Fact-Checking Sheehan’s Anti-Gist Attack

On Tuesday, state Senator James Sheehan (D, Narragansett, North Kingstown) sent out an op-ed through the General Assembly’s Legislation Press and Public Information Bureau, attacking Education Commissioner Deborah Gist on the basis of her graduate-degree dissertation.  Naturally, the missive is available on RI Future.

Overall, the essay is little more than a union teacher’s attack on an appointed official who started out (at least) seeking to take the edge off of the teachers’ union excesses that are harming Rhode Island’s children, but one of Sheehan’s gotchas deserves a fact check (emphasis added):

Good leaders lead by example. If Gist were to do so, she would hold herself to the same standard and consequence for performance failure as she does teachers. In the new evaluation, teachers must develop Student Learning Objectives to be used to demonstrate their students are continually making progress based on standardized tests or other measures of student performance. If teachers do not meet this standard, they can be deemed “ineffective”. If teachers do not improve after a year, they face termination as had teachers in Central Falls Ironically, the Department of Education, at Gist’s request, has set 33 targets for statewide student performance. The bulk of them are related to closing the achievement gap while a few involve graduation rates and how students do after high school. In 2012, the state reached just 1 out of those 33 targets. In other years, under Gist’s leadership, RIDE did not fair much better. Yet, the commissioner is not held to account for these dismal results.

Sheehan appears to be referring to table 15 in RIDE’s “Rhode Island’s NECAP Math, Reading, and Writing Results for Grades 3-8 & 11,” showing “Statewide Progress toward Attainment of RIDE Performance Measures and Goals.”  The senator is correct to note that only one of the 33 goals is shaded green for having been achieved in 2013.  Eighteen goals are listed as having not been met, but with improvement.  That leaves 13 red rectangles for goals that simply weren’t met, with no improvement or worse performance.

The table also shows the prior year’s results, providing some context for Sheehan’s assertion that “in other years, under Gist’s leadership, RIDE did not fair much better.”  The 2012 numbers are one goal “met or exceeded,” one goal “nearly met,” and twelve goals not met, but with improvement.  That leaves 19 goals in red.

Looking at all categories, 2013 appears to be an improvement, but Sheehan was correct at least for one other year about the number of fully met goals.  That said, his claim was plural “years.”

Going back to the 2011 report, we see that only 31 of the categories were in effect.  Of them, RIDE hit four goals, with three “nearly met,” and the other 24 simply not met.  In 2010, RIDE met 14 goals, nearly met  eight, and didn’t meet 9.  That’s the earliest data collected this way.

So, where does that leave Sheehan’s claim?  There are four years of data.  For the latest two, RIDE met only one of its goals.  For the first year, the results were obviously much better than that.  The second year (which would be necessary to give Sheehan his plural “other years”) is a matter of opinion.

Because of the subjectivity involved, a scale of truth would be a politicized gimmick.  Readers can apply their own judgment.  It’s worth noting three things, however.

First, Sheehan takes a conspicuously narrow view of success, here, by noting only goals that were completely met.  That’s akin to judging schools and teachers only by students who achieved “proficient with distinction,” rather than simply proficient.  If he’d gone with trends on the other side of the scale — categories in which there wasn’t even improvement — he’d have had to admit that RIDE has been chipping away at the problem.

Second, RIDE’s achievement by this measure reinforces Rhode Island’s trends on the  National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests.  Clear progress (in isolation and in comparison with other states) turned into a backslide after Governor Lincoln Chafee (D) changed policies and Board of Regents members.  It’s a bit unfair to fault a commissioner’s leadership when the people whose policies she must implement begin to undermine her.

Third, it’s also a bit unfair of Sheehan to liken RIDE’s success on these metrics to schools’ and teachers’ metrics with students.  However unmotivated they are, most students aren’t actively working against their own test results as a way to score a political victory against their teachers.  By contrast, Rhode Island’s educational establishment invested early in the principle that Gist’s reforms would not work.  When Gist lost her political backing with the change of gubernatorial administrations, her ability to prevent teachers and administrators from making their predictions self-fulfilling evaporated.  Sheehan’s uncharitable presentation of RIDE’s 33 goals makes him a poster boy for the mentality of rooting for failure.

The substance of Sheehan’s complaint is that Commissioner Gist wasn’t able to get Rhode Island’s intransigent insiders to buy in to reforms that would shift the education system’s emphasis a little bit away from lucrative deals and low accountability for adults and toward the present and future success of Rhode Island children.  That’s an indictment of the insiders, including Sheehan, not of Gist.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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