Education

Mitigating the College Oversell

By Justin Katz | April 30, 2008 |

Our society appears to be in the process of deciding that college oughtn’t be a foregone conclusion for every young American. Indeed, Marty Nemko calls the Bachelor’s degree “America’s Most Overrated Product”: Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated…

Senator Barack Obama: Republicans Have Better Ideas on Education

By Carroll Andrew Morse | April 28, 2008 |

From yesterday’s Fox News Sunday…Chris Wallace: Over the years, John McCain has broken with his party and risked his career on a number of issues, campaign finance, immigration reform, banning torture. As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you…

A Problem of Scope

By Justin Katz | April 27, 2008 |

John McDaid rightly tweaks me for my overly hasty reaction to Berkshire Advisors’ audit of the Portsmouth school district. The report is thorough, thoughtful, and likely enlightening for employees of the district… within its scope. In large part, my complaint still stands. Indeed, John begins a related post on his own blog thus: There is…

What a Crock

By Justin Katz | April 26, 2008 |

Pat Crowley’s complaints about a letter that Governor Carcieri apparently sent to Bob Walsh, Crowley’s NEA boss, are transparently two-faced in so many ways that I won’t enumerate them. Simply put, the idea that Walsh would respond otherwise than with the mind-numbing reply that Crowley publishes is laughable. It is, let’s just say, improbable that…

Why Should a Study Focus on the Underlying Problem?

By Justin Katz | April 25, 2008 |

Here’s the laugh line from Jill Rodrigues’s Sakonnet Times story on the professional study that concluded — shockingly — that the Portsmouth school system needs more money: Although much of that money is spent on salaries and benefits, the consultants did not weigh in on contract provisions and their impacts on the district. Reading some…

More Funding Formula Numbers

By Carroll Andrew Morse | April 23, 2008 |

Abby Fox of the East Greenwich Pendulum has some more data on what certain members of the legislature think of as a “fair” “funding formula”…East Greenwich’s state aid would be cut by the full amount — $1,949,761 – to $0.Narragansett’s almost identical share, $1,897,159, would also drop to $0.Newport’s share would be cut by more…

This Year’s Funding Formula Plan: Worse Than Ever

By Carroll Andrew Morse | April 21, 2008 |

A Projo letter-to-the editor from West Greenwich resident Cynthia A. Walsh provides an excellent example of how education “funding formula” rhetoric has been used to confuse people about the true purpose of the proposal. Ms. Walsh celebrates the ideal of local control that is possible in smaller towns…The only time we end up with serious…

Teacher Buyout In Warwick?

By Carroll Andrew Morse | April 16, 2008 |

Russell J. Moore of the Warwick Beacon reports that the American Federation of Teachers has a longer-then-usual-term proposal for addressing the school financing situation in Warwick…The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is asking the school department to seriously consider offering teachers a retirement incentive that they believe would save the department millions without compromising the…

The Right to Know What’s Happenin’ With Chariho

By Carroll Andrew Morse | April 14, 2008 |

It looks like the attempt by the National Education Association to place restrictions on school committee members’ communication with the public in the Chariho district has come to an end. NEA Assistant Executive Director Peter Gingras, who last year filed a Labor Relations Board complaint against the Chariho School Committee making the vague assertion that…

After Further Thought

By Justin Katz | April 12, 2008 |

I’ve most likely been overstating the number of Tiverton teachers who stand to lose their jobs if the union remains implacable. Thirty-four notices of potential layoffs went out to meet a deadline; one position was eliminated in the school budget as passed; so I’ve been saying that intransigence might result in the actual layoffs of…