Education
Diane Ravitch offers a wonderful example of a particular strategy for rebuffing education reforms: As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done. Our era is no different.…
Let’s order things clearly: It was objectionable for a Central Falls high school teacher to dangle an Obama doll upside down with a sign saying “Fire CF Teachers,” because it involved the students in a union dispute. Talk of its being a hate crime is utterly outlandish: To Clifford Montiero, president of the Providence branch…
As I’ve articulated in the past, education systems ought to have a structure of responsibility — and accountability — that begins in the classroom with comprehensive teacher evaluations performed by administrators with responsibility for broader performance measures answering to the superintendent, who must answer for the performance of the entire district. In a recent letter…
Perhaps it’s too easy to be the naysayer in a place like Rhode Island, but something about this good news: Legislation approved by the General Assembly on Tuesday and signed by Gov. Donald L. Carcieri later in the day raised the limit on charter schools in Rhode Island from 20 to 35, a key part…
Those who read my previous post regarding Cranston’s attempt to help relieve their budgetary woes by combining various school sports programs from their two high schools via a waiver application to the Rhode Island Interscholastic League won’t be surprised to read that I think the RI Interscholastic League got it right: The Rhode Island Interscholastic…
Right now, public education is such an expensive catastrophe that top-down imposition of standards and reasonable organizational principles is an attractive option. But there’s a very dark side to the impulse, hints of which can be found here: Governors and education leaders on Wednesday proposed sweeping new school standards that could lead to students across…
Here’s the decision from Superior Court Justice Silverstein: PDF. About halfway through the document, it appears that Silverstein would draw his lines very tightly around his ruling in favor of the school committee: Under the language of § 16-2-9 a school committee must bargain in good faith with certified public school teachers in accordance with…
ProJo reports: A Superior Court judge ruled today that the East Providence School Committee “acted lawfully” when it unilaterally cut teachers’ salaries and forced a 20 percent contribution to their health insurance costs last year. Facing a deficit of more than $4 million, the board made the reductions in January 2009, saying it had to…
I’m glad to see I’m not the only person with concerns about top-down education reform in Rhode Island. Here’s Bill Felkner, executive director of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute: [Education Commissioner Deborah] Gist is wresting power from the unions and implementing reforms through the state Department of Education, such as the no-bumping rule. In…
Add this to the strange insights into the way things work that explain more than the immediate context to which they apply: While state officials have described problems in the qualifications of teachers at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, the Web site of the state Department of Education lists most of them as…