Javier Montańez has been acting superintendent of the Providence public schools all year, while State Superintendent Angelica Infante-Green searched and searched and finally decided to make him the real superintendent of the troubled school district.
Providence finally has a chance to have genuine experienced leadership at the helm, if Infante-Green allows him to run the district, writes Boston Globe columnist Dan MacGowan.
Providence has been under state control for two years, with nothing happening, in part due to the COVID.
But let’s face it, the maximum leader Infante-Green has less experience than the new superintendent. She was a TFA teacher for two years, then moved into the New York State Education Department bureaucracy. She has never been a principal or a superintendent. Montańez has been both.
Kids don’t look up to superintendents the way they do to sports stars like LeBron James or Steph Curry, but Montañez is a true role model. As a teenager, Montañez was homeless and sleeping under a tree in Roger Williams Park, and now he’s running a district filled with thousands of students facing similar obstacles to those he overcame in his life.
Teachers don’t usually look up to superintendents, either. But in Montañez, they’ve got someone who truly understands what they’re going through. He has both taught and been a principal in Providence, so he has the ability to connect with the city’s 2,000 educators in a way no school chief has in many years.
Now comes the hard part.
Montañez has a life’s worth of credibility and a career’s worth of goodwill to be the transformational figure that Providence schools desperately need, especially when we’re more than two years into a state takeover that hasn’t produced any significant results up to this point...
For the past year, he’s been the ideal cheerleader for the district while also proving that he can run the operations of a large school system. He has excelled at both. He’s in his element when he’s talking to students about their future or joking around with them in the hallways, and he’s proven that he can make sure the buses run fine, the buildings aren’t in complete disarray, and the students are safe.
His challenge now is to begin articulating and then executing a vision for getting Providence schools to a place where the majority of kids are proficient in math and English. It’s a tall task. As it stands now, only 6.8 percent of students in Grades 3 through 8 were proficient in math and 14.1 percent were proficient in reading.
Is it worth mentioning at this point that “proficient” is not the right benchmark? “Proficient” does not mean “grade level” or “above grade level” or “passing.” It means “excelling.” I am not sure what percent of Providence students should be excellent, but editorialists should use “basic” as “grade level,” not “proficient.”
The biggest problem the new superintendent will have is that the Governor and the State Superintendent are used to micromanaging the district, and neither of them has the experience that the superintendent has. Also, they are both big fans of privatization, and he will have to protect the public schools.
He will have to use his credibility to insist on his leadership.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Everyone that has followed education and privatization understands that “proficient” is a subjective term. It would be wise to look at other data as well. Nobody should expect a “miracle.” Real improvement is gradual, and it has to be earned by building a cohesive team that are treated fairly and professionally. Test scores alone do not tell the story of a school or district. Other factors like attendance improvement, reduction in discipline referrals, an increase in graduation rates and the number of students going to post high school education, and better communication with the community are all signs of positive change as well.
“Everyone that has followed education and privatization understands that “proficient” is a subjective term.”
A, B, C, D, F and any other grading schemes, even percentages of correct answers are subjective. No assessment in the teaching and learning process is “objective.” Never have been and never will be any “objective” assessments.
Not all human activities are rationo-logically subject to, amenable to supposedly objective means of assessment, evaluation, judgement.
“editorialists should use “basic” as “grade level,” not “proficient.”” Those terms describe NAEP levels, not RICAS levels. The columnist should use the state’s own terms: Not meeting, Partially meeting, Meeting, and Exceeding expectations. Perhaps needless to say, all such levels are arbitrarily set – especially in the case of state assessments. States can, and do, shift both the content of the tests and the required score to “pass” from year to year.
That said, Providence has been a dysfunctional school system for many years. Something(s) need to change. Montañez sounds like the right person for the job but I remain skeptical the pols will get out of his way to do what’s needed.
The Common Core tests (PARCC and SBAC) both use NAEP levels—inappropriately. I assume RI was using one of the two CC tests.
Rhode Island adopted MCAS (Massachusetts) in 2018 after MA dropped out of PARCC. MCAS no longer uses “proficiency” as a qualifier either but, unlike NAEP, when it did it was meant to signify “on grade level”.
“Perhaps needless to say, all such levels are arbitrarily set – especially in the case of state assessments.”
“. . . all such levels are subjectively set. . . “
I thought we had a chance but he pulled a recent publicity stunt that was on par with AIG regime towards the teachers. He turned off many teachers who supported him. PPSD is an absolute mess and The Network that runs it along with AIG have destroyed whatever was left to destroy. Teachers are leaving the system. They’re having trouble filling positions. My school alone, half of the math department left this year, no one will fill the vacancies. That’s just the math department. In the district, HR is now offering us $500 for each person we find to fill a position It’s a disaster.
Thanks for the inside scoop. We can only cry for the students of Providence as the adults play their power games.
That is so disappointing to hear. I’m sorry for all of you teachers and your students.
Well, the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate isn’t going to sit still and let someone dedicated, qualified and competent run a public school district.
When Javier Montańez succeeds, that will cut into the DPECS’s fraudulently gained profits. The crooks and liars are not going to put up with that.
I expect whatever chops Montañez has will be curtailed by the political set-up in Providence. Thank god Gina Raimondo is gone. But as I recall, that school district was hampered in any policy move (at least as of a couple of yrs ago) by the Mayor’s office.