large-scale system. Unless attitudes, values and behaviors change, people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in their new environment. To achieve this critical conversion, she needed to inspire confidence in her evaluation system to get the necessary “buy-in” and support from teachers around the state. Teachers, the commissioner wrote, had to believe that the system ultimately was “valuable” and would need to trust the system was truly “designed primarily for feedback and support.”

Unfortunately, these goals contrast sharply with teachers’ view of the evaluation system.

Educators found it to be time-consuming while providing little in the way of constructive feedback, let alone professional development. More pointedly, teachers complained that the evaluation’s over-reliance on constantly improving student test scores was an unfair measure as teachers cannot control all of the variables affecting student performance, especially the socio-economic background of pupils in urban centers. In her dissertation, the Commissioner touted that she demonstrated flexibility and responsiveness to these teachers in making changes to the evaluation system. In reality, however, the changes made were often more negative than positive. For example, the original design included a Student Learning Score weighting of 51%, RIDE subsequently moved to a 4X5 column matrix giving a heavier weight to the Student Learning score over the Professional Practice score when determining overall teacher effectiveness.

As soon as students underperformed on tests, teachers were blamed for the failure, resulting in unprecedented low morale. The Gist reaction was on national display when all of the teachers at Central Falls High School were fired. The individual merits of the teachers did not matter nor did it matter if students had applied themselves or were disadvantaged. Under Gist’s leadership philosophy (corporate reform), all teachers were held strictly accountable for low school test scores. Educators were again broadsided by the mass firing of all of the teachers in Providence, a year later. What hurt the commissioner’s credibility in Providence was her defense of wholesale firings, calling them a “good and just cause” [ignoring RIDE’s own case law which would have prohibited firing all teachers].

Good leaders lead by example. If Gist were to do so, she would hold herself to the same standard and consequence for performance failure as she does teachers. In the new evaluation, teachers must develop Student Learning Objectives to be used to demonstrate their students are continually making progress based on standardized tests or other measures of student performance. If teachers do not meet this standard, they can be deemed “ineffective”. If teachers do not improve after a year, they face termination as had teachers in Central Falls Ironically, the Department of Education, at Gist’s request, has set 33 targets for statewide student performance. The bulk of them are related to closing the achievement gap while a few involve graduation rates and how students do after high school. In 2012, the state reached just 1 out of those 33 targets. In other years, under Gist’s leadership, RIDE did not fair much better. Yet, the commissioner is not held to account for these dismal results.

The final failure in leadership involved Gist’s penchant to use threats to enforce her will, in an e-mail to her staff, Gist warned them she would not “hesitate to take action against any employee of RIDE who purposefully works to thwart RIDE policy.” This threat was in response to RIDE staff who had intended to attend, on their own time, a vigil for the teachers to be fired in Central Falls. Gist violated the law in attempting to restrict the free speech of her staff, and was cited by the State Labor Relations Board. Gist also threatened legal action against any school superintendents who permitted teachers to be assigned based on seniority, threatening sanctions “up to and including the loss of certification,” withholding state aid and legal action. Irrespective of one’s view on seniority, I think most would agree that withholding state aid would likely hurt the very students the commissioner professes to put first.

In conclusion, Gist failed to get the level of “buy-in” necessary to create a fair evaluation system that would garner the support of a majority of teachers. That failure was not due to teachers’ fear of change or being held accountable, but to the Commissioner’s own poor leadership ability. Befittingly, 82% of public school teachers polled had a negative view of Gist’s job performance! All things considered, I can appreciate why she wanted to keep her dissertation out of the public eye as long as possible.