Education
In the course of yet another article about bias in our univerisities, William Pilger (a pseudonym), a conservative tenured professor in a southern university, managed to both display the value of a humanities education and the reluctance (and reason) that students show for engaging in any type of classroom discussion that may touch on current…
I became more interested in bias in academia when I re-entered “the academy” to pursue an MA in History (at Providence College). Thankfully, I have not personally felt any real “quashing of dissent.” Although I have heard a few pithy political asides in the course of unrelated lectures, my experience at Providence College has been…
Yesterday I “braved” the rain to vote in a special election that sought to winnow down the candidates for an open school committee seat from 5 to 2. Dr. Saleh R. Shahid and Lucille Mota-Costa emerged as the winners. Shahid is a registered Republican who has unsuccessfully run for both the State Legislature and State…
Marc: I published a ProJo editorial in March that noted the ludicrous comments last Spring about Governor Carcieri’s then-proposed modest increase in charter school funding and insignificant reduction in general education funding. What made the comments so ridiculous was the proposed small changes in funding for the upcoming year were completely dwarfed by the hefty…
While visiting The Learning Community Charter School in Pawtucket, Governor Carcieri floated the idea of removing the state’s charter school cap, which limits each school district to two charter schools (except Providence, which is allowed four). Predictably, there are those who disagree with the Governor about removing the cap, even though recent studies have shown…
Presiden’t Bush’s much vilified No Child Left Behind Act appears to be working, at least that’s the conclusion drawn from reading this story in today’s Providence Journal. More than half of Rhode Island’s public schools have jumped into the high-performing category, and school leaders across the state say that’s in no small part due to…
I attended a meeting last night at my local elementary school in which data was presented detailing where the school stood with regards to standardized testing for school accountability as mandated by the State and Federal governments. While I may find the specific numbers for my children’s school more germane, I realize that there is…
Commenting to a post by Marc, Rich from East Greenwich offers several specific questions that he might ask if mediating teacher contract disputes there. Among the considerations that he proposes is a comparison of teachers compensation with the median for the town. Although not addressing East Greenwich, Marc and I worked through some of these…
After 20 months of fruitless contract negotiations, the School Committee and the Warwick Teachers Union are about to put the dispute to arbitration hearings — but now they can’t even agree on when to meet to frame out a schedule for the proceedings. So begins the latest report on the latest chapter in the Warwick…
