Raimondo’s pension cuts benefited hedge funds more than RI, says Brown
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown attacked pension cuts for state employees dating back to Governor Raimondo’s previous role as state treasurer at a town-hall style “Restore Our Pensions” event at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence on Monday evening. The event came mere hours after WPRI published polling results showing Brown lagging behind in name […]
Deya Garcia runs to advocate for a neglected neighborhood
Sitting in The Lunch Box, a Dominican restaurant on Park Avenue in Cranston, Democratic candidate for Providence city council Deya Garcia (Ward 8, Reservoir and West End) shows me pictures of flowers. Her neighbors have dug in chayote, a kind of squash plant usually reserved for humid climates, and gave Garcia tips on how to […]
Candidates for Ward 1 and Ward 12 square off
In one of the first opportunities for both city council incumbents and their challengers to be grilled by the public this campaign season, candidates from Ward 1 and Ward 12 (encompassing Downtown, Smith Hill, and Fox Point, among other neighborhoods) met at the Pavilion at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence this Tuesday during a Q&A […]
Professor Kalwant Bhopal on race, education in US, UK
Kalwant Bhopal is a visiting professor at Harvard University in the Graduate School of Education and deputy director of the Center for Research in Race & Education at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Next Spring she will be publishing her book “White Privilege – the myth of a post-racial society.” Her first US […]
No more charter school lotteries, pick students at random
A Providence Journal editorial on Thursday, September 14, “Some schools lead the way” praises charter schools for outstanding performances on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests. They are described as “heroic schools…in the urban core,” and are held up as proof that “the old canard that poverty is an […]
RI needs new investments in higher education to ensure prosperity for all
Like most states, Rhode Island’s state funding for higher education remains well below pre-recession levels (though Rhode Island’s disinvestment in higher education preceded the onset of the Great Recession by several years, as seen in Figure 1). Economic opportunity and a thriving state economy depend on a high-quality, affordable system of public higher education. At […]
Lucy Rios on prevention of domestic violence
Lucy Rios is the director of prevention and communications at Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence (RICADV). I talked to her about her work in my continuing series on domestic violence issues. Why is prevention important? We have been strategically working at how do we end domestic violence in our community. We focused a lot […]
RI now has one of the best public preschool programs in the country
When it comes to pre-kindergarten programs, Rhode Island is slowly becoming one of the best states in the nation, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual State of Preschool Yearbooks released yesterday. “Rhode Island is a leader on funding per child and preschool quality standards, meeting all 10 current and new benchmarks,” […]
The state of RI school buildings is in ‘crisis,’ says Wagner
“We have a crisis with our facilities,” said state Education Commissioner Ken Wagner about the state of school buildings in Rhode Island during the student question and answer portion of his State of Education speech Monday night. A student from Chariho posed the question. He said his school resembles a prison. Then there’s Providence. In […]
Rhode Island’s pre-k program is expanding, slowly
As Rhode Island considers extending the social contract at the tail end of the public education experience with Governor Gina Raimondo’s high profile RI Promise proposal, it’s worth noting the Ocean State has been extending it at the other end for almost a decade. This September, the state-funded pre-kindergarten program adds four new classrooms in […]
Gina Raimondo’s grassroots approach to free public college tuition
Michelle Terminesi, of Wakefield, has a son in college and a daughter on the way. She and her husband don’t really know how they are going to pay for it. “We have two people in our family who are trying to make a better life for themselves through college,” she said yesterday, while speaking at […]
Javier Montanez has degrees from RIC, J&W and the school of hard knocks
Javier Montanez, the principal of Leviton Dual Language School in Providence, interrupts a second grade class with a message in English. He then walks down the hall and delivers a similar message to a fifth grade class in Spanish. Both classrooms know what Montanez said because this is how education is delivered at Leviton – […]
Achievement First expansion could be decided tonight
Public education in Providence comes to a fork in the road tonight as the state Council on Elementary and Secondary Education is scheduled to act on Achievement First’s controversial 10-year expansion plan. If approved, the multi-state charter school would become responsible for educating more than 10 percent of all city public school students, growing from […]
Going deeper into RIDE and Brown’s Achievement First fiscal impact memo
As part of the ongoing debate regarding the proposed expansion of Jorge Elorza’s Achievement First (AF) mayoral academies in Providence, one crucial question is the expansion’s fiscal impact on the Providence Public School District (PPSD) and the City of Providence budget. In the 2016 legislative session, Rhode Island charter law was revised to require… …the council […]
The optics, politics and nuance of Achievement First expansion
Supporters, many poor people of color, spoke passionately about justice and opportunity in Providence schools. Opponents, mostly well-employed white people, spoke about economies of scale and efforts to undermine public education. This was the scene last night as the state Council on Elementary and Secondary Education listened to public testimony on a proposed expansion to […]
Public input needed on proposed changes to RI diploma system
Hopefully many parents, teachers, and concerned RI residents are aware that the RI Council on Elementary and Secondary Education has proposed changes to the high school diploma system. They will host four public hearings in late August and early September, and also are accepting public comment in writing. Here is the link to the draft […]
ProJo news story corrects Projo op/ed misinformation
How misleading are Providence Journal editorials on public education and specifically charter schools? The news department ran a front page story this morning overtly correcting misinformation found in its editorials.
Providence is in the red yet pays a finder’s fee to Teach for America
According to City Hall, Providence has a major budget crisis to face but if this is true, why are we paying a finder’s fee to the corporately-backed nonprofit Teach for America?
City Year, Teach for America, and the neoliberalization of education
The war on public education includes union busting but also the destruction of teacher tenure.
Learn all about the grand ed deform plan in THE SCHOOL CLOSURE PLAYBOOK
Jacobin magazine is not my favorite publication on the Left, mostly because it seems to have some spots where it is putting its layout editorial policy ahead of everything else, producing gorgeous magazines that sometimes seem to be all over the place ideologically. That said, they did a fantastic job this summer commemorating the 150th […]
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