Education
Taking a soft tack in defining “fairness” when it comes to teacher compensation, Julia Steiny references a series of reports put out by Education Week: The researchers averaged the earnings of all 16 occupations and used that number to draw a “parity line” across the center of the chart. Against that line they graphed each…
Paul Mueller of WLNE-TV (ABC 6) is reporting that the West Warwick Town Council has voted to have the Town Manager “take over” reconciliation of the school committee’s budget deficit…ABC 6 Reporter Paul Mueller: A town council meeting, packed with hundreds of West Warwick residents and teachers, searching for answers to help fix their financial…
First, let me say, as a Cumberland resident and taxpayer, that I greatly respect teachers and the job that they do shaping the minds of our children. I like the profession; I do not hate teachers, nor do I have anything personally against them. This is not intended as an attack. Having taken the time…
I’m not a fan of top-down consolidation — at least not in Rhode Island. It’s not as if our system consists of a competent, efficient state-level government attempting to stay afloat on a roiling mass of expensive, unruly municipalities. The whole beast’s cancerous throughout, and the more diseased flesh we graft onto the heart, the…
As you’ve probably heard, the results for the 2008 New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) tests are available, and Rhode Island overall did see improvements. For purposes of comparison, I’ve averaged the proficiency scores for each of the three tests and ranked the schools: RI Grades 3-8 NECAP Score Ranking, 2008 Average ProficiencyScore Increase from2008…
As Marc and I have been illustrating, there are a number of ways to cut the data on education expenditures. That, indeed, is what makes it possible for unionists to declare this or that slice decisive, even if reality disagrees. In the comments to Marc’s post, for example, NEA Assistant Executive Director Pat Crowley seizes…
Unexplored concepts have been all the rage when it comes to Rhode Island’s education system (and the money that supports it) of late. Consolidation! Funding formula! State-level contract! South Kingstown Superintendent Robert Hicks offers an important directive: In the short term, we should subject any proposals to these questions: How do we know we’ll get…
Prompted by Justin’s analysis, I decided to take a closer look and compare the 2004 (PDF) and 2007 (PDF) statewide education expenditures (per student). First, as Justin noted: [T]he statewide per-student spending on “instructional teachers” (as opposed to the broader “instruction”) actually rose $880, from $5,490 to $6,370, or 16%. Both the size of the…
This is classic Crowley: Repeat the lie. Repeat the lie. Repeat the lie. No matter how wrong, no matter how damaging. Repeat the lie. This must be posted in the Projo editorial room somewhere: The lie. Crowley’s first step to this particular platform was finding a bit of data that looks, in the light of…
Jim Hummel, filling in for Dan Yorke, has had three unionists on the program since 3:00, and as I’ve pulled up flooring and cleaned my jobsite, I’ve been itching to make three points: 1. Regarding the teachers’/union’s behavior at the latest School Committee meeting, NEA lawyer John Liedecker pointed out that the police had said,…