Education
In an op-ed published in Monday’s Projo, Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey makes his case for using school choice to increase the educational opportunities available to Rhode Island students. Here is the Mayor’s description of the first step, a voluntary pilot school choice program for Providence students…This program will let students in Providence’s failing schools enroll…
The encouraging school choice proposal by Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, discussed here, and the absurd response by Senator Chafee has led me to repost below an expanded version of a November 18, 2005 posting on the moral imperative for school choice. Contrasting this week’s posting with an earlier posting on this issue – also by…
Fred’s sarcasm in the comments to Andrew’s foregoing post regarding my previous complaints that Mayor Laffey hadn’t tied his arrest of Maria Hernandez to the issue of school choice doesn’t really work based on Laffey’s ex post facto announcement. Will’s comments fair a little better, since his previous assertion was of an unseen plan on…
Robert Walsh, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Education Association, has responed, point-by-point, to Tom Coyne’s education proposals for Rhode Island. Mr. Coyne’s proposals are in boldface. Mr. Walsh’s responses are in italics. 1. Start by saving money through the use of a single state health insurance plan for teachers and…
Gary Ezovski, Chairman of the North Smithfield School Committee, offers these thoughts in a recent ProJo editorial: I can comfortably say that I have yet to hear a suggestion that will solve the schools-budget challenge in our community or throughout the state… The business of education is nearly 80-percent labor. Payroll and benefits are where…
I stand behind my original solution to the problem posed by Providence residents like Maria Hernandez who send their children to school in Cranston. Instead of focusing on action against Ms. Hernandez, Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey should take the battle directly to the real source of the problem — the Providence school system. Mayor Laffey…
Representative Paul Crowley (D-Newport) has introduced legislation lifting Rhode Island’s moratorium on the establishment of new charter schools (House bill 6850). If the moratorium is not lifted, no new charter school can open in Rhode Island until the 2008-2009 school year.
According to the Wall Street Journal: If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you’d probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy.…
An editorial in Saturday’s Projo compared the poor performance of Rhode Island’s public schools to the better performance of those in neighboring Massachusetts, then listed a number of reform proposals for closing the gap…Impose high-stakes testing. Create performance incentives for teachers, through pay — rewarding those who do a great job, and especially those who…
Somehow this bit of biography of the man who recently performed a “75-minute one-act, written by Howard Zinn, [that] engaged the audience by shedding light on the theories of philosopher Karl Marx” at the University of Rhode Island is almost too predictable to notice: Jones is a high school teacher in New York and is…