Education
South Kingstown parent advocate Nicole Solas has been, let’s say, having words with Met School special education teacher Emily Bowden. The back-and-forth is mainly social media snark shooting, so we shouldn’t assume that Bowden’s bombast is evidence of the school’s operation, but she does facilitate an important point that isn’t often made in these arguments.…
The following sentence, concerning the attorney general’s scuttling of a hospital merger deal, from Ted Nesi’s weekend roundup column brought to mind a different industry: Yet in the end, their plans were derailed by a concern raised on day one: how could a hospital group with roughly 80% market share be stopped from abusing its…
You know you’re dealing with greedy special interests most concerned with maintaining their own position when you read something like this, emphasis added: The plan has the support of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, the Rhode Island School Superintendents’ Association, the National Education Association Rhode Island and the Hassenfeld Institute for…
As in a horror story in which some trusted institution becomes possessed by an evil force, something has changed in youth culture and our schools. Youth media has long (always?) fostered doubt about whether parents could really understand what their children were going through (as opposed to glossy magazines, Hollywood, and pop stars). As the evil…
Watchers of the mainstream narrative may be a little surprised that there hasn’t been much coverage of an incident on February 1 at Mount Pleasant High School in Providence during which a school resource officer (SRO) was caught on video being aggressive with a student. These incidents are difficult to judge from video clips, and…
Judy Schwalbach makes that connection explicit in a report on school choice policies and history in Washington, D.C.: During the 20th century, federally sanctioned housing “redlining” influenced the composition of neighborhoods in large cities across the country, including Washington, D.C. The term “redlining” came from the color-coded maps developed by the Home Owners Loan Corporation…
Bob Walsh, who has been the executive director of the National Education Association of Rhode Island as long as many of us have been paying attention, or even been present in the state, has announced his impending retirement. Some on the conservative side are understandably happy to hear the news, but I’d caution a bit…
To begin with, let me apologize for the subject line. Once it occurred to me, I couldn’t let it go. If you’re of a certain age, you may recognize the sexual undertones of the phrase, which I began thinking about after stumbling across a Twitter exchange between apparent progressive Liz Gledhill and known conservative Nicole…
John DePetro and Justin Katz talk about the ways in which people are beginning to see through Rhode Island insiders.
Erika Sanzi shared a post on Parents Defending Education about a school assignment to teach kids about sexual consent. Working in groups, students design a pizza that their partners will like by communicating with non-verbal cues. Everybody likes cheese, but not everybody will want olives. Here’s step number two: “Now mirror these preferences in relation…
