Education
Ever have an educator explain to you that it is important to hear all sides of an argument and to engage the opposition in dialogue? Well, for many humanities professors, that may be a lesson preached more than practiced: Anyone who needed evidence that the culture wars are far from over could find it here…
Many Rhode Islanders surely share the sentiments that Sharon West expresses from East Providence: Recently, a consultant hired by the committee reported that the average teacher makes $69,000 a year and receives benefits costing $26,000 annually. Yes, $95,000, and many make even more. The consultant stated that this amounts to an hourly wage of $93.…
URI economics professor Len Lardaro had a very disappointing piece in the Providence Journal on Saturday, advising a tax increase in order — curiously enough — to benefit schools and universities. Professor Lardaro states that “investment-related activities… by their nature entail sacrifice” and suggests the following: I propose raising the state’s sales-tax rate to 8…
I just heard on WPRO that the judge won’t decide whether to stop the East Providence School Committee’s unilateral employment change until the 23rd. It looks like union members will start to feel the pinch of not giving concessions. That’s a huge change for the better from an environment in which they expect to get…
I may be misunderstanding him, but it appears that Rhode Island elementary and secondary education commissioner Peter McWalters believes that Rhode Island should seek to attract illegal immigrants to our state in order to educate their children: In Rhode Island, McWalters said, “We’re not in agreement that these kids are worth it because we are…
James Vaznis of the Boston Globe reports on research from our neighbor to the North (Massachusetts, that is, not Canada) regarding Charter schools…Charter schools were created as part of the 1993 Education Reform Act, as a way to develop new teaching strategies that could eventually be transferred to public schools. The approximately 60 schools operate…
The school committee in West Warwick appears mainly to be doing the bare minimum to support a Caruolo suit for more money from the town, but it may be headed down the road behind East Providence soon: The performance audit, commissioned by the town as a part of the Caruolo lawsuit proceedings from the last…
After two drop-out years selling fish off a truck, I returned to college much more motivated, and with a better sense of what I wanted to accomplish there. So I was inclined to approve when I came across a news story with a lede explaining that “more educators are advocating a year off between high…
The rhetorical dance of the East Providence teachers’ union is so flowing, it’s easy to miss the essential argument: “The School Committee’s solution to their self-inflicted fiscal problem is to blame it on the teachers’ contract and to shift the entire burden of paying off that deficit to the teachers,” union representative Jeannette Woolley countered…
Following up, the ProJo has their report on the situation today: School officials said that few members of the union that represents custodial, maintenance and secretarial employees — the Warwick Independent School Employees (WISE) –– responded to calls to come to work late Sunday afternoon even though union workers had showed up for snow duty…