First week of school kaleidoscope (2 days down, 2 days to go)

Forms filled out. Forms forms forms. More forms.

NO PEANUT BUTTER! NO PEANUT ANYTHING! NO NO NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO!

Three trips to Staples (and one last week, too).

Label maker! Resulting, probably temporary, sense of calm and organization.

Campaign to pry information from children about what happened at school relaunched. Children proving wilier than ever. Learned little.

School drop off in a four-dimensional craze of children. Fourth grader disappears immediately. First grader clings to my hand. Mayor Taveras visiting. Trying to talk education with him and say hi to first grade teacher at the same time. Hugs and kisses and handshakes with parent and teacher and kid friends. So good to see everyone.

Homework. Realization that middle kid has apparently forgotten how to form legible letters over the summer. Realization that oldest kid has somehow figured out that writing clearly is a useful skill. Realization that there is hope.

No bus passes. No idea if/when they may be bestowed. Resulting drama brewing?

PAC meetings. Meetings meetings meetings. PTO meetings next week. All the meetings.

Kids tired, voluntarily going to bed early. I am right there with them.

Photographic evidence of second day of school:

Henry and Leo, shady characters.

Afterschool with the fabulous Adelle.

I hope that this is a conversation, redux

Tomorrow, Saturday 1/28 from 10:00-11:30am, Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Lusi are co-hosting another community conversation about Providence's public schools at the John Hope Settlement House, 7 Thomas P. Whitten Way. Full info is here. 

Another such meeting happened last month on the first night of Hanukah, as I noted - happy to see that there's another scheduled. I am going to try to be there and will report on what transpired if so, and of course would love comments from others who were either at December's gathering or who will be there tomorrow.

I hope that this is a conversation.

Heads up for those who want to attend meetings about Providence's schools until the bitter end of 2011: on Tuesday, December 20, Mayor Angel Taveras and Superintendent Susan Lusi will be co-hosting a Community Conversation on Education in Providence from 6:30-8:00pm at Nathanael Greene Middle School, 721 Chalkstone Avenue in Providence.

A bit more info about the event is here: http://cityof.providenceri.com/mayor/community-conversation-on-education-in-providence along with a link to what presumably is the subject of the discussion, the Educate Providence website which features the outcome of the Education Opportunities Working Group. I say that I hope it's a conversation because the report from the group is well worth discussing, exploring, and understanding in terms of their likely impact on Providence's education system.

This event is also scheduled on the first night of Hanukkah, so I can't be there. I understand it's hard to find dates that work well for most people, and one assumes that this date was chosen with the understanding that some of us would have family obligations. Nevertheless, it's really unfortunately scheduled; I hope that another such session will be held in early January for those who can't make it either because of Hanukkah or because this is generally such a wildly busy time of year for many across the religious, or not, spectrum.

Update from Angela Romans, who emailed the following: "Yes, we are planning to have 2 more such meetings in January and are working out the dates. Those will be announced and posted by next week." Excellent to hear and when those dates are posted, I'll share them here.

What will the new PPSD-PTU teachers contract mean for teaching and learning?

Mayor Taveras' August 2 announcement mentioned in the previous post focuses mainly the tentative agreement between the Providence Teacher Union and the City on the teachers contract, on which PPSD teachers are voting today (click here for a PDF version of a letter from Providence Teachers Union president Steve Smith that contains the announcement of the vote).

Each side seems to have given big to get big in certain areas. The union agreed to criterion based hiring to replace hiring/classroom assignment controlled by seniority. The city agreed to nearly all fired teachers keeping their jobs. The city nets $53 million in savings as a result of the agreement, which in our current dire financial situation is, of course, the big win. As former school board president Kathy Crain argues in GoLocalProv, the contract doesn’t seem to contain significant improvement in the conditions it establishes for teaching and learning, so no big wins for students.

Since this is a follow up post to thoughts about the length of the school day, it’s worth noting that the contract itself doesn’t expand instructional time in any meaningful way, other than adding 5 minutes a year to the day over the course of three years. Not nothing, but not really something either.

Additional stipulations of the new tentative agreement that have been released are provided by the Mayor’s announcement and reported by the ProJo, Providence Business News, and other outlets.The contract itself has not yet been made available to the public.

Last but definitely not least, take a few minutes to review the list of reactions and questions about the new contract that Better Providence is compiling on Facebook. Very thoughtful. I want to know the answers and thank Better Providence for asking for more clarity.

PPSD Middle/High School Common Planning Time/Early Release: No More

Update to the previous post about Councilman Zurier’s upcoming hearing about PPSD’s practice of releasing middle and high school students early in order to accommodate the need for teachers’ common planning time: an announcement from Mayor Taveras’ office released Tuesday states, "...the district will immediately increase instructional time by ending the practice of dismissing students early every week to accommodate state-mandated common planning time."

That’s it? Well, okay then.

The City Council Education Subcommittee's August 23 5:30pm hearing, according to email that Councilman Zurier sent to constituents, is still going forward to "review other issues related to the re-opening of school this fall, including the assignment plans for children who were in schools closed this Spring, and the “match” process by which teachers from the closed schools were assigned new positions."

The Mayor’s August 2 announcement focused mainly on the recently negotiated contract with the Providence Teachers Union. More about that in the next post.

Who remembers and why does it matter?

So, I took a week off there - sorry for not sharing that I would! Welcome back.

Last week, on the East Side Public Education Coalition's blog, Dr. Harlan Rich shared "Reflections on Change and 'Institutional Memory'" in response to ProJo coverage of the exodus (some by budget-cutting position elimination, some by retirement/moving on to new opportunities) of nearly all of PPSD's leadership team. Dr. Rich's thoughts on the largely untapped value of parents as key stakeholders and points of continuity/agents of change can and should be successfully expanded to include students, alumni, and community members as we face a down a new school year starting startlingly soon with a new acting superintendent, extremely strained relations between the Mayor's office and the school board, and--with all of the accompanying opportunities and challenges--without the aforementioned departed leadership team (COO Carleton Jones and acting chief academic officer Paula Shannon excepted).

Dr. Rich makes the point that PPSD has a substantial if inconsistent history of involving parents in decisions about school leadership and other planning. The district needs to stay the course on that and go much further, developing policies and a culture that systematically--across neighborhood, language, and other differences--involves and includes parents/family members, students, and neighborhood stakeholders.

So what's up with Providence's libraries?

Yesterday, in the context of a post about Providence Public Schools' summer reading lists and the Providence Community Libraries' summer programming, I mentioned a conflict that's threatening our libraries.

For those who want to know more, WPRI's Ted Nesi ran through the facilities dispute between Providence Community Library and Providence Public Library that's triggered PCL to send layoff notices to all of its employees and may imperil community use of the library starting July 1.  It's the clearest presentation that I have read of the conflict, its origins, and what Mayor Taveras, District 4 State Representative Gordon Fox, and City Council members are doing to find resolution to keep our libraries open this summer so that kids and adults can access the world of ideas.

WRNI features dual perspectives on PPSD school closing timeline + our commitment to neighborhood schools

WRNI's Elizabeth Harrison has (separately) interviewed Mayor Taveras and Matt Gabor and Michael Udris from the West Side Public Education Coalition. Both are worth a listen to deepen understanding about the arguments about whether, how, and when to close public schools in Providence.

Gabor and Udris' argue that the proposed school closings will leave the West Side with no middle school. The same is true for Windmill Street Elementary School; its closing leaves the Charles Street area/the northern part of Providence with no elementary option. That the West Side's Bridgham Middle School and Windmill (not to single them out - the rest of this sentence applies many or most other PPSD schools) have ample room for improvement is obvious, and they will be able to build on their respective recent successes and recently galvanized neighborhood energy to continue to do so. However, to say that there should be no elementary or middle school options at all in various neighborhoods is ludicrous, as is suggesting that mileage alone determines that a school is a "neighborhood" option.

This is particularly true given Providence's actual policies and current rhetorical focus on neighborhood schools. We need neighborhood task forces to bring local understanding to bear on what is reasonably walkable. Our children cannot cross highways, walk through dangerous streets with poorly understood potential for gang-related violence, or be forced to negotiate dangerous intersections. And winter isn't yet a distant memory; just a few weeks ago, we were all picking our way through unshoveled sidewalks, icy intersection, and poorly plowed streets.We may well want walkable, neighborhood schools but even from a infrastructure-only point of view, we're not yet ready for them.

Had Nathan Bishop have remained closed in 2007, the greater East Side would not have had a middle school option. At that time, that seems inequitable and unfair, and that spurred me into action as an involved parent. I started attending ESPEC meetings, witnessed and assisted the process of working through the politics of reopening the school, and along with other parents, eventually joined PPSD's Nathan Bishop Task Force as a parent/involved citizen to collaborate with the city to plan Bishop's reopening.

Many speakers at last night's School Board meeting acknowledged that we may well need to close schools and make significant changes but that doing so now, with such haste and so many remaining known unknowns, would be wrong. Those changes, many of them said, should be done with significant, substantial input from neighborhood residents within a more reasonable timeframe to allow us to create a more workable plan. 

Though I acknowledge the financial pressures that are compelling the school closings and reduction in teacher force that will result, I too want to find a way to do so with clearer answers and more adequate preparation. Along with many others, I am eager to seize our collective energy and assets to identify and implement community-based, locally-driven ways not only to save existing schools when reasonable to do so but also to improve teaching and learning all of our schools and the system itself.

Mayor Taveras meeting with WSPEC + Flynn School Board hearing tonight

Two quick notes:

Per the ProJo, his afternoon, the West Side Public Education Coalition met--or perhaps is still meeting--with Mayor Taveras to clarify the questions and issues its members have raised in public statements and on its web site about the impact proposed school closures and reorganizations will have on the West Side's communities. WPSEC has been awesome at sharing info--looking forward to a report from the meeting (which was closed to the public).

Very much not closed to the public is tonight's School Board hearing on the proposed closure of Flynn Elementary School, to take place at 6:00pm at the Davey Lopes Recreation Center at 227 Dudley Street. Again, if any Providence Schools and Beyond reader attends and is willing to write up notes and thoughts, I'd be thrilled to publish those here along with my quick summary of last week's Windmill Street Elementary hearing.

Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools, 3/19/11: recap

On Saturday, March 19, I worked with a handful of other PPSD parents, with Karina Wood from Better Providence (who is also a PPSD parent) and with the staff of the office of the district's office of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) to create the Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Schools. Big effort, and playing catch-up in all of the other areas of life has necessitated a couple of days of blog silence even though there's so much to talk about. This meeting was a separate and independent effort, spurred by recent events but not related to the Community Meetings on the future of Providence Public Schools that the district is hosting this week.

Quick event recap: the organizers--and my informal sense of reaction from most participants--is that it went really well. Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady opened the Forum with short remarks that included their own wishes for the Providence Public Schools - a thoughtful way to get participants ready for what was to come. They then took several questions, not directly from the audience but from the audience, who wrote their questions for the Mayor and Superintendent on index cards. Ina Anderson posted the most frequently occurring questions. We'll be sharing all of the questions, and I'll get a report from someone who was paying attention to the Mayor and Superintendent's answers to share their responses--I could not, as I was engaged in other event-related getting-started urgencies.

Following the Superintendent and Mayor's remarks and Q & A,  we moved the audience members into small groups of 10 or so, each group gathered around a table, and each group paired with a facilitator. The facilitator led the groups--which were mixed across roles, neighborhood, race, and other factors--through a conversation with several phases: quick introductions, longer discussions in pairs in which each participants shared her/his reason for coming to the forum, a full-group discussion in which each person shared their partner's reason, a short individual writing session in which participants wrote about their top three wishes/hopes/dreams/expectations for the Providence Public Schools, a time to share those wishes, which the facilitators captured on chart paper, and finally, a group conversation that identified the group's top three wishes. We then brought the small groups together and they shared their collective results, which I will share here as soon as they're typed up.

I wish we'd asked for feedback at the end - unfortunate oversight. Though I can't report directly on people's experience, what we saw was encouraging. Anecdotal feedback told us that people were gratified both to have heard from Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady. They valued having the opportunity to express themselves not just to people who they knew, but to people who they never would have otherwise met. They talked about the immediate issues that their schools are facing as a result of the current financial mess, and they talked about the bigger picture of what we want our schools to be in the long run. We saw teachers, parents, elected officials, appointed officials, students, and others being able to share their experiences with each other with honesty and respect--and we noticed a lot of intent listening. Informal conversations lasted long after the small groups dispersed, and again, there were folks talking with each other who never would have met, and they were able to feel a sense of mutual support and new understanding of each other's challenges. I think the event went a distance toward humanizing groups that might have found it easy to be disparaging or dismissive in the abstract. When faced with a real person talking about their worries and hopes, we realize both that our experience is not universal, and that we need to gather our assets citywide to create lasting change in our schools that will make the difference for all kids in all neighborhoods.

Next steps include sharing the results of the meeting, particularly the pressing questions and the hopes and dreams for our schools. We will definitely do a follow-up gathering of some sort soon, and we'll see where our collective energy takes up. This could be the foundation of a city-wide public school advocacy group powered by those who are closest to young people and their learning: educators, family members, and students themselves. Providence needs it, and the time is right to make it happen.

If you want to read yet more, the ProJo and the Brown Daily Herald came out and reported on the event; I think there were other media outlets there as well but haven't seen anything else in print or online.

I could go on, but for those of you still reading, I'll let you off the hook, at least for now. Just one more thing to do, which is to say thank you to the many people who helped make this possible. Thank you to Mayor Taveras, Angela Romans, Melissa Withers, Superintendent Brady, Janet Pichardo and the FACE staff, Christina O'Reilly, Peter Lee and the staff of the John Hope Settlement House, Jorge Cardenas of Sodexho for providing food, Aramark for providing chairs, Karina Wood and Better Providence for tireless event support, Youth in Action and Kidoinfo for helping to spread the word, members of the Parent Advisory Council who came out on Saturday morning to assist with registration and set-up, and the members of the Parent Advisory Council leadership group who planned the event: Robin Adams, Dawn Clifton, Carmel McGill, Lee Keizler, and Michelle McKenzie.

If you'd like to find out more about the Providence Public Schools Parent Advisory Council, email us at ProvidencePAC@gmail.com.

Calling all Families and Educators! Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools, March 19, 9:30am

On Saturday, March 19 (this coming Saturday!) from 9:30am-noon, please take a couple of hours to join parents, family members, young people, educators, and concerned citizens across Providence to participate in a Parent and Community Forum on the Providence Public Schools.

The Forum will take place at the John Hope Settlement House, located at 7 Thomas P. Whitten Way (off Westminster St.) in Providence. If you're driving, enter front parking lot off Westminster Street or back parking lot via Thomas P. Whitten Way.

The forum is sponsored by the Providence Public Schools Parents Advisory Council (known as the PAC, of which I am a proud member and of which I will say a bit more below) and BetterProvidence (with which it has been a delight to collaborate).

Parents and community members will identify and discuss our education priorities, and how can we be better engaged in our schools and partner with our schools and the School Department to improve the quality of education for our kids. We're planning on facilitated discussion in small groups, and what people share really matters. Your voice will be heard!

In addition, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras will outline his education agenda and priorities for Providence public schools and Superintendent Brady will provide the most updated information from the Providence Public School Department.

The Parent and Community Forum is free and open to all. Spanish and Hmong translation services, refreshments, and free child care will be provided. Please call in advance to reserve childcare: 401-456-0686

For further information, please contact ProvidencePAC@gmail.com or the PPSD Office of Family and Community Engagement at 401-456-0686 - or ask me here and I'll find out what you need to know. If you click on the flier in the upper right, you can grab copies of it for yourself. Please help spread the word!

As you can tell, I am excited about this event. In early March, when the impact of the city's financial crisis became know, the PAC leadership gathered to act on the foundation we've been building for some time to create strong connections among families with students in the public schools across Providence. The PAC meets monthly with representatives from many (should be all, but isn't now) schools in Providence. One of our members, Robin Adams, was instrumental in pulling together a meeting of parents statewide earlier this year to hear from and ask questions of RIDE Commissioner Deborah Gist about Race to the Top funds and parent involvement.

This meeting will be our first focused on Providence itself, the first effort by parents for parents that we're aware of recently, and we see it as an important moment. We're eager to use the strength and energy of those who show up to form a strong citywide coalition of families. We won't always agree, but we can work across difference, find what we have in common, and speak clearly as one to stand for the best interests of all of our kids.

This is not limited at all to families, of course. We also hope that teachers and high school students -- who thus far have been better organized than families in this city -- will join us.

Please help spread the word, and if you have any questions or comments, please share them below or with me in email. Use the ProvidencePAC@gmail.com address - I'll be checking it.

PPSD school closings announced + please sign petition

The ProJo has the rundown on the anticipated school closures with detail about expected teaching job losses, reconfiguration of several schools that are remaining open, and more. The article is here.

Flynn Elementary School, Windmill Street Elementary School, Asa Messer Elementary School and the Asa Messer Annex will all close. Bridgham Middle School will become an elementary school. In order to create space for the teachers who will be losing positions, teachers considering retirement will be offered a one-time stipend to do so. Other shifts and changes which at least on the surface seem to make a lot of sense are described in the article.

Not described in the article nor in the press conference at which Mayor Taveras and Superintendent Brady spoke was any sense of how teachers from those schools will be hired back into positions. Will they interview for open positions under the district's criterion-based hiring system? Will they be able to bump less senior teachers? Will there be another way? Not clear now. What is clear is that if you do not think that seniority should be the single and only deciding factor for teacher hiring, now is the time to express that opinion. Please take a moment to sign "Put education needs of Providence kids first," a petition created to tell our school board members and other officials that we wish to see a way to manage teacher hirings that both respects experience, wisdom, and seniority and considers other factors. Please take a moment to sign.

School closing announcement delayed again. Who stays and who goes?

Mayor Taveras' office has released a statement that the school closures announcement, originally slated for Monday and postponed until today, will now happen on Monday, March 14. Here it is, in full:

Superintendent Thomas Brady and Mayor Angel Taveras have postponed by one week submission of a list of schools recommended for closure in 2011-12.  The list will be announced on Monday, March 14, 2011. The decision to postpone reflects the seriousness of the process, the complex variables that must be considered before a school is closed, and a commitment to conduct school closures in a manner that produces the best outcomes for students and significant cost savings for the City. In addition, the administration is still in ongoing conversations with leadership at the Providence Teachers Union to discuss how teachers displaced by the closure will be terminated and how those unaffected will have their letters of dismissal rescinded. These are challenging decisions that cannot be made lightly or without adequate consideration.

The second to last sentence points to a real challenge: who will stay, who will go, and how will that be determined? I ask the Mayor not to use seniority as the sole basis for continued employment. If the only criterion is seniority, the result will be bumping, which allows senior teachers to displace more junior teachers. This destroys the fabric of school communities and presents the prospect of disruption that our already stressed-out students can't afford.

I write this with great respect for our teachers with seniority in the system. We need their wisdom and experience. Seniority has a place in the hiring and retention process, but it cannot be the only factor.

PPSD kindergarten registration field report

Yesterday, I stopped by Providence Public Schools' Student Registration and Placement Center to register my youngest child for kindergarten. In and out in 25 minutes. The staff confirmed that 4:00 in the afternoon on weekdays is a great time to stop in if you can; in our case, it was the only hour I had available that has been designated for children whose last name starts with the letter of the alphabet with which my youngest son's last name starts.

Much was the same as when I registered my second child three years ago: too-loud tv blaring in ther corner, blank empty room, lots of chairs in rows. A shelf or two of books and games for kids would be lovely, and perhaps a DVD featuring performances and learning in action in Providence Public School classrooms would go far to making the wait (brief in my case, but longer for many) more pleasant.

Nevertheless, the process itself was easy. Filled out the various forms, presented birth certificate, health records, and proof of residency (this kid's circumstances don't require extra steps of ESL assessment or IEP processing), a chat with the registration staff member to confirm or supply information, and that was that. As I was registering my son for a school which a sibling attends, I received verbal confirmation that he would have a kindergarten seat at that school as long as his immunization records were up to date.

In past years, the process included meeting with a school nurse to review health records. Not this year - the registration staff member I met with reported that they're swamped and no longer do those individual meetings. A nurse will review kids' immunization and health records and be in touch if anything is missing or awry.

So that was that. 25 mostly low-stress minutes from start to finish. I do not expect that everyone will have an identical experience, and I continue to suggest you enter into the process informed about which schools you wish to choose as a first choice and the implications of those choices. Read this post on registering your child for kindergarten and first grade in the Providence Public Schools for thoughts on those matters, and for more advice.

The only caveat to the ease of the experience--well, the only caveat in addition to the blaring tv in the waiting area--is the uncertainty that all parents share about which schools are likely to close. The announcement of which schools will be closed, originally slated to be released yesterday, was delayed--here's Mayor Taveras' statement on the reasons for that delay and the criteria that decisionmakers are using about choosing which schools to close. The timing is terrible, of course. Parents may well be choosing schools that will soon be closed, or finding that the school that they chose will be significantly different due to increased student population or other unknown factors. I asked the registration staff member who assisted me how this would impact her work and she sighed in a way with which any one of us prepared to put in many long, difficult hours at work would sympathize.

PPSD school closing announcement moved to Wed., March 9

The ProJo reports that the announcement that will tell us which Providence schools will be recommended for closure as a result of our financial crisis has been delayed until Wednesday, March 9. Here's the original timeline that Mayor Taveras shared last week.

If you're still reading, having made it through that painful passive construction that I used in the first sentence above, thank you for hanging in there. Since last week, when all of this started with the teacher termination news, Mayor Taveras' office has initiated all communication from the city's perspective about what's happening to our teachers, schools, and other education-related matters. Perhaps moving forward, some of this info will start to come from PPSD, though there's no way to be sure of that, hence the grammatical hedge.

Extremely far from ideal

Here's a small excerpt from my upcoming April East Side Monthly education column. I put aside what I had been writing for April to focus on the sharing reactions from teachers in the first week of hearing that they faced termination at the end of the school year. Since last Wednesday, when the news of the teacher terminations broke, the possible impact of PPSD budget cuts on our young people and their schools was surrounded by a larger context of bleak finances and immediate responses by Mayor Taveras. The mayor is addressing neglected and obfuscated financial responsibilities; I applaud him and am committed to contribute all I can to move our city to its next strength. Here's part of what I wrote; the issue should be in your mail within the next couple of weeks, and I'll link to the full version when it appears online.

...we know  that the way the teacher termination decision was reached and announced was extremely far from ideal, even if could not be helped. I am not in a position to know if there were no other choice. What I do know is that the specific circumstances of the teacher termination announcement—during vacation, with no guidelines or support of which I am aware provided for teachers to manage students’ anxiety—created a perfect storm for stress and unease. One can assume the utmost good will and believe that no one intended to create anxiety among students, but the consequences, however unintended, have been real. The erosion of trust that resulted from the way the teacher termination news broke created resentment, confusion, anger, and worry at precisely the worst moment. We all need safety and security to use our minds well. We need everyone at their best as we pull together to preserve what works and improve what’s broken in our schools for the benefit of our city’s young people.

 

Voices from Last Night's Regents' Diploma Hearing

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't able to be at the Rhode Island Board of Regents hearing on the proposed changes for Rhode Island's high school graduation system. I'm gratified to post a report on the evening from Aaron Regunberg. Aaron, a junior at Brown, is a force for good in politics and education. He recently worked as an organizer on Angel Taveras' campaign and is actively supporting Hope High School students as they fight to maintain the schedules and structures that allowed them favorable conditions for learning. Here's his report:

What I saw at the hearing tonight was at the same time one of the most beautiful and the most frustrating spectacles I've experienced in a long time. On the one hand, it was absolutely inspiring to see so many different Rhode Islanders come together to fight for the type of education system they believed in. The PCTA auditorium was completely packed--there were students, parents, teachers, administrators, concerned citizens, black and white and brown, all protesting with one voice. That in itself should be pretty powerful evidence; one speaker said that he had never seen such a consensus, that he was there fighting next to people he had never agreed with before. And of course, it was particularly powerful to hear so many students committed enough to their education to come out on a freezing night like tonight to speak truth to power.

But as beautiful as the protest was, it was also immensely frustrating, because I had seen it all before. This was the third such hearing, not counting the initial mass protest in Narragansett at the beginning of the month. And none of these outpourings of anger, none of the valid and rationally articulated criticism had seemed to have any effect on any of the decision-makers. I was at the Regents' work session last Thursday, and listened as the Commissioner told the Board that nothing any of these different stakeholders had been saying was valid because it was all based on a belief that minority students are not able to achieve.

This shockingly ignorant statement allows these people to dismiss all of the arguments that students, parents, and educators are making--that tying graduation to a single test is horrifying; that even if it weren't horrifying in general, the NECAP is a horrifyingly bad test to use as it was designed specifically to not be used to test individual achievement; and that creating a tiered diploma system is inequality incarnate.

That's what everyone was saying. I just don't think the Regents particularly heard.

Thanks, Aaron (and happy birthday!).

The other big news story from last night's hearing--the first, as Aaron reported, was the powerful presence of young people, parents, and concerned citizens speaking out--was Providence Public Schools Superintendent Tom Brady's statement opposing the imposition of NECAP partial proficiency as a graduation requirement. Click here for Brady's entire testimony (in PDF form); here's a part:

I would also like to address the proposed proficiency measures for high school graduation and the dire consequences for many Providence students who are currently in their junior year.  Our current graduation policy was written to comply with RIDE’s 2008 Regulations Guidance which clearly states “that districts will evaluate the results of the state assessments in those areas in conjunction with the other components of the proficiency...”  RIDE staff on more than one occasion made public comments confirming that the NECAP was only one component of this conjunctive system, and that failure to achieve partial proficiency would not result in a failure to graduate.
   
With this mid-stream change from what has been consistently communicated by RIDE, students in the class of 2012 are at-risk of not graduating and would be afforded limited opportunity to improve.  While we are already implementing intensive interventions and supports to continually improve student achievement, there is not sufficient time, resources and direction from RIDE to create a comprehensive, personalized support system to ensure the type of growth students will need to graduate.  Also of note, is that Rhode Island, unlike other states, can only administer its standardized assessment once per year, affording students only one “re-take.”  

The ProJo's story on the hearing, "Students say diploma plan is unfair," is here.

P.S.: So far, there's school in Providence tomorrow. No snow day (yet). As I just said to my kids as I sent them up to bed, "Sorry, kids."

P.P.S.: And now, in news just delivered in a Facebook post from Mayor Angel Taveras, no school tomorrow. Snow day. Sleep in, kids!

Education front and center for Mayor Taveras

I was delighted to be part of the crowd that witnessed Angel Taveras' inauguration this afternoon as the 37th mayor of Providence, and our first Hispanic mayor. I enjoyed a moment of photojournalism, result to the left, and appreciated the extra pair of socks I'd put on this morning. It was chilly out there! But the sun was shining on our city today in all possible ways.

Providence public school students played prominent roles in the inauguration ceremony itself, which featured third graders from Mary Fogarty Elementary School reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and a recitation of Richard Wilbur's "On Freedom's Ground" by Classical High School student Amber Rose Johnson, the 2010 Poetry Out Loud National Champion.

Taveras' speech* emphasized his commitment to education, declaring that Providence's schools will "become the envy of American urban education." I particularly appreciated Taveras' discussion of the idea that our city's schools cannot be "one size fits all." To insist that they be otherwise is to deny the value of the diversity of the people of our city. That diversity is in fact our greatest asset, and to honor it, we must identify a wide range of what works for all of our schools in all of our neighborhood serving all of our young people and their families.

Carrying his education first message into the week, Taveras is holding inaugural neighborhood events at the schools that he attended (details here). Taveras is living proof of the force that strong schools and caring, challenging teachers can be in the life of a young person. He needs to transfer the power of his personal narrative into policies and momentum that will allow all young people the same kind of positive experiences and corresponding opportunities for achievement. With Mayor Taveras and many others, I want to be a part of creating a system of education in our city in which our children attend school to become their best selves, knowing how to use their minds and able to translate skills and knowledge into self-sufficiency, participation, and meaningful contributions as they move into adulthood.

I just returned from the inauguration celebration at the Convention Center all hopped up on the great music and energy. Tomorrow, once we all settle down, I'll remain hopeful, excited, and ready to join our new mayor to get to work to make it happen.
Felicitaciones, bienvenido, y gracias, Mayor Taveras!

*GoLocalProv has the full transcript of Taveras' speech. Read it if you weren't there or haven't heard it yet.