Education
It looks like the General Assembly actually did get around to passing a state aid formula for Rhode Island’s schools. As we’ve been pointing out all along, folks at the local level have seemed to assume that a “fair funding formula” would be one that gives them, specifically, more money, and this legislation does acknowledge…
Maybe it’s just my sense of the underlying humor of humanity, but I had to chuckle when reading a recent article about an RI Kids Count event. The piece starts out with RI Federation of Teachers and Allied Health Professionals head Marcia Reback advocating for a massive wave of unionized public-sector early-childhood workers. Then it…
At the Warwick School Committee meeting last night–in a virtual repeat of Monday night’s City Council meeting–residents and students voiced their dismay over the idea of cutting school activities, including sports, to make up looming budget deficits. Perhaps the most insightful, eloquent and forceful defense of sports was given by former Pilgrim standout and Syracuse…
According to Jennifer D. Jordan of the Projo, the Highlander school, a K-8 charter school located in Providence, is in danger of having its charter not renewed by the state’s Board of Regents for education…[State Education Commissioner Deborah Gist] said she is concerned by a weak curriculum and uneven test scores that continue to trail…
New Jersey Governor Christie The fight is about who is going to run public education in New Jersey. The parents and the people they elect or the mindless, faceless union leaders who decide that they’re going to be the ones who run it because they have the money and the authority to bully around school…
Two factors are obvious in making Rhode Island school committees behave as if authority over the jobs is ultimately a weak card in negotiations: Some members see giving as much money as possible to teachers as one of their rightful objectives (whether they’re teachers, themselves, or have some other reason for alliance), and other members…
Well, it’s certainly not rocket science, but it’s nice to know that New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie and I have come to the same conclusion when it comes to schools’ supposed funding problems (subscription required): In the last three years, state and local government-employee compensation grew 9.8 percent, compared with 6.9 percent in the private…
In an article about securing union approval of Rhode Island’s application for federal Race to the Top education funds: [NEARI President Larry] Purtill also said he is carefully monitoring the acrimonious situation in East Providence, where the School Committee last year unilaterally cut teachers’ wages, forced teachers to pay more of their health insurance costs…
The title of Julia Steiny’s Sunday column, “Test results don’t accurately write a school’s story,” doesn’t really reflect the theme of the essay. Sure, she does say that the efforts that Beacon Charter School put forward to improve its reading and writing scores on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) would have been well…
I’m keeping up the posting over on the Tiverton Citizens for Change Web site, including the observation that the drum that the Tiverton School Committee beat prior to our financial town meeting are now being played in West Warwick: Sports programs and part-time employees join the list of recommended cuts school officials hope will compensate…