Jim Morgan writes about the NECAP, the New England Comprehensive Assessment Program that RI Commissioner Gist defends and the Providence Student Union oppose, and reflects on the tragedy of Central Falls High School, which Superintendent Frances Gallo and State Commissioner Deborah Gist threatened to close in 2010:
“I teach in a district adjacent to Central Falls. CFHS has always been a school with excellent teachers trying their best to help an economically underprivileged ELL population of students to do their best. What Gist and Gallo did to those educators and their students is a travesty that will never be forgotten or forgiven in Rhode Island.
“CFHS’s test scores are always at or near the bottom of NECAP rankings. Most of the kids there are poor, many miss a great deal of school travelling back and forth between Rhode Island and other places such as Puerto Rico and Columbia, and speak English as a second language.
“The NECAP school rankings in RI mirror socio-economic rank almost perfectly, with Central Falls, the two Pawtucket high schools and the three non-magnet Providence high schools always at the bottom. The wealthy communities of Barrington and East Greenwich, and the Providence magnet school Classical–and the newspapers never bother to explain that Classical is a selective magnet school–are always at the top. To be a good teacher in RI, according to the powers that be, is to be hired by a wealthy district.
“I’m not sure how CFHS is doing. I hope students and teachers there are recovering from the damage inflicted on them in the name of politics.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s not forget that Arne Duncan and Barak Obama, himself, supported the firing of all of the teachers at Central Falls High School. This may go down in history as the beginning of the fall of the rephormers as the nation was introduced to their cruelty.
Something similar happened in Providence. All 2000 teachers were fired to supposedly balance a budget. We weren’t laid off. We were sent letters or termination. Awful.
They both clapped…appalling.
Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and in effect, made their union null and void. He set a precedent and a model for the next 30 years. After Katrina, New Orleans fired the teachers and other support staff, making the unions null and void. It’s really all about a right wing/libertarian agenda of privatizing the commons and turning teachers into glorified indentured servants.
It’s also the neo-liberals’ perspective as well.
Thanks for the update Jim.
It is telling that one can’t turn on the news and find out what’s happening at CFHS.
The media couldn’t care less about those kids, though they love ripping on the teachers because they can’t magically make the scores go through the roof.
The firing served its purpose. The CF teachers were all given their jobs back and immediately after the Rhode Island AFT endorsed Race to the Top. Obviously some sort of Faustian bargain went down.
I’ll never forget when Duncan went on tv, and when asked if he supported the firing of the teachers he said, “You bet I do!” Can you imagine anything more ridiculous from a Sec. of Ed? One of these days people will look back and laugh at how stupid this movement was.
Probably on using test scores for evaluations.
I received an email today from the US Department of Education RTTT office.
They could not provide any justification for using any percentage of test scores for teacher evaluations.