Education

Not Much of an Education Story

By Justin Katz | February 26, 2010 |

We’re in sad circumstances when this hardly seems like much of a story at all: The [Cranston] School Committee Tuesday approved a nearly $123.6-million budget that eliminates high school teams, the enrichment program [aka, honors programs], the elementary school strings, band and choral program, and lays off about 16 employees. The teams cut are: freshman…

Re: Times of Drasticness

By Justin Katz | February 25, 2010 |

By way of follow up, I asked Director of Administration and Finance Doug Fiore a couple of questions after tonight’s school committee meeting, here are various interesting data points derived from our conversation: Approximately $130,000 of the $450,000 increase in health insurance costs would have been erased from the next budget if the union hadn’t…

Times of Drasticness Begin

By Justin Katz | February 25, 2010 |

I was a few minutes late to tonight’s Tiverton School Committee meeting, and it was already underway. The high school library is pretty well filled, which means probably about 30-40 people, an apparent mix of students, teachers, and residents. The topic: closing the high school. Of course, when the union is looking for a juicy…

Politics & Pupils

By Justin Katz | February 25, 2010 |

Monique and Matt talked Central Falls and Chafee on last night’s Matt Allen Show. Stream by clicking here, or download it.

Parents Can Only Teach What They Know

By Justin Katz | February 24, 2010 |

The raging blame debate, when it comes to public-school students’ performance, made an appearance in RI Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s online chat for the Providence Journal: Parent: As a parent of 2 children, I know how crucial parent involvement is. Has anyone looked at educating the parents of the kids of these failing schools? You…

A Day in the Life of RI Education

By Marc Comtois | February 24, 2010 |

A look at the papers today gives quite a little snapshot of the sorry state of education in Rhode Island. Central Falls is firing it’s high school teachers as a way to deal with a chronically under-performing school (with the blessing of the State Education Commissioner Gist and U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan) because…

Steps Don’t Just Go UP

By Marc Comtois | February 23, 2010 |

Reading a couple different articles (and the comments) prompted me to go looking for the Rhode Island statute that required teacher steps. Here it is (16-7-29): § 16-7-29 Minimum salary schedule established by community. – (a) Every community shall establish and put into full effect by appropriate action of its school committee a salary schedule…

The State of Education in Rhode Island, Part 2

By Carroll Andrew Morse | February 23, 2010 |

The district-by-district count data, presented in yesterday’s post, on changes between the 8th and 11th grades in the numbers of students proficient in reading and math needs to be compared to a measure of opportunities for change, in order to be useful for purposes of analysis and accountability. Depending on whether a change in number…

The Cause of the Firings

By Justin Katz | February 23, 2010 |

Every working Rhode Islander, and all of those looking for work, can see the disconnection of Central Falls union rhetoric: “We still hold that this termination of the entire faculty is a violation of the contract and contrary to state law and federal law as well,” [teachers union President Jane] Sessums said. “This is a…

The Same Old Local Political Roundabout

By Justin Katz | February 23, 2010 |

As circumstances deteriorate, it’s instructive to observe the varying reactions and strategies for handling them. In Tiverton, the established order, so to speak, has redoubled its efforts to keep the negative focus on Tiverton Citizens for Change in the hopes that people won’t notice that the plans for improvement bear a striking resemblance to the…