Governor Gina Raimondo is a bona fide neoliberal who is part of the DFER clique, having been a hedge fund manager herself.
She recently selected Angelina Infante-Green as State Commissioner of Education. Infante-Green is a member of Jeb Bush’s cohort of Future Chiefs for Change. Now that she is a State Commissioner, she will qualify to join the big boys and girls as a full-fledged member of Jeb’s Club.
Chiefs for Change support privatization and high-stakes testing. It is Jeb’s vehicle to spread Florida’s failed model, whose ultimate goal is the elimination of public schools, unions, and professional teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Public school students can forget about getting any attention or effort expended at all. If they’re mentioned at all it will be at the end of whatever charter and voucher initiative is put in, like this: “and district schools”.
I sometimes wonder why ed reformers refer to charter and voucher STUDENTS, and then public SCHOOLS. I feel as if it’s a “tell” on how much they value the unfashionable public school population. Our students don’t even exist.
well said
I read your blog yesterday and checked RI and discovered this – while I am not surprised given her recent choices (Deborah Gist, Ken Wagner), I was very very disappointed. er hedge fund work completely ruined the teacher pensions several years ago – those of us who are retired will never recoup our loses (compounded, of course, by the banking/mortgage issues of a few years back). Public school students in RI are destined to have diminished educations (of course, Gina’s kids to to private schools). The only saving grace seems to be the determination of many districts (including my own) to do their utmost to provide quality educations, Common Core and testing not withstanding.
She did not choose Deborah Gist. The previous governor did.
Oops. My error as I couldn’t recall that detail. Thanks for the correction.
boba dude?
http://www.bobadude.com/
Now why would anyone want to eliminate public school unions?
So they can sink to the level of Mississippi and Alabama and other non-union states?
From an article in “The Network for Public Education” – “Teacher unions, Betsy DeVos shape charter school debate in Democratic presidential primary”:
“The DeVoses and others really wanted to just create a marketplace, a lot of it private sector, that would erode both funding and support and the traditional education establishment of teachers unions and they’ve kind of succeeded.”
If you read up on the top 1% – The Kochs, the DeVos family, the Waltons of Wallmart,etc., they hate and despise ALL unions and have worked to eliminate them. One way was to ship jobs overseas. That took care of a lot of private sector unions. ( look up article – “50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map”) Now they are working on public sector unions. In Wisconsin, the Kochs had gov. Scott Walker in their pocket and he crushed unions in that state, especially teachers unions. (look up Scott Walker and Unions) Kasich tried the same thing in Ohio, but the voters held a referendum on his bill and overturned it. In case you haven’t noticed all of the above 1% families are heavily invested in privatization of everything, especially schools. They want to eliminate public schools altogether in favor of non union private entities. Unions interfere with the rights of “job providers”
Angelica Infante Green, in her prior job as Deputy Commissioner in NYS worked closely with the union, accessible and collaborative.. btw, check out the “New Yorker” article on personalized learning in Rhode Island, scary
She may have worked with the union in NY, but now she aspires to be accepted by Jeb Bush, who despises unions.
From bio at link: ““During her tenure leading P-12 Instructional Support efforts, New York students made gains on both math and English assessments, and the state narrowed opportunity gaps for black and Latinx students.”
Ruh-roh! Now scores will go down in NY, & those pesky gaps will widen again…
Isn’t that amazing that a Deputy Superintendent of the State Ed Department raises test scores across the state? How did she do that?