This news, reported in an early-January article by G. Wayne Miller in the Providence Journal kind of disappeared with the governor’s announcement of free tuition, but it’s relevant at the front and back ends:

A Rhode Island Department of Education review of Rhode Island College has found multiple deficiencies in educator programs at the school, which graduates a majority of the state’s elementary and secondary school teachers and administrators.

Problems at two master’s-level programs were judged so severe that RIDE declined to renew them. Seven other programs were conditionally approved. A tenth was approved “with distinction.”

As the article states, this college is graduating “a majority” of the “teachers and administrators,” and the schools at which those graduates are going on to teach are often leaving students to graduate without being proficient in math and reading.  So Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo is proposing to give free-to-the-student (paid by taxpayers) tuition to students who often aren’t adequately prepared for college, some of whom will enroll in programs for which the state has reason for concern and then go on to teach at the schools that aren’t offering adequate college preparation.

That sounds very Rhode Island, but it doesn’t sound like a winning formula for the people who live here.