Education
I notice that Mike, of Assigned Reading, is cynical about the ratcheting up of consequences for failing schools that Andrew mentioned yesterday. Here’s Mike: This is why education bureaucrats drive me crazy. Today Commissioner Deborah Gist announced that five schools in Providence have been performing so poorly for so long that the Department of Education…
Tonight’s the first meeting at which the Tiverton School Committee will address next year’s budget. The upshot is that Superintendent Bill Rearick is offering, as an initial budget, an increase at the state cap (4.5%). Of course, he included in last year’s budget “surprise” federal “stimulus” cash, so this budget is actually 7.13% above the…
Traditionally, Rhode Islanders have been offered a choice of two options for improving their troubled educational system…Spend more money on district-level bureaucracies, with minimal change to existing school practices.Spend more money on non-educational social service programs.According to Jennifer D. Jordan of the Projo, however, in the case of six currently underperforming Rhode Island schools, while…
I’m one of two people in the audience of an “emergency” Tiverton School Committee meeting, which was called in order to approve a memorandum of understanding from the Rhode Island Department of Education for the state’s Race to the Top application, and the sense that I’m getting from the discussion is not encouraging. Here’s the…
The transition of Hope High School in Providence back to city control, reported on most recently by Linda Borg in today’s Projo, illustrates the premises that animate both charter school and site-based management school reform movements. Rhode Island’s State Commissioner of Education took a direct role in operating Hope High in 2005; after educational results…
The last paragraph of Alisha A. Pina‘s story in today’s Projo on Democrat Mary Messier’s victory in Tuesday’s District 62 special election (former Rep. Elizabeth Dennigan’s old seat, mostly Pawtucket with a little bit of East Providence) provides a perfect example of how the state Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy on fiscal issues continues to propel…
WRNI’s Elisabeth Harrison includes Tiverton in her radio review of the notion of merit pay. A national expert suggests that longevity and such are not effective, but that the formula for a mert-based system hasn’t been perfected, yet. I’m encouraged, though, to hear that Education Commissioner Deborah Gist is on the page that I consider…
At last night’s Tiverton School Committee meeting, a member of the town’s hard left (a state social worker who, as I understand, was instrumental in banning the Easter Bunny when he was on the school committee), acting in his capacity as Voice of the Community, cited Providence Journal columnist Julia Steiny as some sort of…
One expects for this sort of thing to slip out in the heat of argument — in person or in comment sections — but it’s a splash of cold water to see retired social studies teacher Robert Salerno offer it as op-ed material: I submit that they might learn that the problems of public education…
Well, the title of this post is a bit of an overstatement (downright presumptuous, actually), but I just received the following press release from the Rhode Island Department of Education: All Rhode Island teachers will be evaluated at least once a year, following the historic vote tonight by the Board of Regents for Elementary and…