Education

The RI Department of Education released the latest RI High School proficiency ratings. Not good: Only half of Rhode Island’s 58 public high schools are making enough progress in English and math, while the other half are failing to make adequate yearly progress — a slight dip from last year’s 54 percent. According to the…

My first reaction is to applaud efforts to make high school graduation requirements more stringent, but something in the execution always seems to cloud the picture: To ensure that a high school diploma in Rhode Island really means a student is prepared to graduate, education officials are developing tougher graduation requirements that would go into…

Also in yesterday’s Sakonnet Times is an article about the transitional pains at one of the Tiverton elementary schools that I mentioned last week. Principal Ed Fava ends the article on an interesting note, albeit by missing the more significant factor: Mr. Fava has one more stress to add to his list this month: a…

The school committee is looking for a temporary classroom because a school that’s being phased out as new construction completes after this year is substandard. The idea is, as soon as possible, to spread the children out in (and out of) a building that is too small to accommodate them, for health and noise reasons.…

Our referral logs led me back to the following comment to a Kmareka post: The fact of private schools is that parents can reign in or nullify the academic freedoms that make public and tenured institutions great opportunities to open young minds. I couldn’t have put it better, myself. Even the incorrect usage of “reign”…

Gloria S. Redlich of the Block Island Times has her ear to the ground on a number of education trends that will be reaching all Rhode Island communities very soon. 1. Apparently, Rhode Island school committees are already hearing that flat funding of education aid, or perhaps even an aid cut, is being planned for…

Let us not forget that in this area can be found yet another dubious “Rhode Island, We’re Number One!” rating. From a February 8 Providence Journal article by Jennifer Jordan: Rhode Island already claims the highest percentage of students in special education in the country – 21 percent compared with the national average, 13.7 percent…

I know it’s de rigueur to advocate for those who require additional help in school in an effort to bring them as near to the average line as conceivably possible, but something just seems wrong (in certain lights, immoral) about opposing this change, as described in the Rhode Island Catholic, in a state with as…

Both Jennifer D. Jordan‘s funding formula advocacy in the news pages of the Projo…An audience of 500 educators, politicians, child advocates and business leaders met at the Rhode Island Convention Center yesterday to discuss one of the most pressing education issues facing the state — developing and enacting a fair school funding formula.…and Russell J…

Hurrah for the community newspaper! Unlike the news department of the Projo, which uncritically builds into its coverage the assumption that a new “funding formula” can somehow magically solve Rhode Island’s education problems, the editorial board of the Warwick Beacon takes a more questioning view…Problems in Rhode Island’s educational system indicate the state doesn’t need…