Education
Any additional educational freedom for Rhode Island’s parents would be a good thing, but Julia Steiny’s Sunday column on interdistrict school choice left me wondering about the mechanics of the thing: Cross-district choice would allow the parents to decide which schools should be closed for lack of enrollment and interest, and which should thrive. Right…
Disappointingly, Julia Steiny’s column yesterday takes a two-dimensional view of poverty programs: … it’s nothing short of glorious that Rhode Island has managed, over the course of three years and with a few strategic investments, to reduce the number of families in poverty by 6 percent. That’s huge. Six percent of Rhode Island’s population of…
A cost-benefit analysis of sorts has led me to give up on the Tiverton town council. I simply can’t afford to devote that much time to such an unprofitable activity (especially if my taxes are going to continue to climb). Still, the school committee remains sufficiently interesting and important that I’ll continue to make the…
Just wanted to highlight Max Fenig’s comments on school vouchers: After seeing the poor results for R.I.’s public schools as measured against proficiency standards, we all know what must be done: Double the money for public education and we may reach mediocrity! But one matter regarding education in this state is worthy of note. We…
It’s disappointing even to have to argue against such arguments as the one put forward by Ron Wolk, a member of the governor’s task force on urban education: The main reasons students are not learning algebra and geometry is that they don’t really want to. They think higher-order math is irrelevant to their real lives.…
I’ve had mixed feelings about the reliance on student portfolios for the awarding of high school diplomas. On the one hand, it does place an active, foreseeable academic achievement before all students. On the other, most of the work is done as regular coursework and set aside for the portfolio, which aggregates the work in…
Unsurprisingly, many invested in the current education system object to proposals to tie graduation to discrete, measurable testing requirements: Dozens of speakers last night said they were worried about a provision that would make the English and math scores of statewide standardized tests students take at the start of 11th grade count toward one-third of…
The opinion page of the February 21, 2008 edition of the East Greenwich Pendulum carried a letter from the co-presidents of the East Greenwich Educational Association, the local branch of the NEA teachers’ union, in which they wrote (not available on-line) the following under the heading of “Teachers union heads seeking ‘balance’ in contract”- We,…
Last week’s stunner was a feeling of agreement with Bob Kerr: No summits, no rigorous testing of teachers, can restore what has been lost in too many schools — the basic respect for learning and for the place a teacher holds in making good things possible. Until we can reverse the damage done before some…
I finally managed to take a look at the Providence Journal story about the abysmal math scores of Rhode Island’s high-school students, and I have to say that I think Dan Yorke‘s show may be underrepresenting the problem. The woman from the Department of Education whom he was in the process of interviewing when I…
