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89 search results for: fix the system reform

61

As with Everything, Caution on Empowerment Schools

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Rhode Islanders have a right to be skeptical about ideas coming out of their government, and the “empowerment schools” that Rhode Island’s new education commissioner is promoting are no different. At this point, the only reasonable advice would be not to buy into the idea until there are more details about how it would actually work:

“Why can’t we give the tools to districts that the charters have?” he said. “This would address the demand for the charter sector.”

In a speech before the Senate Committee on Education Thursday night, Wagner fleshed out his vision for public education, one that would give principals much more authority over budgets, hiring, even the school day, allow schools to innovate and give parents much more control over where their children attend school.

Rhode Island, Wagner said, has to look beyond the entrenched debate over the value of charter schools and give every school the opportunity to innovate, whether it’s offering dual language classes, an enhanced arts program or a longer school day. This does not mean that Rhode Island abandons testing or a shared set of high standards, however. It means that the state Department of Education would give “extreme freedom” from many state regulations, much like charter schools.

As I’ve been saying in a number of venues, lately, these fix-the-system education reforms walk the edge between absorbing reform efforts into the education blob and pulling the blob toward actual reforms, and whereas the rights of parents and local communities ought to be the things that help ensure balance, they tend to be considered as an afterthought. Giving principals more authority in their own schools, for example, is a great idea, but only if they still have some accountability to parents and only if it doesn’t erode local taxpayers’ ability to determine what (and how much) they’re willing to support.

Similarly, legislators need to thoroughly consider how empowerment schools will actually be populated. If an elementary school converts, for example, will it still be the local district school for students in that neighborhood, or will those families have to enter a charter-like lottery not only against other families in their city or town, but against students throughout the state? And either way, who decides which option to use? It’s all too easy to lose sight of the distinction between funding education for all students and funding a particular set of government-branded schools.

If anything can be declared definitively about this style of education reform, it’s that we don’t need another proposal constructed of general promises and packaged with buzzwords that leads to another 15 years of helping a handful of children while doing damage to education overall, as well as to representative democracy.

63

The Real Way to End Corruption in Rhode Island

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Edward Fitzpatrick highlights an interesting flash of truth from former Governor Lincoln Chafee, who candidly stated something that everybody who pays attention already knows:

… Stanton zeroed in on the question of whether Rhode Island’s process for selecting state judges is transparent and accountable. And attention turned to Chafee’s appointment of former Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano as a Superior Court judge in 2013.

Chafee told Stanton he’d received heavy pressure from Senate leaders, who held up several of his initiatives after he bypassed Montalbano for previous judicial vacancies.

It’s a favor factory, over on that hill in Providence.  Governing the state on behalf of the people of Rhode Island comes a distant second to shuffling favors around for the benefit of insiders.  But if you want reason to believe that nothing will ever change, here, turn to the suggestion that Fitzpatrick and Common Cause RI Director John Marion offer:

So what can be done? Marion said it’s going to take public pressure on Governor Raimondo “to exercise her full authority to pick judges without the interference of Assembly leaders. With former Rep. Tim Williamson a finalist for a District Court vacancy, the governor has a choice — stand up for her power to make those appointments, or give in to the pressure to placate legislative leaders.”

If a great deal of targeted pressure is brought to bear, maybe the governor will make the tune skip the Williamson verse, but that doesn’t fix anything.  Frankly, it almost makes good-government activism another favor to shuffle.  If the governor doesn’t bow to the pressure, then folks like Fitzpatrick and Marion will, in effect, be promising to hold up other initiatives she might need their support to achieve.  To be clear: I am not saying that advocates for good government will therefore be just like corrupt legislators.  I’m saying that they will be working the system without changing its structure, and Rhode Island’s problems are systemic.

To fix this specific problem — and many more — what’s needed is a balanced political system in which competing interests have incentive not just to slip their own priorities into the mix, but to expose the corruption of others and to hold them accountable.  That means elections actually have to be contested.  It means it actually has to be possible for power to change hands in significant ways.  It means people in power have to fear the consequences if their corruption gives their opponents an edge in the fight for the reins.

Much must be done to achieve that end, but for starters, Fitzpatrick’s paper could get some ideological diversity in its news department and (therefore) reporting, and Marion’s organization could stop supporting campaign reforms that serve to regulate outsiders off the playing field.

64

NAEP Drop Shows Disservice to Rhode Island Students

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I’ll be taking a closer look at the just-released scores from the national standardized NAEP tests later today, but initial reports suggest that Rhode Island slipped.  Linda Borg’s Providence Journal story focuses on whether the switch to Common Core standards accounts for the dip, and that might be part of the story nationally.  However, Rhode Island’s story is more detailed.  I’ll pivot off the closing comment from Rhode Island’s new education commissioner, Ken Wagner:

“The answers are around us,” Wagner said. “We need to invest in our students, our teachers and in our economy. This isn’t about coming up with something new. We need to be focused on having the will to persist in what we know works.”

Wagner’s new, so it’s possible he’s not familiar with the history, but in the years that Rhode Island was actually pursuing education reform, our test scores, both NAEP and NECAP were on the rise, catching and surpassing the national average (in the case of NAEP).  Then those “fix-the-system” reforms hit a political ceiling, with Governor Lincoln Chafee putting the brakes on the reform vehicle and the General Assembly beginning to dismantle it.

The most reasonable interpretation of recent history in Rhode Island is that the education establishment isn’t really interested in figuring out what works and “persisting” in it.  Politicians and labor unions want to persist in what benefits them, and improving the lives of Rhode Island’s children is only permitted to the extent that it doesn’t disrupt that primary objective.

65

Funding Formulas and Political Rhetoric

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As I’ve written before, public school districts have a point when they complain that charter schools drain their resources to build a parallel second school system.  As for Rhode Island’s education funding formula, it obviously makes some assumptions and throws some numbers at the wall, but at least it’s a formula, not an arbitrary annual decision.

But I do wish we could have more-straightforward, factual discussions of such topics in this state.  Here’s Governor Gina Raimondo in the Providence Journal:

Rhode Island’s existing formula allocates aid to public schools based on student enrollment, the level of student poverty and the wealth of the community.

“It is an excellent funding formula,” Raimondo said. “But it’s been around for five years. It needs to be tweaked.”

Rhode Island, Raimondo said, spends a billion dollars a year on public education.

But, she asked, “Are we getting the most out of our money? Rhode Island is seventh in the nation in terms of per pupil spending, but we’re seeing average [academic] results. What troubles me is we have the greatest achievement gap [between low-income and higher-income students] in the country.”

Shouldn’t it at least be acknowledged that the state is five years into a 10-year phase-in of the formula?  The details of the funding formula have been around for five years, but it’s still five years away from actually being fully implemented.  (And honestly, what person over 35 years old still believes that five years is a long time in public policy?)

Let’s not pretend that we need some shiny new fixes to an antiquated formula; that’s merely an invitation to mischief.  The charter school piece — or, ahem, school choice education savings accounts — is more of an add-on than a core component of the formula, of itself.

Most important, though, is the plain and simple fact that we can “tweak” the funding formula all we want and it won’t have an effect on academic results or the gap between the haves and have nots.  Money is not the issue in Rhode Island’s education system, and it serves Rhode Island’s vulnerable communities poorly, indeed, not even to be raise that fact as a possibility.

As you can see by playing with the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s interactive tool for comparing results on the national standardized NAEP tests, Rhode Island had actually closed the gap with national results when it comes to lower-income students … until after the 2011 tests.  Those reversed trends align conspicuously with the brakes that Governor Lincoln Chafee and the General Assembly applied to the reforms initiated by former Commissioner Deborah Gist under former Governor Donald Carcieri and may indicate that there’s a political ceiling on education reform that tries to work within the system, rather than shake it up.

Education is too important to add to the pile of things that Rhode Island is getting absolutely wrong during the Chafee-Fox and Raimondo-Mattiello years.

66

Dammed Teacher Union Pay Scale Prevents Realistic Variations

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Yesterday, I suggested that a government program subsidizing early-childhood education degrees for childcare providers — “giving them a chance to teach in a public school and earn more money” — was an example of backwards government thinking that ignores market forces.  As if to follow up on that suggestion, Linda Borg has an article, in today’s Providence Journal, that proves and reinforces my point:

Locally, superintendents say they are flooded with applications for elementary education openings but struggle to fill vacancies in secondary math and science, especially in physics. Many school districts have now expanded their search to include international candidates. …

In Rhode Island and elsewhere, the teaching profession can’t compete with the salaries offered to math and science majors in the private sector.

Borg goes on to lay blame on increasing attempts to make public school teachers accountable for their work and the minor reductions in pension benefits, leading teachers to “postpone retirement.”  There may be some truth to the first point, although education needs some system of accountability, and absent real school choice that would create accountability through competition, the public is right to insist on objective metrics.  As for pension reforms, I’m not persuaded; indeed, the two points strike me as contradictory: If teaching is a less attractive profession, then teachers should be more inclined to retire earlier.

The real problem, here, is obvious.  The old-fashioned factory pay scale prevents public schools from dealing with market realities.  School districts are paying way above what elementary school teachers would demand if everybody were free to work for as much as they needed to earn, and they’re prevented from paying enough to attract teachers in subjects that require expertise in areas that are, themselves, more in demand.  (That’s a good indication, by the way, that those areas are particularly important to teach well.)

Some districts have agreements with their unions that allow bonuses and such for difficult-to-fill positions, but clearly, that’s insufficient, and in any event, they run up against budget constraints, because they can’t reduce other pay commensurately.

Like many other intractable problems in public policy, this should be easy to fix.  Back off the government and union restrictions, and implement school choice policies.  With freedom, competition, and more-flexible forms of accountability, everybody will find their level, and teachers, students, and taxpayers will all benefit.

Unfortunately, labor unions and politicians have built a giant dam that prevents the reasonable flow of money, talent, and customers.  Yeah, they get to siphon off money and power, but everybody else suffers.

67

Press Conference & Request By Concerned Citizen, Bill Murphy, to Testify about Unfairness of Pension Settlement

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[The following was received via e-mail this afternoon.]

Concerned Citizen Seeks to Testify about Unfairness of Pension Settlement to Taxpayers at Court Hearing Tuesday, Schedules Press Conference to Explain Request to the Public

Concerned citizen Dr. William J. Murphy will hold a press conference in front of the Frank Licht Judicial Complex at 250 Benefit Street in Providence at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, May 26, 2015 to explain to the public the reasons for his request to testify about the unfairness of the pension settlement to taxpayers at the ongoing fairness hearings in Superior Court. Dr. Murphy will deliver a statement emphasizing that the terms of the settlement itself as well as the impropriety of the court-supervised secret negotiation process that produced it have significantly harmed the financial welfare of taxpayers, violated the political rights of citizens, and severely damaged the public interest.

(EAST PROVIDENCE, RI – May 25, 2015) – Dr. William J. Murphy, a concerned resident of East Providence, has petitioned the Rhode Island Superior Court to testify at the ongoing pension settlement fairness hearing Tuesday. He held a press conference at Superior Court in Providence on Tuesday to issue a statement explaining the reasons for his request.

Dr. Murphy opened his remarks by saying that, “The pension settlement is grossly unfair to good citizens of Rhode Island because it adds over $290 million to the unfunded pension debt that the state’s already overburdened taxpayers cannot afford. Even more troubling, the terms of the settlement itself as well as everything about the nature of the process itself fail to demonstrate appropriate sensitivity to the economic hardships this increased tax burden would impose on elderly citizens living on fixed incomes as well as low-income younger taxpayers and their families who remain deprived of adequate economic opportunities in part because of the unaffordable state pension system, the high rates of taxation imposed to feed it, and the resulting negative consequences for the Ocean State’s economic competitiveness.

68

Rhode Island and New Hampshire Education Trends

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According to his bio line, Ron Wolk is an advocate for “performance-based assessment” in schools, so his argument in a recent Providence Journal op-ed should be considered with that in mind.  That’s a minor qualifier, though, inasmuch as one expects people typically to advocate for things they believe in.

It’s just something to keep in mind while considering his comparison of education trends in Rhode Island and New Hampshire.  The two states, he suggests, began moving toward reforms at around the same time, and with much the same plan, but then:

As the years passed, Rhode Island marched in place for a while and then retreated when most schools continued with business as usual. The commitment to multiple measures was never fully accepted, and state officials steadily increased the 10 percent limit on New England Common Assessment Program scores until a “passing score” was deemed necessary for a student to graduate. Today, the state remains mired in a system where time is the constant and learning is the variable, and where the “learning” is largely “delivered” through classroom instruction. 

Meanwhile, New Hampshire has stuck with its vision, working at ground level with principals, teachers, parents and students to make CBE successful. Much work remains to be done, but progress is steady. More students are earning credit for supervised internships and projects in communities. Research shows significant declines in dropouts, school failures and disciplinary problems. Student engagement and learning have increased. Students say their work is more challenging and their interactions with teachers are more rewarding.

It’s a distortion to say that a “passing score” became obligatory in Rhode Island, rather than just a mild improvement of a non-passing score, which is the truth.  But putting that aside, is his characterization of the states’ trends accurate?

Looking at the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s online application to compare states’ results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, I’d argue that the answer is, “no.”  If you scroll down the application and compare the two states by multiple measures, a few trends emerge:

  • New Hampshire started the millennium considerably higher than Rhode Island.
  • New Hampshire is considerably less diverse (as evidenced by the fact that the “all students” category tracks so closely with the “white students” group.
  • Looking at just white students, for a more direct comparison, and averaging grades (four and eight) and test subjects (math and reading) Rhode Island moved from a 5.5-point deficit in 2003 to a 1.75-point deficit in 2013.

The most important observation, though, is that the overall impression of the trends is actually, as I’ve written before, a more-rapid improvement in Rhode Island than elsewhere… up until the point that Governor Chafee’s administration put a stop to the reforms that Wolk laments.

“Performance-based assessment” may prove, in the long run, to be an excellent principle by which to organize education, and the specific approach that Wolk appears to advocate may prove workable, but I don’t think this particular comparison is the evidence that he thinks it is.

69

Coalition Radio Introduces Three Fiscal Topics into the 2014 Campaign

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Issue 1: Do any candidates for Rhode Island Governor or Rhode Island General Assembly support modifying or repealing Governor Chafee’s Wall-Street-first law regarding municipal priorities?

Issue 2: Will any of the candidates for Governor of Rhode Island have their fiscal staffs look immediately into the possibility of a Providence receivership. Will they tell us if they do?

Issue 3: Buddy Cianci, according to some research done by Michael Riley, once advocated for pension obligation bonds to help finance Providence’s pension system. Might he do so again?

72

Coming up in Committee: Forty-One Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, June 3 – June 5

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1. S2898: $39M of “state investment” into the Superman building, in the form of a $19,500,000 “direct allocation to the owner” in the second year of the program, “and then payments of $9,750,000 in each of the following fiscal years”, with the condition that “following the funding of the fourth and final payment, upon a capital event resulting from the sale or refinancing of the project, any amount paid to the owner under this program above thirty percent (30%) of QREs shall be repaid to the state of Rhode Island prior to the owner realizing any return over the actual amounts invested in the project”. (S Finance; Tue, Jun 3)

2. S2950: Mandates that the RI Board of Education adopt “a competency-based/proficiency-based learning policy and a model district policy designed to increase programmatic opportunities for students to earn credits through demonstrations of competency”. (S Education; Wed, Jun 4)

3. H7939: Provides for information related to mental-health related involuntarily commitments to be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) database used for conducting firearms purchase background checks. The records sent to database will be from cases where there has been a demonstration of “clear and convincing evidence that the subject of the hearing is in need of care and treatment in a facility, and…continued unsupervised presence in the community would, by reason of mental disability, create a likelihood of serious harm”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Jun 3)

4. S2801: New insurance requirements for “mental health and substance use disorders”, including a requirement that they be covered “under the same terms and conditions as…provided for other illnesses and diseases” and a ban on annual or lifetime limits on their coverage. (H Corporations; Tue, Jun 3)

5. S2009: Prohibits funds from the restricted-receipt account used to pay legal costs for the state retirement system from being used to pay for litigation not directly based on a state retirement board decision. (S Finance; Tue, Jun 3)

6A. S2379: Legalizes certain uses of marijuana beginning with “actually and constructively using, obtaining, purchasing, transporting, or possessing one ounce (1 oz.) or less of marijuana, not including hashish” and “actually and constructively using, obtaining, purchasing, transporting, or possessing marijuana products, including up to five (5) grams or less of hashish, sixteen (16) ounces of marijuana-infused product in solid form and seventy-two (72) ounces of marijuana-infused product in liquid form”…

73

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Six Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 6 – May 8

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1. H2059: Prohibits standardized testing from being used as a graduation requirement from Rhode Island high schools until after July 1, 2017. (S Education; Wed, May 7) What’s going on inside the Rhode Island’s Senate backrooms, with regards to education testing? (More detail after the jump).

2. S2030: Requires employers with 200 or more employees to apply to participate in E-verify by January 1, 2015, and all employers to apply to participate in E-verify by January 1, 2016. Employers are required to keep applying every 60 days, until they are accepted. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 6)

3. Gary Sasse and John Simmons will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, May 8, to give testimony under the heading of “Analysis and discussion of determining the payment or non-repayment of moral obligation bonds relating to 38 Studios and the consequences of such choices”.

4. H7437: Writes into law in-state tuition at RI public colleges and universities for students, including illegal aliens (but not non-immigrant aliens) who graduated from a Rhode Island high school that they spent three years at, including illegal aliens who have applied for citizenship, provided that the Federal government has provides a pathway to citizenship as part of an amnesty law. (H Judiciary; Tue, May 6)

5. S2335: Eliminates tolls on the Sakonnet River Bridge, replacing the anticipated revenue with a multi-part formula requiring that fixed percentages of the total state budget be annually appropriated to a “transportation infrastructure fund” and adding a temporary 5% surcharge to motor vehicle fees to help initially seed the infrastructure fund. Also, if a Federal internet sales tax is adopted, instead of the RI sales tax dropping from 7% to 6.5%, as is specified in current law, the sales tax would only drop to 6.625%, with the 0.125% difference going to the infrastructure fund. Also, creates a study commission to look at eliminating the gas tax. (S Finance; Tue, May 6)

6. H7776: State bailout of the Central Falls pension system. According to this bill…

The state is liable to the retirement system for the cost of funding a retirement system for the existing retirees of the city of Central Falls who are members of the system under this section and chapter. (H Finance; Wed, May 7)

74

Coming up in Committee: Thirteen Sets of Bills Being Heard by the Rhode Island General Assembly, March 18 – March 20

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1A. H7444: Requires that the town/city council and school committee of every municipality to be served by a propsed mayoral academy charter school give explicit approval, before the mayoral academy can open. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Tue, Mar 18)

1B. H7495: Requires that students be randomly assigned to mayoral academies, i.e. instead of a lottery being held to award slots to students who have first applied for mayoral academy admission, admissions lotteries will include all students who are geographically eligible to attend a mayoral academy. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Tue, Mar 18) The sponsors of this bill are unintentionally providing some keen insight into progressive education ideology — once something like a system of Mayoral academies calls into question progressive notions of education-focused structural education reform being impossible, people must be prevented from being allowed to actively choose to participate in successful reforms, or else they will start to entertain silly ideas that they can help themselves in ways other than supporting ever-increasing funding for traditional government bureaucracies.

2. On Tuesday, March 18 the House Judiciary Committee will hear this year’s raft of firearms related bills. They are all listed in the separate post below.

3. On Wednesday, March 19, the House Finance Committee will hold its hearing on the “Health Benefits Exchange” (see p. 65 here).

4A. H7569: Extends the ten-cent cap on the Sakonnet River Bridge toll for a whopping three months, from April 1, 2014 to July 1, 2014. (H Finance; Tue, Mar 18 & S Finance; Tue, Mar 18) Simultaneous hearings suggest that the GA is in a hurry to get this one through.

4B. H7432: Eliminates tolls on the Sakonnet River Bridge, replacing the anticipated revenue with a multi-part formula requiring that fixed percentages of the total state budget be annually appropriated to a “transportation infrastructure fund”. Also, adds a temporary (still HAHAHAHAHAHAHAing over this) 5% surcharge to motor vehicle fees to help initially seed the infrastructure fund. Also, if a Federal internet sales tax is adopted, instead of the RI sales tax dropping from 7% to 6.5%, as is specified in current law, the sales tax would only drop to 6.625%, with the 0.125% difference going to the infrastructure fund. Also, creates a study commission to look at eliminating the gas tax. (H Finance; Tue, Mar 18) Gary Sasse of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership has tweeted positively about at least the concept of this bill, which is a point in its favor. However, I’m still skeptical of a bill that calls for new borrowing right away, promising to pay it back with a new multi-part process in future years.

77

Rhode Island Is Losing for Lack of Stories

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Both Rhode Island’s languishing economy and the fading strength of its paper of record may result from a lack of hope and interest, which result from a lack of any real competitive battle for the direction of the state.

81

Things We Read Today (12), Monday

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Chafee shows his bond cards, Chicago exposes a metric discord, Rhode Island misses the skills-gap/business-cost lesson, QE3 misses the inflation nebula, and college majors miss the mark.

84

Using Providence for Pension “Liability” Perspective

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Pension actuaries use the word “liability” differently than the layman would. The total actuarial accrued liability of Providence’s pension system has been given as $1.3 billion, with about $0.4 billion in assets, but the liability as most people would probably conceive of it is more likely $5.7 billion, with the same $0.4 billion saved up to date.

86

Providence Budget Illustrates Pension Charade

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Inflated assumptions for pension system rates of return mean that the budget that Providence Mayor Angel Taveras unveiled this evening (and all current RI budgets) amounts to an accounting trick to disguise future tax increases and pension cuts.

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