Education
Charles Bakst’s column in today’s Projo contains this item about House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino (D-Providence), generally considered to be the main architect of the House’s budget…Interestingly, Carcieri hoped to spend $19 million more on school aid. But Costantino, looking for savings, wasn’t convinced such an outlay, spread over the various districts, would make much…
Matt Jerzyk of RI Future offers these long-term recommendations in response the Rhode Island House’s decision to REDUCE — not level-fund — statewide education aid…Consolidate and merge school districts to some smaller level (perhaps five districts).Eliminate the funding of schools by property taxes and fund them solely through the state. Two immediate thoughts in response…These…
I’ll readily admit that I don’t know much about the state of Providence schools other than what I get from the news, but it seems that Providence Superintendent of Schools Donnie Evans has some good ideas. Evans announced a series of new initiatives that address his strategic plan, Realizing the Dream, which calls for improving…
State Rep. Paul Crowley of Newport commends the special commission that has recommended a new school-funding formula, but has some questions: Does it make sense to invest millions of additional dollars in a system that has remained structurally unchanged? Do we need, and can we afford, more than 35 school districts to educate about 120,000…
I’m not 100% sure what to make of this just yet, but according to the specific numbers in the House budget plan (H5300, Article 21, substitute A), many Rhode Island communities will get less education aid, in terms of absolute dollars, than they did last year. Here are exact numbers from the text of the…
From Andrea Panciera of the Projo’s 7-to-7 newsblog…The head of the House Finance Committee early this afternoon revealed some of the panel’s proposals to deal with the state’s budget crunch. Among them are… “Level funding” the total amount of education aid to cities and towns, which means eliminating the 3 percent education-aid increase across the…
I’m not just being a contrarian when I say that I have concerns about this legislation: The Rhode Island Senate has approved legislation creating the “Lindsay Ann Burke Act,” an effort to protect those most vulnerable to dating violence by calling on schools to provide dating violence education for middle school and high school students.…
Chariho school board member (and Rhode Island College iconoclast) Bill Felkner has an interesting op-ed in today’s Projo expressing concern that some of the information being produced to meet No-Child-Left-Behind requirements isn’t reliable…The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) uses the Teacher Certification System to tabulate the types and numbers of employees at every Rhode…
The title above is not snarky or ironic. At least as far away as Detroit, Rhode Island is famous for its charter schools, according to nationally syndicated columnist Neal Peirce… In 1999, Doug Ross and his colleagues made an outrageous “90-90” promise. In 2007, they would graduate at least 90 percent of ninth-graders going through…