Angelica Infante-Green, the new State Commissioner in Rhode Island, plans to take control of the Providence schools.
Providence has a mayor-appointed board. The mayor complained that the union contract made it too hard for him to fire teachers.
Infante-Green has never run a school district. She has never been a school principal. She entered education through Teach for America, then ran bilingual programs in Bloomberg’s Department of Education. She belongs to Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change.
It will be instructive to see what she does to Providence.
State takeover in Rhode Island does not have a good record:
The state has never sought to reconstitute an entire school system, although it did take over Providence’s Hope High School in 2005. The school was split into three academies and showed modest improvements, but it is now back under city control and remains one of the district’s lowest-performing high schools.
The lowest performing district in the state is Central Falls, where the state stepped in and threatened to fire all the teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How about firing the mayors and governors first? Rhode Island, the anti-teacher state.
Recently, every time I see TFA and/or Teach for America in print, I think of Hitler’s brutal rise to power, and the insanity of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Under Hitler, the “Brown Shirts” were his militia that helped him rise to power in Germany.
Under Mao, it was the Little (teenage) Red Guard.
Anyone that joins TFA and completes their two-year contract in the classroom and stays with TFA to be placed in positions of influence throughout the state and federal governments is no different than Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mao’s Little Red Guard.
You are right, Lloyd.
I believe President Obama weighed in supporting the firing of teachers stating their contracts should be abrogated. This after making excused for the banksters taking multi million dollars bonuses on the taxpayer’s dime for the bank bailouts by invoking the “sanctity of contracts”! Of course there is no guarantee of s bonus which is supposed to be for a job well done, not for destroying the lives of millions of people that lost their life savings/homes.
Duncan and Obama applauded the threats to fire every teacher in Central Falls. They called it courageous.
Black Agenda Report: https://www.blackagendareport.com/obama_legacy_III_privatization_schools
Obama and Duncan clapped on camera when the first public high school was shut down. Wonder what they “got” for clapping?
Bill Gates already paid them before they clapped and they wanted to make sure he’d keep paying them.
The role of Larry Summers, friend of Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, shouldn’t be ignored. From Truthout, “Corporate Media and Larry Summers Team Up to Gut Public Education”.
The values of CAP, where Summers is a “Distinguished Fellow” have always been suspect. But, Summers, as Harvard’s President, drug the school’s reputation through the mud. In one case, Harvard ended up paying $26.5 million to settle a lawsuit that involved a professor, Andrei Shleifer, closely tied to Summers.
Shleifer was primary engineer of Russian privatization. His wife was a hedge fund manager who allegedly profited by speculating in Russian bonds. Shleifer denied wrong doing and settled without admitting guilt. BTW, Shleifer remains at Harvard.
(Wikipedia and the Harvard Crimson)
A harvard professor lamented, “Summers cares so little for Harvard’s name and mission to do good in the world.” I presume those values are what qualified him for a position ay CAP.
Sheryl Sandberg has been described as an “acolyte of Summers”.
Recall also that President Obama wanted to appoint Larry Summers as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank but was thwarted due to publc outrage. Summers strongly supported the repeal of Glass-Steagel which allowed banks to expand in size and limit competition. Worse still repeal allowed banks to undertake risky trades with their savers money ultimately resulting in financial catastrophy.
There may have been blame to go around but ultimately the “buck stops at the top”.
I hope the people of Providence rise up and make Infante-Green’s life miserable. I hope they resist and march on the state house. Mostly minority majority communities should be tired of imposed privatization and fight this attempted “coup.” Minority students should be entitled to investment in authentic public education equal to what most majority white students receive. Separate is never equal, and privatization is no substitution for equity.
Exactly: “Separate is never equal, and privatization is no substitution for equity.” Thank you.
Never forget: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/first-lets-fire-all-the-t_b_483074
Luis Reyes, Regent of the State of New York, sent the following message in support of Infante-Green (when he tried to comment, he was able to do so):
Read the full article about the “takeover” of the Providence, RI. schools:
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190723/state-approves-takeover-of-providence-public-schools
Otherwise, a text without a context becomes a pretext for prejudgment, in this case one that prejudices readers to the person in charge, namely, RI State Supt. Angélica Infante-Green.
She walks the walk with parents, teachers, students as well as public officials!
The process she is leading in Rhode Island is consistent with her distinguished leadership and her public record in support of equity, diversity and inclusion in New York City and New York State. I know her record; and, I have worked with her in both venues. I respect her professionalism and her rock-solid commitment to educational justice.
Her record does not reflect the assumed brainwashing that Diane suggests:
“…Superintendents who understand the importance of collaborating with and respecting the community they serve, and the Superintendents connected to Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, who believe in state takeovers and imposing their views on their communities.”
With all due respect, she walks the walk with parents, teachers, students as well as public officials!
Luis O. Reyes, Ph.D.
N.Y.S. At-Large Regent (I speak here for myself alone.)
My advice to Infante-Green is that if she cares about equity and her reputation, she should quit Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. It is an organization created to promote the ideology of Jeb and Betsy DeVos.
Why does she belong?
Jeb and Betsy love profit and privatization. They hate public schools. They don’t care about equity, inclusion or diversity.
R.I.’s Gov. Gina Raimondo who never met a hedge fund she didn’t want to enrich, chairs the Democratic Governors Association.
In 1992, the RI Department of Education took over the management of the Central Falls school district. Initally the issues were two fold, lack of resources to properly fund education in the state’s smallest city and poor performance measured by standardized tests accompanied by high dropout rates nearing 50% in the high school. From 1992 to 2010, little if any improvement could be discerned. Despite 18 years of state supervision, Central Falls students never saw the opportunities the state should have provided. We must recognize that the school district was still under the management of the RI DOE during that time.
On February 24, 2010, Superintendent Frances Gallo, with the full support of the then Commissioner of Education, Deborah Gist, fired all of the high school teachers as part of a 4-possible option plan to improve educational quality in the district. Obviously demoralizing and punishing teachers was the answer to improving the quality of education there.
It is now 2019, a full 27 years later and despite the RI DOE intervention, Central Falls is still the lowest performing school district in RI although Providence is very close to surpassing it. We’ve heard all about the RACE TO THE TOP when in reality, RI DOE is going in the opposite direction.
What has changed? Gallo is out in Central Falls. Gist is now in Kansas. Iafante-Green is the current Commissioner after her predessor quit and took a position at nearby Brown University. One of Iafante’s first moves was to hire the current Central Falls superintendent as the #2 person at the RI DOE. Coincidently, Mr #2, just happens to be the godfather to Iafante-Green’s youngest child and she obviously is impressed by his record during his time as Central Falls superintendent.
Oh, announced this week, the state will take over the Providence schools and Frances Gallo has been chosen to be the interim superintendent. And, all of these folks, from Governor to Commissioner to Superintendent 8are anti- public education in favor of charter schools.
You just can’t make it up.
When Commissioner of Education, Deborah Gist fired all of the high school teachers in Central Falls Road Island, she was punishing them for the high child poverty rate in that city that is almost three times the rate for that state.
32.7 percent of the residents in Central Falls live in poverty vs the whole state at 12.8 percent.
49.7 percent of the children in Central Falls Road Island under the age of five live in poverty.
From age six to eleven, 43 percent live in poverty.
From age 12 to 14, 45.9 percent
Age 15, that number of children that live in poverty is 83.7 percent.
http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Central-Falls-Rhode-Island.html
Sounds like grounds for a class-action lawsuit to take the state to court and sue them for lost jobs and wages.
Has everyone on here read the report from Johns Hopkins on Providence schools? It is heartbreaking and infurating. Is it inaccurate, or is this really what you’re defending? https://edpolicy.education.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PPSD-REVISED-FINAL-002.pdf
Correction: Here is what I know:
1. I never met a failing school. I did meet failing students and a few failing teachers among the vast majority of good teachers who worked very hard in often terrible conditions.
2. I never met a hungry school! (despite underfunding)
3. I never met an angry school but did encounter many angry students.
4. I never met a school from a broken home but did meet many students from broken homes.
5. I never met a sleep deprived school from a 40 hour work week on a minimum wage after school hours. But I had many students working 40 hours a week after school and wondered why they were often less than attentive.
Yup, so easy to blame “schools” rather than the powerful wealthy who don’t want to pay taxes to help adequately fund public education because they send their kids to private schools.
Also there was a time when we actually had a progressive income tax system.
Michael, you talk about deflection and then practice it in spades by blaming the powerful wealthy for school dysfunction. Please read the report. Clearly this isn’t solely about inadequate funding.
Providence and Central Falls have very high proportions of children who are poor and don’t speak English.
I understand that. Did you read the report? Everybody in these schools is miserable; teachers, students, administrators, parents. Is your response that this is the best that we can expect in high poverty schools? Or that nothing can be changed without fixing poverty first?
I know school takeovers are largely not successful, but it seems important to recognize that the current system seems to be a complete failure and doing nothing shouldn’t be an option.
State takeovers have never worked.
I will post about this tomorrow
How is Detroit doing?
I agree that there is plenty of data that says that state takeovers don’t work. But, what is the solution? Maybe charter takeovers like they’ve done in Camden? Leave things as they are? Expect that the same people who developed and are maintaining the current state can fix it?
Takeovers have consistently failed.
Look elsewhere.
“doing nothing shouldn’t be an option”
Changing management/control from an elected school board to mayoral control or control through a governor that appoints an all-powerful Tzar that almost always knows nothing about education and how children learn does not change how things are done and that often makes things worse.
Change works best when it is from the bottom up NOT the top down. I capitalized NOT so you would hear me shouting that word, not in anger but so you would hear me.
The problem (seen by the top) with bottom-up change is that the local parents, teachers, students and school administrators involved in the decision making might recommend programs and/or changes that will cost more and that means raising taxes, something the top doesn’t want to do because it cuts into their profits and wealth.
But what catalyst starts the change? All parties seem boxed in.
I think this is what drives takeovers.
Takeovers have consistently failed.
Why would anyone apply a leech to a bleeding sore?
Actually, leeches protect bleeding sores and wounds from infection and speed up the healing process and not just leaches but maggots and bees, too.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/563656
Actually I’m sorry u respond to “John”. I responded twice but that’s it. In my view he’s just a shill for the “reformers” who come & go on this blog.
Michael,
Is that how you consider anyone that disagrees with you? I asked a serious question. I take it everyone here disagrees with a state takeover, but what would you do instead?
Al Franken said “[Conservatives] love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow.”
Which way do you think you love public education?
Domingo Morel is the go-to guy on state takeovers.
Read his response re Providence, posted at 9 am Monday.
That doesn’t sound unreasonable, but I’m skeptical that those who are benefitting from the current system will go along with any systemic changes. Is there an example of where this approach has worked?
So your recommendation is to blow up the system and start over? Where does that work?
Remember there are children involved
I don’t have a recommendation. I’m looking for options.
His plan sounds fine, but how will they increase the diversity of school administrators, teachers and staff in light of collective bargaining agreements? Same for “reforms that allow principals to have more influence over decision-making in their schools”?
These sound like great ideas, but they don’t seem practical. Somebody has to be the “adult in the room” to fix the dysfunctional procurement process and the rules that make it impossible for anyone to have enough responsibility to influence their results.
If you don’t have any ideas, why do you nitpick Domingo Morel, who was part of the Johns Hopkins team and has studied takeovers nationally?
It’s “nitpicking” to ask whether his idea is plausible given constraints?
John,
You complain about the recommendations of someone far more knowledgeable than you; Domingo Morel is a national authority on state takeovers, he served on the Johns Hopkins review team, and he is a graduate of the Providence schools. What are your credentials? You complain about his recommendations but have none of your own to offer.
Yet, that is nitpicking.
I fundamentally disagree. If only experts can question plans, that absolves everyone of responsibility. Also, I’m not “complaining”. I’m confident he has the same questions about his Own recommendations.
Where are your recommendations?
First, you said that those who had not read the Johns Hopkins report had no standing to comment on state takeover plans in Providence.
Then you say that a member of the Johns Hopkins team doesn’t know what he is talking about.
And you have no recommendations.
Diane,
I didn’t say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In fact, I think he makes some good points. Please don’t put words in my mouth so you can disagree with them.
John,
You said his proposals are “fine” but “impractical.”
“I don’t have a recommendation. I’m looking for options.
His plan sounds fine, but how will they increase the diversity of school administrators, teachers and staff in light of collective bargaining agreements? Same for “reforms that allow principals to have more influence over decision-making in their schools”?
These sound like great ideas, but they don’t seem practical. Somebody has to be the “adult in the room” to fix the dysfunctional procurement process and the rules that make it impossible for anyone to have enough responsibility to influence their results.”
That’s nitpicking.
Who is the “adult in the room”?
What are your recommendations?
Questioning whether a proposed solution is practical is entirely appropriate and responsible. Accepting it without question is what would make no sense.
This has stopped being a productive conversation. I thought this might be a place for rational discussion of the issues, but I was apparently mistaken.
This “John” does seem like a shill, a troll, assigned by the charter school industry to disrupt our forum and spread doubt. We’ve seen this before here and after they fail, they seldom return … until the next one shows up who might be the same person using a different name.
LOL, “assigned by the charter industry”. You have quite an imagination.
As for “spreading doubt” in a forum, I don’t know what that means.
Whatever you think it is I have done, I’m done doing it. This is obviously not the place for any rational discussion about approaches to education challenges.
Back to your lovefest…
What is your definition of a “rational” discussion?
To clue you in, John, I do not think this site is here to solve all the problems that exist in public schools. This site is a place to defend the public schools against the invasion of greedy, power-hungry CEOs and billionaires that are out to destroy the public schools and replace them with a profit-based (even if they are labeled non-profit) charter school industry that the public has no control over.
However, to focus on the topic you are interested in, the only way to solve any challenges public school districts face is to do it from the bottom up and not from the top down.
I started teaching in 1975 and before President Ronald Reagan declared war against the nation’s public schools when he published and released the flawed and fraudulent “A Nation at Risk” report in 1983, that was how we solved the perceived problems in the public schools I taught in.
The individual schools I taught in organized the local stakeholders: teachers, students, parents, and administrators at the local level to work together to come up with methods to deal with perceived challenges in the schools because each school comes with its own challenges and problems.
In the district and schools where I taught for thirty years up to August of 2005, the biggest challenge was children living in poverty and street gangs. The child poverty rate in those schools started at 70-percent.
No test in the world is going to deal with the problems a child brings into the classroom when they grow up in poverty.
And no test is going to deal with the problems that violent street gangs cause in those same communities.
But the bottom-up approach to deal with the challenges individual public school face ended with “A Nation at Risk” that was based on misinformation and lies.
We run into alleged “shills,” “trolls,” and “hacks” all the time on the internet.
And the cost of pub ed is at the heart of all the “reforms”. The middle class has been hollowed out putting increased financial pressure on public school systems. The wealthy use private schools or fund public schools in their neighborhoods and do not want to lose that advantage nor help pay for public education for others. Hence the “reform” movement which is really about blaming failure on schools to justify cost cutting measures such as “individualized learning” (students sitting in front of a computer) and minimize the use of expensive teachers….and pensions. By the way, I read that some tech titans do not want their children using computers in school at all, preferring to have small classes (15 students or so) with actual live teachers!!!
John, what is perceived as poor performance for a school has nothing to do with the school and everything to do with children living in poverty.
Firing teachers and closing public schools will never end poverty.
Ten Ways to End Poverty (John, you will not find “firing teachers” on this list.)
Click the link to read the rest of the list.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/10-ways-end-poverty/
“Poor performance” might be what caused Johns Hopkins to study the school, but this report isn’t about poor performance. Did you read it?
Why should I waste my time to read any report?
To learn something?
I learn new stuff every day, but I decide what I read … and I read a lot.
But I don’t read everything that someone else wants me to read just because they want me to.
In this case, a fifty-word summary would do if the summary was accurate.
John: Quote from the report:
Student engagement was wanting. In only two classrooms did instruction focus on students’ doing the majority of the work, and in many cases, students appeared eager to participate but were not given meaningful chances to do so. We observed no classroom in which there was genuine “productive struggle,” in which students are called upon to grapple with, and persist through, challenging skills or concepts. As indicated above, students were not pressed to look for evidence in the texts, and there were almost no opportunities observed for students to engage with one another in meaningful ways. Another important feature of a standards-aligned classroom is teachers’ “checking for understanding,” which in the classrooms we visited seemed largely rote and did not lead to any observed change in instruction or meaningful feedback. Finally, students were given infrequent opportunities to strengthen or develop foundational language skills.
Yup: blame the “school”. Do a lot of statistical analysis to give the aura of authenticity. Bottom line: the stromgest correlation to academic achievement is wealth/income.
What you posted is a critique of instruction.
Also, I’m not blaming anyone, I’m asking if people here acknowledge problems at the school and how they think they should be fixed.
How about doing something different, other than eliminating the local board and putting TFA or a Jeb Bush or Broadie in charge?
Sure, but what?
Read the 9 am post on Monday.
The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting to get different results.
What??? I critique of instruction??? Did we read the same item? I reread just to be sure and it is not just a critique. It states very clearly students were not challenged by the teachers to think through whatever was being taught. Clearly teachers at fault blame game.
And that’s not a critique?
It seems there’s plenty of blame to go around.
How would you propose fixing it?
I’m not a fan of the “teachers can do no wrong” approach to fixing problems. If I recall, even the teachers thought 55 of their number had no business being there.
But, as I said before, the issues seem to be widespread and systemic. How would you fix this?
John
Reputation matters.
Look at the advisory board of Johns Hopkins education dept. Is J-H a think tank with students? Billionaires deliver grants to J-H faculty which shouldn’t be ignored. Commenter, Laura Chapman, exposed valid concerns about the J-H school of education.