Education
Just to offer a hear, hear to the Projo’s editorial on education in RI: These proposed reforms are all excellent ideas. He also announced that he, House Speaker William Murphy, Senate President Joseph Montalbano, and representatives of labor, business, local government and other interests will work together to formulate what he called “Rhode Island’s 21st…
It looks like the Senate is where momentum is building towards a decision on whether or not to allow more charter schools in the state. Right now, there are three bills on the table (that I’ve found, anyway). S 0238 was proposed by Senator Leo R. Blais (Deputy Senate Pro-Tempore) and simply seeks to revoke…
The Governor mentioned it in his State of the State and Rep. Paul Crowley (D) seemed to support looking into it and now a group of GOP legislators have introduced a bill that calls for a statewide teacher’s contract. H 5397 (sponsored by Representatives Loughlin, Gorham, Mumford, Moffitt, and Singleton) states: (a) Effective July 1,…
Here’s another one: “The Rhode Island High School Dropout Prevention Act of 2007” (2007 – H5351) makes it the responsibility of the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary education to work in collaboration with local school districts and the Department of Higher Education to implement strategies to lower the state’s dropout rate. “Rhode Island…
While announcing legislation that would “require all public schools systems in the state to provide full-time kindergarten programs,” Sen. Christopher B. Maselli of Johnston offers this bit of manipulative rhetoric: “It’s incredible how quickly we, as a state, can commit to spend money on new motor vehicle offices and prisons, but we argue about the…
A couple days ago I mentioned about how–and why–many urban school districts are doing away with middle schools and going to a K-8 model. Apparently, Providence is looking to head in the same direction, as indicated by Mayor Cicilline: Addressing the challenges facing the Providence School District will not be easy, [Mayor Cicilline] said, and…
In his innaugural address, Governor Carcieri vowed to reform our current education system. As Maggie Gallagher reports, maybe getting rid of “middle schools” entirely is one worthwhile goal. According to the New York Post, almost 50 of the city’s 220 middle schools have closed in the last two years, part of a plan to move…
It being the end of the year, the ProJo produced a piece detailing the public policy goals of various Ocean State political leaders. Among the topics was education reform: Lawmakers dole out more than $699 million in school aid to their home cities and towns, but it has been years since the state had a…
Time magazine’s cover story announcing the idiosyncratic choice of “You” as the 2006 Person of the Year is receiving the requisite amount of media and water cooler attention. However, the Time cover story on education reform from the previous week contains more ideas of substance likely to be remembered in the long run. In its…
In a comment to my post on sex education, Rhody points to another of those differences of understanding between conservatives and liberals that seem nigh impossible to resolve: I think the best way to discourage sex before marriage is building kids’ self-esteem and letting them know they don’t have to give it up to feel…