After Johns Hopkins University wrote a scathing critique of the Providence public schools, Governor Gina Raimondo and her new Commissioner of Education took control of the city’s schools. They just announced their turnaround plan and predicted that the low-performing schools of Providence would be on par with the top 25% of schools in the state in five years.
Among the major points of the plan:
It places enhanced focus on the performance of multilingual learners, who represent 34% of Providence students but have been shown to be missing out on an adequate education. Going forward, the district will place more attention on the recruitment of qualified English-as-a-second-language teachers, prioritize meeting the expectations laid out in a Department of Justice settlement over the district’s handling of multilingual learners and double the number of students served by bilingual programs over five years.
The district will renegotiate the collective bargaining agreement with the Providence Teachers Union to make it easier to fire low-performing teachers, hire the best candidates and require additional professional development days, according to the plan.
In order to better engage families, the district will implement a central phone number or text-messaging system for information-sharing that will be accessible 24/7, create a parent and students bill of rights and start a “parent academy” that will train families in how to best advocate for their children. Peters already announced this spring that he plans to completely restructure central office.
The plan also prioritizes hiring more teachers of color, who are underrepresented in Providence schools compared with the student population, in part by partnering with local colleges and universities to attract more diverse candidates to the profession.
The turnaround plan includes an extensive series of metrics that the district aims to hit within five years of implementation, such as increasing the percentage of students who are present for nearly the entire school year to 90% from its current baseline of 62.7%.
To ensure accountability, the district will post updates on the plan’s implementation on 4PVDKids.com and publish a yearly report on its progress.
Nothing was said about additional funding.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
and it’s still based on the standardized test
and it’s still based on the standardized test
Bob’s Insta-Edu-Pundit 1-minute Course on Creating a Turnaround Plan.
Choose a magic formula for improving education. There are lots of these lying about. Flipped classrooms? No excuses? Standardized testing from the third trimester on? Balanced scorecard educator dashboards?
Find out what percentage of kids failed to reach proficiency [sic] on the state standardized test.
Divide that number of by three to get x.
Write a plan saying that by applying the magic formula, x percent of kids will achieve proficiency in two years, 2x in four years, and 3x in six years.
Bask in the glory. After a year and a half, take a new, better-paying position based on the education miracle you pulled off.
It is interesting that this turnaround does not include more funding. There are no magic bullets to working with this population. It takes lots of time and investment. While hiring more competent bilingual teachers is a step in the right direction, they also need a plan. A key aspect of this plan should be smaller class size. Latino ELLs need a lot more support than simply learning English. They are generally years behind in academics as well. Any bilingual program needs to be shaped by a clear vision and plan. Using test scores is an inadequate measure of student progress. Most beginners don’t show progress that can be shown in terms of scores until the third year of instruction. Family outreach should be a component of the overall plan as well. If they want the program to result in real improvement, they might try to partner in a legitimate institution of higher education that can provide teacher training.
that vicious circular irony always attached to “reform”: having students who struggled with English and thus produced low test scores so that their teachers were then forced into teacher trainings to read articles and books which stated that using test-score measures with ELL kids was detrimental and would garner a negative effect — only to then come back and work inside classrooms where administration told us that we must use test-score measures or lose our jobs
The Rhode Island Commissioner, Anjelica Infante-Green, comes from NYC, a deputy commissioner in NYS, the “Providence” plan excluded the union, you can‘t “change” w/o buy-in from classroom teachers. Providence city politics has been rife /w corruption for decades, “imposing” a plan is simply public relations, and down the road blame teachers .. unless teacher unions and community activists are at the table from day 1 – Anjelica knows that!!! The “plan” is DOA
Well said.
I noticed one of the main components was renegotiating with the Providence teacher’s union to make it easier to fire “under-performing teachers.” I assume that performance will be based exclusively on misleading standardized testing data. Gist to Infante-Green’s state education leadership has done nothing but undermine public schools in the city and state. They even brought in the superintendent of schools who fired all of the teachers in Central Falls to lead Providences schools. On top of all that, Governor Raimondo is 100% in the DeVos/Trump choice camp so the fact that no turnaround schemes run by politicians has ever worked won’t deter her.
Tultican, I’m assuming your assumption is accurate in that teacher performance will be based on misleading standardized test data. Raimondo is a Wall St Democrat so it’s axiomatic she would believe in the magic test scores.
Investigative journalist David Sirota reported on her shenanigans with the RI public pension system way back in 2014. Privatizing public assets seems to be her modus operandi.
As RI treasurer, Raimondo handed RI public pension funds over to high fee, high risk investment firms.
“the pension investment strategy that Raimondo began putting in place in 2011 has delivered big fees to Wall Street firms. The one-two punch of below-median returns and higher fees has cost Rhode Island taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to pension analysts.”
https://www.ibtimes.com/rhode-island-has-lost-372-million-state-shifted-pension-cash-wall-street-1671790
I concur; Raimondo comes straight out of the neoliberal branch of the Democratic party. FYI, In January, I wrote about the Providence public schools: https://tultican.com/2020/01/13/providence-public-schools-threatened/
Unimpressive and unconvincing.
Here’s what has a better chance of working:
Ditch Common Core. It clearly isn’t working. I think that’s because it focuses on mental workouts rather than actually learning stuff. New cognitive science shows stocking the long-term memory is the key to high level mental functioning. Ergo give kids a knowledge-building curriculum, not Common Core or other curricula that ignore brain science.
Empower teachers to curb classroom chaos. We can pretend all we want, but a major reason high-poverty schools fail is that disruptive kids often make teaching nearly impossible (why does no one ever talk about this?). Make sure every school has on-campus-suspension staffed by competent professionals, including counselors. Allow the students who want to learn to learn.
Re: English learners. A visually-rich, content-rich curriculum full of topical units is the most efficient way to build English vocabulary, for both native and non-native speakers. Giving these kids skill drills (e.g. find the main idea; find supporting evidence) does nothing to build vocabulary, the key to learning a language.
It’s hard not to dismiss what’s listed out of hand. There’s not much there there. Shifting priority to 34% ESL’s w/no addl funds, how do you do that? A 24/7 hotline for info-sharing– whee.
As I recall, the Johns Hopkins critique spoke mainly to an unworkable district organization which was top-down – “top” including multiple high-level approvals (including even Mayor), making changes called for by distr supt/ school community nearly impossible to implement. Highly inefficient & disorganized central school office was part of that critique, & I see a reorg is part of this plan… But also quite vague at this point. It hit news in April because it included putting a number of teachers union employees there on notice they may be displaced (LOL!)
Surely, you don’t think that state control is top-down!
😀
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ad infinitum
Lake Wobegon! Every single school in Rhode Island will be above average.
^^^ Correction: The plan’s goal is to make sure that the bottom 25% of schools and the top 25% of schools will all be among the group of schools in the top 25%!
But that would lead to the middle 50% of schools being in the bottom half of schools, a very serious problem which can only be solved by making sure that the schools that began as the middle 50%, but then moved down to being at the bottom 75% when the bottom 25% joined the top 25% in comprising the top 25% of schools.
At that point, when the top 25% of schools consists of the previous top 25% plus the bottom 25%, the bottom 75% (which was previously the middle 50%) will follow the exact same plan so they will also be on par with the top 25%. And then 100% of the schools will be on par with the top 25%.
Clear as mud.
Brilliant!
How can you do better than have 50% of the schools in the top 25%?
OMG! Too bad “Mr. Teachbad’s Blog” (“Where Teacher’s Laugh & Complain”) isn’t still around (Mr. Teachbad’s cover got blown, & he was fired from the D.C. Public School System a # of years ago). I’ll have to find his “Fake Education News” (see–he was prescient) post, about the principal asking to have his student body replaced (note: NOT the teachers!) to raise the test scores: it’s hilarious! (If I can find it, I’ll send it.)
I’d sent it to you when it came out, Diane, & I think you reposted it–?
You will all LYAsO!! (&–don’t we all really need a good laugh these days?)
I was a certified “Mr. Teachbad teacher”. Wear the moniker proudly do I.
Gotta love wordpress, eh. My comment of “I was a certified “Mr. Teachbad teacher”. Wear the moniker proudly do I.” is in moderation.
Huh–I have a recruiter pursuing me at the moment to work in the Providence public schools…. Shall I send her this?