Education
I attended last night’s meeting at the Barrington town hall organized by state Representative Joy Hearn (D – Barrington/East Providence) on the status of the education “funding formula” deliberations in the Rhode Island legislature. Speakers on the panel included Tim Duffy of the RI Association of School Committees, Barrington School Committee members Buzz Guida and…
Supporters have presented charter schools as an educational laboratory, and here’s a major test: They are members of an eight-teacher dream team, lured to an innovative charter school that will open in Washington Heights in September with salaries that would make most teachers drop their chalk and swoon; $125,000 is nearly twice as much as…
The burdens and freedoms of summer reading lists probably play a role in a common memory — trudging through Of Mice and Men in the car on trips while eagerly bringing Stephen King’s The Stand poolside. (The specific books, of course, will differ.) If the limited goal for the summer is to encourage reading —…
Readers’ first reaction to this story may be “let my charters go”: Stymied by contractual rules that control the hiring and placement of teachers, three unionized charter schools are exploring whether to seek independence from the districts that govern them. Times2 Academy and the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, both in Providence, and the New…
Funding-formula advocate Jennifer D. Jordan reaches too far in this part of her description of Thursday’s Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education meeting, published in today’s Projo…Rhode Island is the only state that lacks a school financing formula, so taxpayers, in essence, pay extra money to support charters.The word “charters” refers to charter…
Despite agreement with the thrust of the initiative, this sort of thinking is proving insidiously detrimental to the health of the nation: … the federal stimulus law gives Obama a powerful incentive to push the expansion of charter schools. The law set up a $5 billion fund to reward states and school districts that adopt…
In a South County Independent letter to the editor, town resident Edward Collins presents the kind of statistic that raises eyebrows with regards to arguments that escalating public education costs are somehow inevitable…In 2001 there were 519 people working for the school system serving 4,400 students. Over the last 10 years we’ve served 900 fewer…
Here is some of the information, provided to the public at last night’s financial town meeting in Barrington, regarding various aspects of public education in Rhode Island cities and towns…
I’m suspicious of Rhode Island notions of a school funding formula. Obviously, state aid has to be dispersed by some method, and a formula of sorts is intrinsic in that activity, but the emphases and consequences make a hang-up of the word “equitable.” For one thing, we in the suburbs have no reason to trust…