Education
I’m a believer in the importance of creativity and honing one’s natural talents, seeing it as a critical part of becoming effective at and finding fulfillment in whatever one does. That creativity can be underdeveloped during education, however, does not mean that it’s appropriate to make it the sole pillar of a schooling strategy, which…
Readers know that I’m extremely skeptical — that is, even more skeptical than usual — about efforts to force education reform from the federal government down. Especially with the Obama administration behind the wheel. An article that’s been sitting in my queue all week gives some indication that it’s not an irrational fear: The only…
Last year, Notre Dame University was the center of national attention, because it had asked abortion-supporting President Obama to give the commencement address and was planning to give him an honorary degree. The problem was, of course, that Notre Dame is explicitly a Catholic organization, and while nobody objected to pro-choice speakers, in general, many…
I jumped the gun a bit last Friday. Now I’m not: RI didn’t win in Round 1 of the Race to the Top sweepstakes (and a tweet by EdComm Gist confirms) UPDATE: RI finished 8th: Delaware and Tennessee won bragging rights Monday as the nation’s top education innovators, besting the District and 13 other finalists…
Whatever one thinks of her style and policies — which don’t uniformly fold comfortably into any faction of Rhode Island politics — the outside perspective that Education Commissioner Deborah Gist is bringing to the discussion is refreshing. Take this, from a Newport Daily News article on Friday, discussing the effects of the proposed funding formula…
This is a positive development, for the short-term, but it should be considered a short-term fix before turning around, rather than a short-term transition toward something new in the future: An $88,241 donation from the New England Laborers’/Cranston Public Schools Construction Career Academy, a public charter school, “will just about restore every program except freshman…
Even if Rhode Island doesn’t win federal largess for its education improvement plan, as Marc is suggesting we will not, we still have every reason that we’ve always had to hold our heads high, such as this one that Julia Steiny mentioned last Sunday: After the 1960s, many states went back to their labor laws…
The Department of Education has announced* the winners of the first round of Race to the Top School Improvement Grants (SIG) and the Rhode Island didn’t make the cut. Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio and Washington were the winners. For those who tied the Central Falls firings to RI getting the SIGs, I guess the…
Now for some good news: according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP test results, RI Reading scores are up, overall. Unfortunately, the way the ProJo reports it is confusing: In Grade 4, 36 percent of Rhode Island students were reading at grade level, a five-point increase from the previous rate and five…
Native Cranstonite and former Major Leaguer Mike Stenhouse hit his recent op-ed out of the park: The proposed elimination of varsity athletics programs in the Cranston school district is a direct result of what is wrong with the political system in our entire state. Namely, that state law and city contracts routinely give priority to…