David Anderson for State Representative: Concrete Priorities for Education Reform

David Anderson, candidate for State Representative in Rhode Island's 4th District (Providence), and opponent of House Majority Leader Gordon Fox, has presented some concrete ideas for reforming public education in the state of Rhode Island…

Given the large number of failing schools in Rhode Island I would not try to overhaul all of them at once. I would begin with the "basket cases" where less than 10% of the children are estimated to be at or above grade level as judged by the Nation's Report Card. In terms of the NECAP examinations this threshold would approximately be 20% proficient for the primary levels and 10% for high school. Such schools would be closed at the conclusion of the academic year. All staff would be discharged. Such schools would be reopened as charter schools operated by a professional education management organization (EMO). The EMO's fee would be performance based. The possible rehiring of former staff would be at the discretion of the new managers…

Once all of the dysfunctional schools of the preceding category are under new management, I would raise the threshold for reform upward in phases until all schools with less than 50% of children at or above grade level had been converted to the charter
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Current and past practices that have been used to deceive parents and other stakeholders would be replaced by ones that provide an honest accounting of public school performance. This means rescoring the NECAP examinations to provide proficiency estimates comparable to the Nation's Report Card. It also means withholding regular academic diplomas from all who have not achieved NECAP proficiency on the high school tests. Students not seeking a regular academic diploma would receive a certificate of completion that would show their respective proficiency levels in the subjects tested by the NECAP. In such a system diplomas would mean something.