In a 6 to 5 vote last night, Governor Linc Chafee’s Board of Education voted against revisiting using the NECAP test as a high stakes graduation requirement.

“It’s certainly disappointing but I’m not discouraged,” said Jean Ann Guliano, an East Greenwich parent and politician. Guliano, who was chairwoman of the East Greenwich School Committee and ran for Lt. Gov as a member of the Moderate Party, has a son with autism whose hopes of graduating high school could be dashed by the NECAP requirement. “A 6-5 vote means that some people are starting to listen.”

But Steven Brown, executive director of the RI ACLU, which says the NECAP requirement unfairly targets poor and disabled students, was less conciliatory. In a statement sent out this morning, he said:

It is unconscionable that thousands of high school seniors may soon face their loss of a diploma based on an arbitrary test score, and will do so pursuant to a policy that the Board of Education itself has never directly considered.

Even worse, just weeks after being chided by a court for seeking to hold a discussion of high stakes testing in secret at a ‘private’ retreat, the Board tonight once again showed its disdain for the open meetings law by discussing this petition in complete secrecy. The public has no idea whatsoever why the Board took the action it did last night, and that is the antithesis of what the open meetings law is all about. We will be considering next steps, as this fight is far from over.

The Providence Journal reports “Those voting to deny the students’ petition were: (chairwoman Eva) Mancuso, Michael Bernstein, Karin Forbes, Jo Eva Gaines, William Maaia and Patrick Guida. Those voting in favor of reconsidering the NECAP were: Antonio Barajas, Colleen Callahan, Larry Purtill, Michael Grande and Mathies Santos.”

Rhode Island’s Race to the Top federal funding is tied to its plans to use he NECAP for student and teacher evaluation.

Jean Ann Guliano is the Robert McNamara of the Rhode Island ed reform movement, said our mutual friend Bob Houghtaling. It’s a good analogy. Diane Ravitch works too.

Guliano is a former school committee chairwoman from East Greenwich who ran for Lt. Gov. on the Moderate Party ticket. As chairwoman, she was very fiscally conservative – at one time she tried to outsource school custodians. She was also a big fan Deborah Gist fan and Race to the Top supporter. (who in East Greenwich wouldn’t want to race the likes of Central Falls and Woonsocket to the top).

She also has a son with autism. He’s one of those kids who might not fare so well on a standardized test. But he’s certainly smart enough to warrant a high school diploma.  And Guliano is far and away smart enough to help him through that situation. The issue, as I see it, is not every kid with autism has a smart, politically connected and hard-working mom like Guliano.

Here’s how she put it in a recent GoLocal post:

As a former school committee member, business person and interested parent, I was an early supporter of Race to the Top and Commissioner Gist when she came on board in 2009. I also signed off for my district on the RTTT application. The goals sounded promising. Who wouldn’t want every child to receive an excellent education? Many of the numerous high profile goals of RTTT, especially those that have appealed to the business and political community, have been vigorously addressed. These include areas such as funding reliability, increase in charter schools, elimination of seniority-based promotion, teacher evaluation systems, data gathering, progress monitoring, accountability, etc.

However, with all of these accomplishments, the one thing that has not improved is the outcomes for our most vulnerable students. The original goals of both No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were not about turning schools into businesses or testing companies into a cottage industry. They were about improving the educational outcomes for those students on the fringe – those who are economically disadvantaged, have limited English proficiency and special needs. These students generally don’t have powerful lobbyists. Businesses don’t necessarily line up to hire these students, and even schools even know that these are the students who bring down their test scores.

Read the whole thing here.