Rumors are swirling about whether Deborah Gist will be reappointed as Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island. RI public radio prematurely announced that her contract would not be renewed but the state board said that no decision had been made. Gist is one of the few remaining members of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. She has been an advocate for high-stakes testing and charter schools. She received national attention (and acclaim by Duncan and President Obama) for supporting the mass firing of the staff at Central Falls High School (some of whom were rehired).
Politico reports:
“THE ACCIDENTAL STATE SUPERINTENDENT: Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist is known as a change agent, an education reformer who ushered in a new era of teacher evaluations, lifted the state cap on charter schools and created a statewide funding formula based on school district capacity and student need. But her turbulent time in office might be coming to an end. Her contract expires this June and the state board hasn’t indicated whether they’ll renew it. Gist says she has more work to do, such as implementing the state’s five-year education plan and expanding access to early childhood education. But she’s mum on her career plans. “I’ve never been someone who takes a job and thinks how that’s going to propel me to the next thing,” Gist said. In fact, she never even meant to leave her job teaching students in the classroom. I have the story, part of POLITICO’s Women Rule: Getting There series: http://politico.pro/1DwLTou”
The article is no longer behind a paywall. It is here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Interesting to watch.
Thanks
LikeLike
As a teacher in RI I have long been at odds with the Commissioner and her heavy-handed administration. Rumors are swirling in our small state and generally where there are rumors there is some truth. We are all looking forward to a new administration that values teachers, listens to teachers, and is willing to collaborate with us. We are a small state that should boast an excellent public education system but we have been hampered by short-sighted administrators who are only looking to improve the test score, not the education of actual children. We have incredible dedicated teachers who want to work together…and in our state that is possible! Let’s hope to some needed changes in 2015 for little Rhody!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hope your new Gov doesn’t plan to move Stefan Pryor from the newly created Commerce position to the Ed. commissioner. We are happy he is leaving CT, but keep him far away from teachers, students and schools.
LikeLike
It’s all just a game of musical chairs. They hope that people of the new place will be unaware of why their new person had to be run out of their old gig.
LikeLike
Raimondo is pro charter and anti union and this fact was in many sites around the country in the summer, months prior to her election in which she was bought for $8 million… the only change you will see will benefit the 1% and the privatization people like Raimondo’s 2 million a year consultant to a charter/privatizing group McKinsey…Raimondo does not value teachers- she threw thm under the bus with RIRSA-2011…
Take a look at this Illinois site.This is just one example of many that tells you that Raimondo is no democrat-she is a DINO for the democratic money –she is a closeted republican and even attended Charlie Baker’s inauguration as MA republican governor.
Scroll down to the part about RI where it describes Raimondo: pro charter and anti union….back in July….they had her number then…she won on Republican principles….
LikeLike
I know nothing about Rhode Island specifically, but generally speaking, when the front person is out, it just means that that particular person has become too toxic to be of any further use to the rephormers. That person will then be replaced with someone who talks a softer talk, but carries a bigger stick. Look at what we got in Chicago when Jean-Claude Brizard exited stage left.
LikeLike
King is out in NY. Pryor is out in CT. Huffman is out in TN. Gist may be next. So the reformy non educators are losing their luster. Did I forget anyone?
LikeLiked by 1 person
now sleazeball Pryor changed hats and heads fraudmondo’s newly created Sec of Commerce-another name for the corrupt EDC where the38 studios scandal took place
LikeLike
this was on the Diane Ravitch blog last August. “Sheehan eventually got a copy of the embargoed dissertation, and he understood why she [Gist] wanted to keep it under wraps. The theory she wrote about was leadership based on respect and collaboration, on trust and “buy-in,”but her practice was heavy-handed, confrontational, and top-down.
Sheehan recalled the mass firing of staff at Central Falls High School, then the mass firing of teachers in Providence.
LikeLike
???
LikeLike
Well all that reformy change must have skyrocketed test scores? Or like NY, the commissioner messed up every thing so we move him to Washington!
LikeLike
Guess who will probably apply for the vacant position in NY?
LikeLike
Perhaps she can go sell fertilizer with Rhee.
They are all of them, like crap, always floating to the top somewhere (unbelievably) to spread more stink.
LikeLike
Some correction to the statement by Diane Ravitch:
“She received national attention (and acclaim by Duncan and President Obama) for supporting the mass firing of the staff at Central Falls High School (some of whom were rehired).”
See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/education/18school.html
Going Back to School: Fired Staff Is Rehired
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. —All the staff members of Central Falls High School, who were fired in February as part of a turnaround plan for the chronically underperforming school, will be able to keep their jobs under an agreement ratified Monday.
As New York Times (15/18/2010) states that “All the staff members of Central Falls High School” will be able to keep their jobs, not just some.
LikeLike
We already know that. Who is Raj?
Am I supposed to know?
LikeLike
He is very important, to himself. Don’t waste your time.
LikeLike
RA = TE???
LikeLike
Wow! Raj, are you TE? TE, as you Raj?
LikeLike
Raj, this is getting tedious, having to correct your mis=statements again and again. The entire staff at Central Falls High School was fired in 2010; later, they were rehired, but over the next few years, 80% were gone. This is a paragraph in a comment from George McLaughlin, a teacher at Central Falls High School in 2010, responding to another reader; perhaps you missed it:
I am one of the teachers who was fired in Central Falls, Rhode Island, Mr. Nathan. And, yes we were rehired–after giving up many of our rights. But then, Frances Gallo, the superintendent and her agents began persecuting us beginning with phony 5-minute evaluations and then dictating involuntary transfers–to the point 4 1/2 years later that over 80 percent of the teachers in Central Falls H.S. are now gone via firings, forced retirements and resignations. My wife and I are two of them.
LikeLike
Dr. Ravitch – please see these two NJ articles:
PARCC exams blasted by parents, teachers, students at open forum
http://www.nj.com/education/2015/01/parcc_exams_blasted_by_parents_teacher_students_at_open_forum.html
and
N.J.’s education reforms are more hurtful than helpful: Opinion
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/01/njs_education_reforms_are_more_hurtful_than_helpful_opinion.html
Thanks
LikeLike
First of all, what Diane said. But second, how does your post even contradict anything Diane originally said? The fact is that Gist did support the firings and she did receive acclaim from Duncan and Obama for doing so. The fact that the staff were later re-hired (sans rights as Diane indicates) does not change that fact.
The whole thing was a power ploy and if the same thing happened to you on your job (whatever that is, which I suspect is not teaching), I guarantee you would not think that being re-hired would make everything okay.
LikeLike
Funny someone points out inaccuracy of information turns out to be the most ignorant. Who is spreading misinformation?
LikeLike
Not to worry! There’s lots more where these came from! See:
http://www.forbes.com/30under30/#/education
Meet the 30 not yet 30 year olds who can fix education: There’s Abena, 29, Families for Excellent Schools (are there families for terrible schools?), mobilizing 60,000 people for charters; Andre, 28, with a New Orleans start up out to disrupt those subs who show movies all day; Miriam and Alexandra, both 28, whose app tracks kids’ behavior and reports them to their parents; Angela, 27, who is, seriously, TNTP’s HEAD coach for Philly’s first alternative principal’s certification program; Christie, 28 and Rachel, 29, who, fresh off Mark Zuckerberg’s Newark endeavors are working for Rupert Murdock’s Amplify, driving Core Knowledge’s Language Arts; and best of all in entrepreneurship are Stephanie, 26 and Lydia, 28, whose idea seems to be to create a “space”to plagiarize college applications!
All ready to take over the helm from Gist, Pryor, King, Huffman, et alia.
LikeLike
This is the politico article for those who cannot get it….and there is no mention at all of Michelle Rhee-the reason Gist left Wash DC…the two were competing for one job under Mayor Gray….Gist lost-Rhee won….only to leave later under a scandal cloud.
Here is the complete article:
POLITICO Pro
Deborah Gist: ‘I left the classroom by accident’
By Caitlin Emma
1/8/15
Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist is considered a change agent, ushering in annual evaluations for all teachers and principals, creating a statewide funding formula based on school district capacity and student need and lifting the state’s cap on charter schools.
She’s a member of the education reform group Chiefs for Change, has been recognized by Time Magazine as an influential person, and in 2008, she was a fellow at the Broad Superintendents Academy.
But Gist’s sometimes turbulent time in office might be coming to an end.
She was tapped for the job in 2009 under the tenure of then-Gov. Don Carcieri, but her contract expires in June, and the deadline has passed for the state Board of Education to say whether it plans to renew her contract. The state can keep her on if the board chooses to negotiate a new one. Gov. Gina Raimondo, sworn into office this week, hasn’t indicated whether she wants Gist to stay.
Gist says she has more work to do, stressing that she’s still working to implement Rhode Island’s five-year strategic plan for education. She said she’s excited about the chance to expand access to early childhood education and is focused on supporting schools, students and teachers while they transition to more rigorous academic standards — the Common Core — and associated tests.
But if that isn’t in the cards, she’s mum on her next steps.
“I’ve never been someone who takes a job and thinks how that’s going to propel me to the next thing,” Gist said. “Our goal from the time that I got here is to have the best public schools in America, and Rhode Island I think is positioned to do that.”
Gist never even meant to leave her job in the classroom.
She always wanted to teach young children — even completing a project in seventh grade called My Career as a Preschool Teacher. She went on to earn multiple degrees in early and elementary education. More than two dozen years ago, she began teaching elementary school in Fort Worth, Texas. She then moved her career to Tampa, Florida. In both cities, she earned Teacher of the Year awards.
Gist said she wanted to become a “teacher leader” in schools, “but I was never a teacher who thought maybe someday I’ll become a principal or work in the office of my district,” she said. “In a way, I left the classroom by accident thinking I would be back.”
Gist went on to work for the Education Department and serve as the state superintendent of education in D.C., and now she leads Rhode Island public schools.
But her trajectory into federal and state office began with what she calls “a crazy idea.”
How crazy are we talking?
While teaching second grade in Tampa in the mid-90s, she said her class was working to restore a wetlands area in the district. All of the students’ math, reading and science lessons were folded into the project. Gist’s class was working through a service-learning grant, which she noticed that other districts in the state had received, too.
“But I thought, ‘My goodness. My district has so much need, and they could use the extra help,’” she said.
So she decided to apply for a grant that would help all students in her district access environmental education and service-learning opportunities.
“I went down to the district office and carried the grant materials around with me, trying to find someone who thought it was a good idea,” she said. “I just decided to write the grant myself.”
She traveled to other service-learning programs throughout the state to see what they were doing. She forged relationships with local businesses and secured enough in private donations to raise $40,000 to apply for the grant. Her hard work paid off — she got the money, enough to establish a center at her school’s campus where other district students could take advantage of the same kinds of resources that her second graders had at their fingertips.
Hillsborough County School District was the 11th largest school district in the country at the time.
“The next thing they said was, ‘Well you have to come and run it,’” she said. “I had one of those moments when you just have to decide what to do.”
So she did. Soon after, she founded Hillsborough Reads, a wildly successful literacy program that served 108 elementary schools in Hillsborough County. She went on to graduate school before serving as a senior policy analyst at the Education Department.
What was that transition like, to go from working in classrooms to working in an office for the federal government?
“At the Education Department, I learned a lot about policy and politics,” Gist said. “I didn’t really have a sense when I was in the classroom of how the different decisions made at the federal and state level affected what I was doing in the classroom, … how legislation gets passed and how policies get made. I don’t mean like, ‘Schoolhouse Rock! I’m Just a Bill’ kind of thing, but how it actually happens.”
Gist worked on a number of projects while at the department for a year, starting in 2000, including the first federal grant for dual-language immersion programs.
Working for the federal government struck her in a profound, unexpected way.
“When I first got to the Education Department, I was being walked around and introduced to people and someone said, ‘Here’s the office supply closet,’” she said. “I looked inside, and it was like a little Office Depot. There was everything you can imagine. I never in my life had people saying that these things were available to me when I needed them. When I was a teacher making $20,000 a year, I was buying my own markers, paper, etc. All I could think was, ‘How wrong.’ … That’s something that stuck with me even today. I try to pay a lot of attention to it, and it’s a problem that we still haven’t solved.”
Not long after that, Gist left to work in the D.C. mayor’s office and was tapped for D.C. state superintendent. She felt closer to students there, she said, realizing that her interests are really closer to working with kids. Gist resigned in 2009 to take the job as Rhode Island’s education commissioner, where she still serves today.
Why did you leave D.C.?
“At first, I really didn’t want to work for a state because I liked being in D.C., and I felt like I was close to the students,” she said. “I had a stereotype of New England and didn’t think it would be a place of significant need. But then I looked into it and learned that there were huge problems and needs happening here.”
When she arrived in Rhode Island, the state’s Hispanic students were the lowest-performing on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the country, she said. While Rhode Island has about twice the number of students as D.C., the state’s small size made her feel like she could get closely involved.
But it hasn’t been easy — and politics has been a big part of the job.
Lincoln Chafee was running for election in 2010, when more than 90 teachers were fired from Central Falls High School. The school was chronically low-performing and a review Gist put in motion led to the firings. Union leaders were incensed. The school became a mascot for a larger, highly polarizing debate on education reform playing out across the country.
“When [Gov. Chafee] was inaugurated, we spent a lot of time together and I certainly opened myself up to other possibilities during that time because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Gist said.
The two have clashed on a number of education reform issues, like the expansion of charter schools. Gist and Chafee worked at their relationship, trying to find common ground and figure out where the other was coming from.
“He was very skeptical about the direction we were going in education, and he was pretty skeptical about me,” Gist said. “And I wasn’t sure whether or not he was going to be a leader who would be supportive of the kind of change that was necessary in the state.”
“He had certain perceptions about public charter schools,” she added. So Gist took Chafee on some charter visits to dispel those negative perceptions.
“I decided that I had too much to do here,” Gist said. “I had to keep going. … The governor and I really were able to get to know one another better and understand where we were coming from.”
In 2010, you were named one of Time Magazine’s “Time 100” people who most affect the world. How did that make you feel?
“I never could have imagined that something like that would happen or that we would have been recognized in that way,’ she said. “I say ‘we’ because for me, that whole experience was really reflective of the work that the entire team had done in that first year or so we were here. … When I looked at all the people included on that list, it’s was really great that Time Magazine acknowledged influential educators.”
You also had a health scare in 2012, undergoing surgery for a benign brain tumor. What was that like?
“Speaking of things that you don’t ever think will happen,” Gist said. “One minute you’re moving along and working like crazy, and next thing you know, you’re going to have to stop doing everything for a while. It was probably the first time in my life that I ever had to slow down. I am certainly very grateful for my health, and I’m extremely empathetic to people with those challenges.”
LikeLike