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Providence school fight posted online
Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — An afterschool fight that drew 50 to 60 student onlookers in front of Roger Williams Middle School was posted on the Web site YouTube, making Providence part of a growing phenomenon in which teenagers use technology to publicize acts of violence.
When the police arrived Wednesday around 3 p.m., they saw three to five girls punching and kicking someone in front of a large crowd of students from Roger Williams as well as a nearby high school, Cooley Health & Science Technology Academy on Thurbers Avenue.
Rhakiyyah Lovett, 28, of Providence, was also involved in the brawl. According to the police, Lovett initially denied involvement in the fight but was seen punching the victim on the video, which has since been taken down from YouTube.
The victim suffered a bloody lip, bloodshot eye and bruises to her upper arms. The police would not release the names of the suspects or the victim because they are minors.
The four teenage suspects turned themselves in after the police, who watched the video online, announced that they were about to be arrested. The students have been charged with disorderly conduct and referred to Family Court. Lovett, who turned herself in, was charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct and referred to District Court.
The police said that the girls were fighting because a couple of them had a beef with one another. And several middle schools students said that two of the girls had insulted each other online.
This isn’t the first time that a Providence school fight has been captured on a cell phone camera and transmitted to the Web. This winter, an afterschool brawl involving students who were leaving Bridgham Middle School wound up on YouTube.
Providence is hardly alone. In Florida, a video showing teenage girls beating another girl unconscious made national headlines. As teens beat the girl, they talked about making the video “good.”
And in Baltimore, a student assaulted an art teacher while another teenager taped the beating with a cell phone and posted in online.
In fact, scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have actually begun to study the phenomena of students using technology to harass and bully other teenagers. From 2000 to 2005, the CDC says there has been a 50-percent increase in teens claiming to be victims of some type of Internet aggression.
One expert says that teenagers view the Web as a way of becoming famous. The more hits on YouTube or MySpace, the more popular you are, according to Parry Aftab, executive director of Wired Safety, an online group that fights cyber-bullying.
“Kids live in cyberspace where popularity is based on page views,” she said yesterday. “We’re creating a generation of kids who live in virtuality, not reality. They see themselves as the producers of their own hit shows.”
The act of videotaping allows teenagers to distance themselves from violence, turning them into passive observers rather than participants who feel the victim’s pain, she said.
Aftab says schools and police departments must take a hard line against bullies and she wants additional penalties imposed on teens who post the fighting online for posterity. Her organization is also hoping to create a “cyber army” of volunteers who will help Web sites track down violent videos and get them off the Internet. File-sharing sites, she said, don’t have the capacity to police themselves because of the volume of material uploaded every day.
Pamela Riley, executive director of Students Against Violence Everywhere, says that she is particularly disturbed by the lack of remorse exhibited by the perpetrators as well as the chroniclers of student brawls. One of the suspects in the Florida fight asked if she would still make cheerleading practice.
“We’re seeing a loss of civility in our society,” she said. “Teenagers are reflecting what they see among adults. Kids need to know that there are consequences for their actions and those consequences have to be swift and fair.”
It isn’t clear what actions, if any, the School Department will take against the Providence suspects.
R.I. education commissioner leaving in 2009
Posted Friday, April 11, 2008
By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Peter McWalters, one of the nation’s longest-serving state education commissioners, will step down next year — a decision that follows a month of closed-door discussions among Governor Carcieri, McWalters and the state board that oversees public education about whether to extend his contract.
Yesterday, Robert G. Flanders Jr., chairman of the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, announced the Regents had agreed to extend McWalters’ contract by six months, expiring June 30, 2009. Last month, McWalters had informed the board that he would not seek a two-year extension of his contract, which would have expired this Dec. 31, according to a news release from the state Department of Education.
By the time he leaves next year, McWalters will have been the state education commissioner for 17½ years, overseeing numerous changes, including a new high school diploma system, the implementation of statewide testing under the federal education law No Child Left Behind, and initiatives to boost middle school performance.
Flanders thanked McWalters, 61, for his service and his leadership, but Flanders also acknowledged a growing frustration that Rhode Island’s education system continues to trail national averages on standardized tests.
Flanders said he plans to assemble a search committee “immediately” to find a new commissioner “who is prepared to take the state to the next level of reform and change and get us to where we need to be.”
“We are far from getting into the Promised Land in terms of where K-12 education is concerned and we need a new leader who will get us there,” Flanders said in a phone interview. “None of us are satisfied with where we are now. So all the good things we are doing are fine, but it’s not enough. We need to get to an even better place, and our new commissioner will be the person to lead the way.”
Discussions about McWalters’ contract began when the Regents met in executive session after their regularly scheduled March 13 meeting, which Flanders missed due to illness. Since then, Flanders, McWalters and Carcieri have met, and the Regents have privately discussed how much longer McWalters should stay on, all agreeing to the six-month extension, Flanders said.
Supporters call McWalters a nationally recognized visionary who has called for greater accountability from schools and teachers and has led the state through a series of major education reforms, despite limitations on his powers and diminishing state resources. Critics say that despite some gains, he has not done enough to raise the test scores of Rhode Island students and the time is ripe for change.
McWalters assumed the state’s top education job in January 1992, and ranks among the top five longest-serving commissioners currently serving around the country. He earns about $149,000 a year, and the state pays another $22,500 a year into his retirement account, as he is not part of the state pension system.
McWalters’ fifth three-year contract, which was set to expire Dec. 31, 2007, came up for review last spring by the Regents. But when former Chairman James A. DiPrete was replaced by Flanders, McWalters’ contract renewal was put on hold until this year, McWalters said. His old contract rolled over another year and would have run out Dec. 31, 2008.
The Regents will vote on the matter at an April 23 meeting held at 4 p.m. at the state Department of Education, 255 Westminster St.
McWalters said that he is satisfied he will have another 14 months to further several initiatives. He said he was not being forced out of his job earlier than he wanted to leave.
“The system has cycles, and this keeps me here through the next school year and the next legislative session,” McWalters said in an interview in his office. Discussions about his contract “really were about how much longer do I want to stay and what do I want to get done,” he said.
McWalters said his priorities include: revising middle and high school regulations to further the state’s new diploma system; updating the state’s basic education plan; dealing with teaching issues such as implementing a more rigorous evaluation process; and more intensely intervening in struggling school districts — Providence and Central Falls.
Standardized test scores for elementary and middle school students — particularly low-income students in urban districts — have steadily risen over the past three years, after the state, along with Vermont and New Hampshire, developed grade-level expectations and tests aligned with the new expectations. The results of new high school tests, which rolled out last October, were sobering, with just 22 percent of 11th graders proficient in math and 61 percent proficient in reading, although education officials say they expect to see those scores rise in the coming years.
Supporters of McWalters, including several regents, charter school leaders, union officials and an organization representing principals, said the state is losing a tested leader at a time of enormous change and strain.
“We are making progress in a number of areas, and I’m concerned about a change with so many irons in the fire,” said Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Education Association. “He’s been leading reforms and fighting larger battles with fewer resources, and when you weigh that all together, he’s done a remarkable job.”
Valerie Forti, president of the Education Partnership, a business-backed nonprofit advocacy organization, says McWalters should not be “the fall guy” for failures in education, “because the problem is much bigger than one person.” Forti said the Regents and lawmakers need to do more to push key education reforms, including redesigning teacher contracts. Forti also warned that McWalters’ replacement will face the same obstacles and finance battles.
At the same time, Forti said, a new person will bring new energy and vision.
“We’re not going to have one person come in and be a white knight and have the perfect thing happen,” Forti said. “On the other hand, could Peter have moved more forcefully on some things? Perhaps. He was able to get some things accomplished. But he was not moving as fast as the governor and now this Board of Regents wanted him to.”
Small donations making a big difference in schools
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A middle school teacher bought eight Scrabble Junior games for her classroom. A librarian purchased $400 worth of Japanese graphic novels. And an elementary school teacher has used her grant to launch a family reading program.
None of these projects would have been possible without DonorsChoose.org, a national Web-based giving program that matches individual donors, called citizen philanthropists, with teachers. Charles Best, the organization’s founder, launched the program in Rhode Island at October at Fortes Elementary School.
The mission of DonorsChoose is to connect small donors to worthy public school projects.
By early this month, Providence teachers had received almost $30,000 for school projects and Rhode Island had received almost $50,000. The schools don’t actually get the money. Donors-Choose buys the material and ships it to the teachers. In return, students write a thank-you note, take a snapshot of their project and mail the letter to Donors-Choose, which sends it to the donors.
Donors don’t have to be a big spender to make a difference. Donors can fill the entire request, which is posted online, or a small portion. No gift is too small and teachers can apply for as many grants as they wish.
For cash-strapped school districts like Providence, these grants pay for some of the little extras that might otherwise come out of teachers’ own pockets.
At Carnevale Elementary School, Ann DePedro spent $500 buying costumes so her third graders could perform small plays based on the books they are reading in class. The costumes ran the gamut from kings and wizards to dragons and angel wings.
“I used to make things out of paper plates,” DePedro said. “It took a lot of time and it wasn’t nearly as fun. I had five students who weren’t making it before. Now they are.”
At Charles Fortes Elementary School, Allyssa Taylor applied for $700 to launch a backpack program in which students bring home books they can read with their parents. Students will be given journals and materials with which to illustrate characters or scenes from the narratives.
“I’m really trying to make a connection with home,” Taylor said. “I want my children sharing literature and talking about it. Without DonorsChoose, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.”
Teachers at Fortes have successfully applied for a total of $4,072 for a number of projects, from printer ink to a special reading table. Taylor said that her colleagues are “on fire,” adding that this program is making a “huge difference.”
Joy Cervoni bought Scrabble Junior games for her eighth graders, most of whom are struggling readers. In just a few weeks, her students’ vocabulary has noticeably increased, she said.
“These kids are beaten down,” she said. “Now it’s amazing. They are seeing things on the Scrabble board that I don’t see.”
Like Cervoni, who spent $750 of her money on education materials this year, many teachers dig into their own wallets to pay for supplies.
Last month, DonorsChoose, taking advantage of a Rhode Island Foundation grant, offered an incentive to encourage more grant applications: the first 50 Providence teachers who submitted a proposal between March 12 and March 19 automatically received $100 toward their project.
Parents float plan to renovate West Broadway school
Posted Friday, April 4, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — When West Broadway Elementary School closed last summer, it felt like a death in the family to many neighbors, parents and students who attended or lived near the turn-of-the-century building in Federal Hill.
After evaluating several design proposals and taking into account the value of preservation, community schools and cost-effectiveness, a committee of parents and neighborhood activists is recommending an $18.1-million renovation.
The moderate-scale renovation, developed by David R. Finney, president of Design Partnership of Cambridge, Mass., would include a separate exit for younger children, which addresses the fire code violation that forced Supt. Donnie Evans to close the school. That renovation alone would cost about $90,000.
“A huge part is that we think this is the most affordable option,” said Kari Lang, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association and a member of the school task force. “We saw the value of having a neighborhood school and saw how much parents and teachers did, as well. If we can renovate the school so it’s a 21st-century learning environment, that’s a plus.”
The saga of the West Broadway School began in February 2007, when Evans announced that the school building had to be closed because it violated the state fire code, adding that the fire marshal had refused to grant any more variances. Outraged parents and neighbors packed School Board meetings in protest, claiming the neighborhood school was a treasured landmark, an island of stability in a rapidly changing neighborhood. Families described the school as a warm and welcoming place that made their children feel special.
A handful of parents took the district to court, filing an appeal with Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education. Although their efforts to keep West Broadway open failed, the community did persuade Evans to move the entire staff to the school’s new location in the Del Sesto Middle School building on Springfield Street. The elementary school now shares space with students from Springfield Middle School.
In response to criticism that he kept parents in the dark, Evans formed a task force composed of parents, teachers and neighbors, who have spent the past four months studying whether to reopen the West Broadway building and, if so, what kind of school it should be.
Last winter, Finney was hired by the Providence Preservation Society, which concluded that renovation would cost less than new construction, estimated at $196 million. According to Finney, there is inherent value in the preservation of sound and architecturally significant buildings. The question, he said, is whether a historic building can be renovated in such a way that it offers the same education value as a new building.
The Finney design would keep the school’s original footprint and its original mission as a K-5 building with room for 450 children. Lang said that the beauty of this plan is that it can be expanded to include an addition with room for three pre-kindergarten classrooms. It is also flexible, with the possibility of expanding to a K-8 school.
“Overwhelmingly, in meeting after meeting, the community has said it wants its children returned to its neighborhood school,” the task force said. “Parents, teachers and neighbors value a school with a past, with historic detail that comforts, as well as a community school that is within walking distance from all parts of the neighborhood.”
Dual-language program pays big dividends at Lima Elementary
Posted Friday, April 4, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — More than two thirds of the third graders at Alfred Lima Elementary School passed the statewide reading test, one of the strongest scores for that grade in the district.
What makes this score particularly significant is that out of the 34 third graders who took the New England Common Assessment, 13 are primarily Spanish-language speakers, and 8 of those students tested at or above proficiency in reading. Across the district, only 21 percent of English-language learners scored proficient on the third-grade reading test and 41 percent of all third-graders did so.
The school’s principal and staff say that the scores confirm that the dual-language program at Lima is working. According to Principal Jose Valerio, research has shown that a child who is literate in one language is more capable of mastering a second language.
The dual-language model works like this: all students in kindergarten through third grade spend half of the year learning in Spanish, which, for many students, is their native language, and the other half learning in English. Students switch from one language to another on a weekly basis. Next year, Lima will expand the program to include grade 4 and will continue to add a grade until the program is offered school-wide, kindergarten through grade 6.
“One language supports the other,” said Rebecca Box, of Dorcas Place, which runs after-school programs at Lima. “As children get stronger in Spanish, they begin to transfer that learning to the other language.”
Although Lima introduced a dual-language program 10 years ago, it existed in name only. In 2004, the school invited experts from Johns Hopkins University to help staff rethink the program, and the researchers suggested that the school adopt the so-called “50-50” model that Lima uses today.
The beauty of this approach is that it allows students to retain fluency in their native language while mastering English. It also honors the child’s native language and culture at a time when the United States faces a shortage of adults with proficiency in languages other than English. Box said that immigrant parents are delighted that their children will remain conversant in their native tongue.
Language preservation is important to a family’s identity, especially as immigrant families struggle to adapt to an unfamiliar culture. And because the family’s native language is valued, parents are more comfortable coming to school and asking about their child’s education.
Children in a dual-immersion program also pick up a second language much faster than those in a traditional bilingual education classroom.
“The kids are using language to learn language,” teacher Robert Prignano said. “In a typical bilingual classroom, it takes five years to exit to an all-English classroom. Here, by the end of kindergarten, students have had more than twice as much instruction in English.”
As Valerio put it, “We like to think that our kids are ahead of the game.”
Prignano said that students who enter the program after first grade have to pass a test to show that they are capable of working in both languages: “We don’t want children to come into classes where other children are more advanced than they are.”
Because students aren’t learning English from the radio or television, they are learning academic or grammatically correct English, according to first-grade teacher Laurie McKenna-Therrien.
For dual-language teachers, the program presents a unique opportunity to collaborate with colleagues on classroom instruction. At Lima, teachers not only meet across the language divide, they meet across grade levels. The goal is to create a seamless flow between English and Spanish classrooms so students don’t repeat material as they move from English to Spanish instruction.
Teachers say that the dual-immersion experience is deeply satisfying, according to Tracy Carcamo, who teaches kindergarten at Lima Annex, which is part of the Lima complex.
“One day, the light goes on and the child says, ‘Wow. I can do this,’ ” Carcamo said. “The NECAP scores show that a child who is learning two languages can outperform the child who is learning one language.”
“This gives children a feeling of confidence,” said McKenna-Therrien. “It really makes them feel more successful at school.”
Even the assistant principal of Lima Annex, Roseclaire Bulgin, is learning Spanish as part of her ongoing professional development.
“It gives children such a great foundation in both languages,” she said. “I wish my son could have had dual language.”
Because the program requires much more one-on-one instruction than the average classroom, teachers have asked the school administration to reduce class size in earlier grades from 26 to 20 students — a request that will be hard to satisfy during these fiscally troubled times.
Although dual-language instructors are able to meet during weekly common planning periods, they also would like additional time set aside to coordinate instruction across languages and subject areas.
Parents’ group takes teacher bumping issue to the Statehouse
Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Legislation that would make it impossible for school districts to lay off teachers purely on the basis of seniority was expected to be heard before the Senate Committee on Education this afternoon.
The proposal was written by members of the East Side Public Education Coalition, a parents’ group, and is being sponsored by Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence. Sam Zurier, a lawyer and member of the East Side coalition, said his group decided to take on the issue of bumping after it became a topic of concern at a summer education forum at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School.
At a meeting with Supt. Donnie Evans in early February, teachers sounded off about bumping, the process by which teachers with more seniority displace those with less. In one case, three teachers were hired on the same date. In a process called a tie-breaker, each teacher was assigned a number and the number that was plucked from the mix won the job.
Other teachers described their frustration at not knowing whether they will return to the same school or the same classroom from one year to the next. Because of the budget crisis this year, even senior teachers are losing their classrooms. In some smaller schools, it isn’t unusual for the principal to lose a third of the staff, which makes it difficult to build a shared culture.
In February, more than 600 teachers received pink slips, although only 66 will actually be laid off. Critics of the process say that it not only demoralizes teachers, but also disrupts the learning that takes place in the classroom, with students as the ultimate victim.
The legislation would repeal a 1946 state law that establishes seniority as the primary criteria for teacher re-assignment. (School districts also have to take into account a teacher’s certification.) Seniority would be replaced by a teacher evaluation process in which the state Department of Education would be asked to develop statewide teacher standards.
According to Zurier, the principal would be responsible for evaluating a teacher’s performance, although the bill’s proponents are also open to a peer evaluation conducted by teachers.
The legislation, which is modeled after Massachusetts law, would permit teachers to be dismissed if they fail to satisfy the state performance standards. The Providence School Board, acting on the recommendation of the superintendent, currently has the power to fire a teacher.
“Principals should be able to make that decision,” Zurier said yesterday. “They are the ones responsible for managing the staff in their buildings. They have to be able to develop a faculty [that] believes in their mission.”
Under current law, a teacher can’t be dismissed for any reason other than incompetency, incapacity, conduct unbecoming a teacher or insubordination. The Zurier bill would add another reason: failure to satisfy teacher performance standards.
Under the proposed legislation, a teacher could appeal his or her termination to an arbitrator, which is modeled after the appeals process in Massachusetts. But Zurier said his group would be willing to delegate that responsibility to the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education or its appointee. Currently, appeals go before a hearing officer with the state Department of Education.
Earlier this year, state education Commissioner Peter McWalters agreed that there is an urgent need to provide more stability in teaching staff, especially in large school districts, where bumping can affect dozens of teachers. He also said that a regents’ task force is looking at examples of effective teacher evaluations, including those currently used by local school districts. But McWalters said he would not impose a one-size-fits-all criteria on school districts, adding that the regents will establish a set of standards that districts can use as a guideline.
According to Zurier, the East Side Public Education Coalition is willing to tweak the bill’s language to make it more acceptable to educators and legislators. The main thrust of the bill is to start a conversation that addresses the problem of bumping and its impact on school stability and effective instruction.
Mr. Collins is Cool
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — When Adelaide High School opened last fall, the music program consisted of a battered drum set and $500.
But Adelaide has what many other high schools don’t: Ted Collins, a teacher who calls music his calling, his reason to live. When Collins was a child, he wanted to be one of two things, a musician or a priest. He chose music and there are plenty of students, from Westerly to Providence, who are glad he did.
“I love my job,” he said. “It’s my life.”
When the drums, dusty from years of disuse, arrived at Adelaide in the fall, some 50 students appeared from out of nowhere and clustered around the set, eager to play. Before long, several teachers had donated keyboards, someone else donated an acoustic guitar and a bass guitar, and then last month, a woman from Cranston gave her baby grand piano.
Slowly, piece by piece, Collins has put together the makings of a high school band — allowing 10 students to jam together for the first time. Some students hadn’t played an instrument since fourth grade, when the district, strapped for cash, dropped art and music programs in middle school. Another young man, however, has been playing the drums for 13 years; in fact, he plays keyboard and drums every Sunday at his father’s church.
“If they had an all-music school,” said the drummer, 16-year-old Derrick Jones, “I’d be in it.”
Collins led the group through a short blues riff in the G chord.
“Hold on a minute,” said Collins, wearing his trademark sweater printed with a musical score. “Let the piano players have a solo on the D chord.”
Collins reminds visitors that this is the first time these teenagers have played together as a group.
“I have to keep reminding myself to keep things in perspective,” he said. “If this is what they sound like after only five months, imagine what they’ll sound like in four [more].”
Collins stops them in mid-beat.
“Good,” he said. “What’s another way we can vary the beat?”
“Quarter notes?” one of the guitar players said.
“Right.”
The band runs through the riff again and again. By the end of class, Jones is doing a drum solo and the guitars have learned to mix up the beat. The band sounds tight, like they’ve been jamming together for a while.
COLLINS IS A NATURAL LEADER. He knows when to let the students loose and when to rein them in. His own enthusiasm for the blues is contagious. And he knows that he is starting from scratch.
“My job is to get them up to speed,” he said during an earlier interview. “I’m teaching them junior high school level music right now. These kids haven’t had music since fourth or fifth grade.”
When school began, Collins asked each student to create his own CD, something that would reflect their favorite artists. Their selections — rap and hip-hop — came as no surprise to Collins, who knew he had his work cut out for him.
His students didn’t recognize the rock ’n’ roll giants, like Elvis and Chubby Checker, not to mention jazz legends such as Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis.
And so he began at the beginning, bringing in CDs of Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He put up posters of them and photographs of himself playing with a couple of big-name bands. Before long, everyone was working on an instrument, using lesson plans written by Collins during his many years of teaching.
Word got out fast. Mister Collins was cool. This class was fun. Teenagers started dropping into Collins’ class who didn’t belong there. One student, who lives in a group home and had known nothing but failure in school, began showing up early to play the drums.
COLLINS’ GOAL is to have his students playing the blues by the end of the year. Ultimately, he wants to form an all-state blues band that can play at games and student assemblies and eventually perform in public.
Collins has his own 10-piece band, the Ted Collins Band, which plays a little bit of everything and includes graduates of the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston. When he taught in Westerly, his band was one of the best high school bands in New England, opening for the Count Basie Band.
Collins describes turning teenagers on to music like watching children opening their Christmas presents. Even the most street-wise teenager softens when he plays his first bass note.
John Craig, one of two assistant principals, said Collins is giving these students a chance to be successful at something, in some cases, for the first time in their lives. It is the carrot that draws some teenagers to school in the first place.
“It’s given them hope, another outlet beyond the streets,” Craig said. “Mr. Collins has opened the door and said, ‘Let’s jam.’ ”
“The enthusiasm that Mister Collins brings to this class has had a tremendous impact on attendance,” said Principal Robbie Torchon. “The turnaround in attitude will translate into academic improvement. These students want to rap, to read, to explore the biography of artists.”
COLLINS HAS ALSO BROUGHT the real world of music inside the classroom, inviting friends like Rick Andrade and Chops Turner to speak to his students about the hard road they traveled to get to where they are now. One of the bands hailed from Cuba and their language and rhythms spoke to the largely Spanish-speaking audience of students, many of whose families come from the Dominican Republic.
At the beginning of class, students move to their various instruments with little prompting. Two girls sit behind the drums as Collins shows them the basics. Four young men begin tuning their guitars. The more experienced players help the newcomers. Every quarter, they rotate instruments.
Asked why they like music class, 14-year-old Jezebel Baez said, “We get to play music and be loud.”
“You can be creative.”
“The stress goes away,” a young man said.
At the end of class, Collins thanks his students for coming.
BUT ADELAIDE HIGH SCHOOL NEEDS HELP.
Many of the school’s instruments are in need of repair. The yellowed keys on the baby grand are uneven, like rippled carpet. Still, the students gather round and can’t resist plucking a few notes.
“We need trumpets, horns, clarinets,” Collins said. “We need guitars.”
Meanwhile, his students are already making music, and, while it may not sound celestial yet, it sounds like the real thing.
As Torchon put it, “Now, we sound like a high school.”
School districts don’t always hire educators as superintendents
Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — It’s no surprise that a former military leader with proven managerial skills was chosen as the district’s next superintendent of schools.
During the past 10 years, between 15 percent and 20 percent of the nation’s big-city superintendents have come from non-traditional backgrounds, according to Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools. No longer are school leaders expected to rise through the ranks, a trajectory followed by Supt. Donnie Evans, who began his career as a math teacher and punched every ticket before becoming Providence’s superintendent 2½ years ago.
Now, school leaders come from the law, from community colleges and universities, from nonprofit organizations and from nearly every branch of the military.
In New York City, Supt. Joe Klein was a federal prosecutor and the leaders of school districts in Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and Philadelphia have, at one time or another, hailed from the military or the legal profession.
“First of all, pedagogy is not rocket science,” said Timothy G. Quinn, managing director of the Broad Superintendent Academy. “You don’t need to grow up in an educational institution to understand teaching and learning. A superintendent has to be a CEO. It really takes someone who is politically savvy, thick-skinned, passionate about doing what’s right for kids and has the know-how to manage complex systems.”
Thomas M. Brady, who was named the district’s new superintendent on Tuesday, has those kinds of skills, according to Quinn and Casserly. Brady spent a year at the Broad Superintendent Academy in 2004 and Casserly worked with Brady while he was chief operating officer in Washington, D.C., and Fairfax County, Va.
No organization does a better job of teaching and learning than the military, Quinn said. One of the key books used by the Broad academy is Victory in our Schools, which was written by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Stanford, who shook up the Seattle schools during the 1990s.
Providence, Quinn said, needs someone who can get it done. All too often, non-academic issues such as transportation and personnel management sidetrack what’s happening in the classroom.
Just last week, the Council for Great City Schools reported that the Providence school district’s human resources department is so woefully inadequate that it is barely able to perform the most basic functions.
In January, more than 2,200 teachers and administrators were notified that the School Department had failed to deduct the full FICA payments for the previous year. (FICA, the Federal Insurance Contribution Act, finances Social Security and Medicare). The miscalculation was caused by a computer programming glitch in the human resources department.
Brady addressed his apparent lack of academic experience in an interview with The Journal. A large urban school district needs someone who can manage complex systems, he said. It needs someone who can define the district’s mission, then tap the right people to see that those goals are achieved.
Brady has certainly had experience running big systems. As the commander of Fort Belvoir, Va., he oversaw a $770-million budget, $94 million in contracts and more than 20,000 residents. In his current position as interim superintendent in Philadelphia, Brady is responsible for running the eighth-largest school district in the country. And as the chief operating officer of the District of Columbia public schools, he managed a $1 billion budget.
“His interpersonal and political skills are truly outstanding,” Casserly said. “He’s a guy who people like, who’s very accessible. He’s got solid political instincts, all of which he’ll need in Providence.”
From Diana Lam to Donnie Evans, Providence has had a history of strong instructional leaders, according to state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, who attributes the latest gains in elementary and middle school scores to that leadership.
The district, he said, doesn’t need another education wizard. It needs a superintendent who can deliver the textbooks on time, someone who can sign a contract with teachers and find savings in the midst of a budget crisis.
“Tom Brady is not coming here with all of the answers,” McWalters said. “He’s coming here to build relationships. He’s said, ‘I’m going to listen.’ ”
Shoe-string budget leaves schools in dire straits
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The proposed 2008-2009 school budget is so bare-bones that the district’s chief financial officer, Mark Dunham, said the School Department will barely be able to keep the buildings clean and the lights on.
At $322.9 million, the proposed budget includes a shortfall of $9.7 million, and Dunham said he had no answers as to how that deficit will be made up. The budget does not set aside any money for salary increases during a year in which teachers are negotiating a new contract, which is in its second year of discussion. A 1-percent salary hike, for example, would cost an additional $1.9 million.
The budget presumes that there will be no additional aid from either the state or the city.
“It feels like we are bankrupt,” said School Board President Mary McClure at last night’s board meeting. “What can we do if we don’t meet our legal obligation [to balance the budget]? We’re very close to not meeting our legal obligation.”
Dunham responded that the district was “close to not being able to run the schools. We’re close to being in peril.”
Last year, the district took extraordinary measures to balance the budget, increasing class sizes for special education students, a move that infuriated teachers and parents and caused the union to appeal the change to the state commissioner of education. Commissioner Peter McWalters, however, upheld the district’s request. And in 2006, the school district helped close its budget shortfall by temporarily closing Nathan Bishop Middle School on the East Side, another unpopular decision.
The proposed budget represents an increase of $8.6 million or 2.7 percent over last year’s $314.3 million budget. Of that increase, pension fund contributions and medical insurance absorb the largest piece of the pie, $4.4 million; out-of-district placements for special education are expected to cost $400,000 and contracted salary increases add up to $600,000.
There is hardly any money in the budget, Dunham said, to pay for programs that would contribute directly toward improving student achievement, measures like reducing class size, offering common planning time for teachers and providing more professional training.
“We’ve been living modestly,” he told the board. “But we’ve been regressing as far as resources go.”
According to Dunham, 350 employees have been shed over the past 10 years and 42 teachers are expected to receive the ax this year. Meanwhile, both state and local aid have been declining for the past two years. Last year, Providence received no increase in school aid from the General Assembly and Mayor David N. Cicilline and the City Council cut a total of $8 million from the School Department’s original budget proposal.
Complicating matters, a new state law further limits how much cities and towns can raise taxes. This year, Providence can raise a maximum of $12 million in new tax revenues, Dunham said.
The school district, however, is required by state law to provide a number of services, from textbooks to school nurses for private and parochial schools, which cost approximately $3 million. The City Council recently hired a lawyer to investigate how the public schools are funded, including the private school issue, Dunham said.
The district is facing several big unknowns, including the amount of school aid allocated by both state and local government and any salary increases in the new teachers’ contract.
The budget must be sent to Cicilline by April 28, well before the state aid figures are finalized. The school budget is submitted to the council in May and should be back before the School Board in July or August.
State wants role in selection of new Providence superintendent.
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The state commissioner of education met with Mayor David N. Cicilline yesterday and told him that he wants to play a role in the selection of a new superintendent.
Cicilline contacted Commissioner Peter McWalters after Supt. Donnie Evans announced his resignation on Monday, shortly before the School Board was prepared to vote on whether to renew his contract. Evans promised to remain in Providence until his contract expires on Sept. 19, which should give the city time to hire a new school leader.
“They talked in general terms about the process of recruiting a new superintendent and Peter made it clear that he wants to play a role in the recruiting and hiring process,” said Elliot Krieger, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. “The state has a huge investment in Providence. The selection of a leader is part of RIDE’s engagement.”
Exactly what role McWalters will play in the selection of a new superintendent remains to be seen, Krieger said. The theme of yesterday’s meeting was that the state Department of Education remains committed to working closely with Providence to make sure there is a smooth transition from one superintendent to another.
“Providence is in its sixth year of intervention and this is the fourth superintendent in a short period of time,” Krieger said. “Both Peter and the mayor are concerned about stability and transition issues. There are many good people in the central office. Peter wants to make sure that they are encouraged to stay.”
McWalters reassured the mayor that the Providence schools are on the right track, pointing to the recent improvement in test scores in elementary and middle schools. According to Krieger, the commissioner pledged to work with Providence to help remove some of the barriers that get in the way of student performance.
“There are contract issues that need to be resolved, finance issues, data issues,” Krieger said, adding that McWalters wants to review the results of several studies of the district’s curriculum and the central office.
The state Department of Education has a history of involvement with the city’s schools. Three years ago, McWalters intervened in an effort to turn around Hope High School, breaking the school into three smaller schools. Under his guidance, the school brought in a new leadership team, hired new staff and restored order.
Last January, the state placed the entire district under corrective action and ordered Evans to develop a plan to improve the city’s lowest-performing schools or face possible state intervention. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, a school district is classified as one in need of corrective action when two of the three grade levels (for example, elementary and middle school) have large numbers of under-performing schools.
In response, Evans introduced a new math curriculum for struggling elementary and middle school students, offered additional reading programs, hired 20 reading teachers and conducted a review of the central office, led by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. At the middle schools, Evans also promised to create student advisories and offer teachers common planning time.
Embattled school chief Evans to leave
Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008
By Daniel Barbarisi and Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writers
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Donnie W. Evans unexpectedly announced last night that he will not try for another term as the city’s schools chief and will leave when his contract expires in September. Evans withdrew his candidacy hours before the School Board was to decide whether to renew the embattled superintendent’s contract for another three years.
Evans’ decision to step down comes amid a chorus of criticism from the City Council and the teachers union, much of it regarding his actions during the Dec. 13 snowstorm, when more than 100 schoolchildren were stuck on city school buses late into the night.
Mayor David N. Cicilline had also chastised his superintendent after the storm, but he insisted last night that Evans left of his own volition.
Related links
Providence Supt. Donnie Evans' letter of resignation
Survey: Grade Donnie Evans' performance as school chief
“The decision that Dr. Evans made not to seek renewal of his contract was his decision. I am certainly grateful for the work that he’s done. I am grateful for his dedication and his integrity and hard work. The responsibility now is to ensure we have the leadership that can move the district forward,” Cicilline said.
“Obviously, I don’t think it’s any secret that no one was satisfied with the pace of improvement,” Cicilline allowed.
Evans offered little insight into the reasons for his departure, saying in his resignation letter that he was leaving for “personal and professional reasons to pursue other opportunities.”
“My decision to leave was not made lightly. I want you, as well as every employee, student, and family in this district to know that my experience in Providence has been both rewarding and challenging,” Evans wrote to the School Board. He did not return calls seeking comment last night.
Evans’ contract runs through Sept. 19. Cicilline and School Board Chairwoman Mary McClure said that a nationwide search for Evans’ successor is already under way, but would answer no questions about specific candidates or whether interviews had taken place.
City Council Majority Leader Terrence M. Hassett said that he knew of talks between Providence officials and a high-ranking school official in Philadelphia about the Providence job. Last night, the Philadelphia Inquirer posted a story on its Web site stating that outgoing Philadelphia schools chief Tom Brady has emerged as a leading candidate for the Providence superintendent position. Brady, a retired Army colonel, has been Philadelphia’s interim chief executive officer for the past year.
Hassett and fellow council members Nicholas J. Narducci and Kevin Jackson are among a large group of anti-Evans councilors who have faulted the superintendent for what they said was poor communication during the storm. In advance of the decision on Evans this week, Hassett and Narducci issued statements calling for the board not to renew Evans. The City Council also went to the brink of voting no-confidence in the schools chief in January, before pulling back at the last minute under heavy pressure from the mayor. Hassett said that Evans’ departure is a good thing for the School Department, and that the council’s agitation helped push Evans out.
“I think the council’s resolve was very strong. The internal pressure, I think, combined with the public pronouncements about the lack of support, was a big factor in making this happen,” Hassett said.
The Providence Teachers Union has been just as loud in its condemnation of Evans. Last week, the union voted no confidence in Evans and McClure. The union and the city have been locked in a contract dispute for seven months.
Evans is the third straight superintendent to last only three years in Providence. Diana Lam came to the city in 1999, and left for the New York City school system in August 2002. She was replaced by Melody Johnson, who left for Fort Worth, Texas, in 2005 despite the School Board’s offer of another three-year deal. Evans succeeded her that fall.
Although Evans’ contract was set to run out in September, his deal stipulated that he must be given six months’ notice if it was not going to be renewed. The School Board has spent the last several months delving into Evans’ record in Providence in an attempt to decide whether to retain him.
Neither Cicilline nor McClure would say what the School Board would have decided had Evans not taken himself out of the running.
“He’s certainly brought a lot of expertise to the district. I have a great deal of respect for him and what he’s done with us, and I would like to thank him,” McClure said.
School Board Secretary Robert Wise, however, said that the board wanted Evans to return.
“We wanted to keep him around. We wanted him to stay,” Wise said.
McClure said she didn’t believe that Evans’ resignation had anything to do with criticism that he awarded the woman who would later become his wife, Charlene M. Staley, a contract with the School Department last year.
In April, the district hired Staley to develop and administer a questionnaire to special-education staff at a cost of $4,200, in addition to compensation for travel, lodging and meals. The contract ran from April 17 until Aug. 1.
In an interview last week, Evans denied that there was any conflict of interest involving his wife, whom he married a month ago, and expressed “outrage” that anyone was making an issue out of the contract.
Evans said that he met Staley in 1992 when he was working at the University of South Florida and she was the university liaison with the Tampa, Fla., school district.
After he became assistant superintendent in Tampa in 1998, Staley became a member of his staff, working first as the charter school director and later working in special education.
At the time, Evans described Staley as a “trusted colleague and friend,” but said they were not romantically involved. He said that a romantic relationship didn’t develop until the summer, after Staley was awarded the contract. By the time that Staley was hired, Evans said that he was already in the process of getting a divorce.
“Anyone who checks Charlene’s background would know right away that she is the most qualified person for the work,” Evans said last week. “She has taught special education to students with learning disabilities, to the mentally handicapped, for a long time. She had taught teachers and administrators. I saw her skills firsthand.”
The contract wasn’t put out to bid because it cost less than $5,000, the cut-off point. She is not doing any work for the school district at this time.
Evans, 58, came to the 26,000-student Providence system from the Tampa area, where he was a top administrator in the 190,000-student Hillsborough district. His most recent annual salary in Providence was $190,742.
In his resignation letter, Evans listed his greatest achievements here as: increasing the number of schools making annual progress; higher percentages of students performing at grade level; implementing intervention programs for struggling students; and gaining national recognition for several Providence schools.
At the same time, his critics said his list of failures included the closing of the West Broadway Elementary School, an increase in special education class sizes, and the snowstorm debacle.
Union pickets, votes no confidence in Evans, McClure
Posted Monday, March 17, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — The Providence Teachers Union has voted overwhelmingly to express its lack of confidence in the administration of Supt. Donnie Evans and School Board President Mary McClure.
Carrying signs that said, “Rekindle the Dream/Stop the Nightmare,” and “A Blizzard of Blunders,” more than 100 members of the union staged an informational picket in front of the School Administration Building at 797 Westminster St. early yesterday. Teachers, who received ballots by mail two weeks ago, voted 1,347 to 44 against the direction that the administration is taking, union President Steve Smith said yesterday.
The ballot question claimed that students were being denied a quality education and cited more than a dozen supposed missteps by the administration, including problems related to the Dec. 13 snowstorm, which stranded more than 100 students on school buses until late at night and resulted in a 30-day suspension of Tomas Hanna, the deputy superintendent of operations.
The ballot also cited Evans’ decision to increase class size for special education students, which resulted in an unsuccessful lawsuit by the union against the district; the supposed “flip-flop” on the new high school graduation requirements; and a “mass exodus” of teachers and administrators during Evans’ two-and-a-half years in office.
The no-confidence vote is just the latest episode in the deteriorating relationship between the union and administration. According to union leaders, teacher morale is at an all-time low. Meanwhile, the teachers’ contract expired seven months ago and a mediator was brought in earlier this winter to help speed negotiations.
Smith, however, isn’t the only one who has become increasingly critical of Evans’ leadership. In the wake of the school bus problems in December, five members of the City Council signed a resolution calling for Evans’ dismissal, but later backed down after a strong lobbying effort by Mayor David N. Cicilline.
The union action comes as the School Board is scheduled to announce Tuesday whether Evans’ contract, which is due to expire Sept. 19, will be renewed. Although the union said it didn’t time the vote to coincide with the board’s decision, Smith said that he hopes the board takes notice of the teachers’ voices.
“December 13 was the culminating event,” Smith said yesterday. “That’s when we began to have a discussion about whether we should make a statement regarding the administration’s ability to lead the district. The vote is timely. At least the School Board can be under no illusion as to the overwhelming opinion of their employees.”
The School Department issued a short statement yesterday on behalf of Evans and McClure that said that the administration has tremendous respect for the “hard-working, dedicated teachers” of Providence and remains committed to negotiating a “forward-looking contract” that will put children first while supporting what teachers need.
“We have all been disheartened by years of poor student outcomes, including low graduation rates, high dropout rates, low test scores and low participation in advanced courses,” the statement said. “We must act now as educators to put aside any and all other motivations and work together to meet the needs of our students.”
In a memo sent to all principals Wednesday, Hanna said that any significant disruptions to student learning or safety issues as a result of the union’s picketing should be immediately reported to the administration’s operations office. The memo also said that any employee reporting late to work should be addressed “per normal protocols.”
Yesterday, teachers on the picket line expressed their frustration with what they perceive as a lack of direction together with a lack of support for the jobs they do every day.
Two teachers from Classical High School, Edward Rissio and Karen Hickey, complained that Evans has adopted a one-size-fits-all approach to high school curriculum, adding that the administration doesn’t recognize that Classical’s mission as a college-prep exam school differs from the other large high schools.
“Our professional development is in shambles,” a teacher said.
Teachers at Classical also said that the curriculum developed recently by the district and the professional training lack rigor. One teacher said that the new math curriculum is too easy for Classical students, who have to pass an examination to gain admission to the high school.
A guidance counselor from E{+3} Academy, a small high school, said that he gets conflicting messages from the central administration regarding the state’s new proficiency-based graduation requirements, which require students to demonstrate mastery by completing two of the following activities: end-of-course exams, senior projects or portfolios of their work. The new requirements apply to this year’s senior class.
“We’re here to show the superintendent and the School Board president that 1,300 teachers are dissatisfied with the job that they’re doing,” said Mary Beth Calabro, vice president of the union and a special education teacher at Nathanael Greene Middle School. “We want people to know that [the administration] has let the kids down.”
The last time that the union took a vote of no confidence was in October 2001, when Diana Lam was superintendent. At the time, 1,700 teachers also overwhelmingly rejected a three-year contact and agreed to work to rule.
Smith yesterday cited what he called “a litany of missteps, miscommunication and poor decision-making” by Evans and his administration, including the surprise decision last year to close (and ultimately relocate) West Broadway Elementary School and a proposal to permanently close Nathan Bishop Middle School, a decision that was later reversed after a public outcry by East Side parents. At the time, teachers and parents said they were blindsided by the decisions and complained that no one in administration asked for their opinions.
Smith said that the union has no plans to strike or work to rule, in which faculty members refuse to perform any duties beyond those spelled out in the contract.
“We’re going to continue to speak out at board meetings and plan on communicating our message to parents,” Smith said. “We will explore any and all vehicles, including contacting community groups and getting our message out through the news media.”
Educators still flock to see improvements at Hope
Posted Thursday, March 13, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Hope High School was in the spotlight again yesterday as two dozen educators from across the country visited the school as part of a two-day tour to investigate Rhode Island’s new high school diploma system.
The members of the American Youth Policy Forum met yesterday with state education leaders, including Robert Flanders, chairman of the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters and Colleen Callahan, director of professional issues for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers.
The team spent the afternoon at Hope, meeting with the school’s three principals, visiting classrooms and speaking with students and teachers. The afternoon ended with a discussion about high school reform with Supt. Donnie Evans.
“We’re very interested in proficiency-based graduation requirements and how they are being implemented,” said Betsy Brand, director of the American Youth Forum, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We’re interested in Hope because of its history as a low-performing school that moved to three smaller schools.”
The visitors included educators and education policy-makers from Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Arkansas, Michigan and Washington, D.C. Today, the team will visit Shea High School in Pawtucket and Coventry High School.
Yesterday, Brand praised McWalters for having the courage to buck the tide of high-stakes testing and implement proficiency-based graduation requirements, which ask students to demonstrate mastery in specific skills by taking end-of-course exams, completing senior projects or developing a portfolio of their work. Students have to complete two of the options to graduate this year.
“Rhode Island has been — and is — a leader in looking beyond a single high-stakes testing system,” Brand said. “The challenge is for districts to think creatively about how you create a proficiency system within the framework of No Child Left Behind.”
At Hope High School yesterday, the three principals — Wayne Montague, Arthur Petrosinelli and Scott Sutherland — recited what has become a familiar storyline: McWalters, disheartened by the school’s chronically poor performance, placed the school under state control three years ago. He ordered Hope to break into three smaller learning communities, each based on a theme. From there, the high school hired 52 new teachers, cracked down on discipline, helped teachers craft entirely new curricula and gave teachers ample time to plan together.
Today, Hope High School has an individual learning plan, called the I-Pass, which has received national recognition and has been adopted as a model by the state. The school has developed partnerships with a half-dozen area colleges, which have not only helped the district revise its curricula but also have provided real-world learning opportunities for students.
But Hope’s leaders were frank about how far the school has to go. Petrosinelli, technology school principal, said he was stunned when the math scores were released recently and hardly any students in the building met proficiency.
He said, “I don’t think that the scores truly reflect what’s happening here.”
That said, Hope High School got to work: the entire faculty reviewed the test scores and many teachers have actually taken sample math questions to see how hard the New England Common Assessment is. In fairness, faculty members pointed out, this is the first time that Rhode Island students have taken the NECAP, and most schools haven’t had time to align the new test with classroom instruction.
“We have to find a new way of teaching math,” Petrosinelli said. “I hate to say it, but we have to find a way of teaching to the test.”
“Do students know that the test is meaningless?” one of the visiting educators said.
Yes. Unlike what happens in other states, students are not graded on the NECAP, although it will count toward the high school graduation requirements. The state requires only that students take the test to graduate; they don’t have to pass it.
The visiting team also heard from several students and teachers, who told them that Hope High School has undergone nothing short of an extreme makeover since McWalters intervened three years ago. Hope, which students often called “hopeless,” was a school spiraling out of control before the new leadership team took over.
“What would you change about the school?” one visiting educator asked.
“I’d change going home every day,” said senior Ari Bzisbon, adding that he’d like to spend more time in school.
Another student said she would like to have more support for students who speak English as a second language while a third student said the school needs more computers so students can keep electronic records of their portfolios.
A couple of visitors struggled with the notion that Hope answers to two masters: the district and the state Department of Education. Sutherland explained that it isn’t always a perfect marriage, adding that the district’s goals are not always the same as the school’s.
Sutherland gave the following example to underscore his point. Hope High School, along with 10 other high schools, chose the portfolio as part of its new graduation requirement, but the district has indicated that it wants high schools to adopt senior projects instead.
In a portfolio class, every student raised their hand when asked about their plans to attend college. When asked about that afterward, Sutherland acknowledged that not every student who wants to go to college will have the grades and the skills necessary for admission. But Sutherland said that the school is asking more of its students and trying to prepare them for the real world.
“What do you do about the graduation requirements when students move?” a visitor said.
Both Sutherland and Evans said the district’s high rate of mobility — a third of all students move at least once each year — poses challenges that smaller school systems don’t have to face. When a student transfers to Hope during senior year, the school tries to find alternative ways to measure proficiency, such as performance on a district test.
Could Hope High School have turned itself around so quickly if it had a traditional leadership structure, with one principal and two assistants? Sutherland said yes, but that reform would have happened at a slower pace without six administrators. Each of the three principals, for example, has a primary area of concentration: Sutherland is the point man on curriculum, Petrosinelli focuses on discipline and Montague has been very involved in creating partnerships with the community.
At the end of the day, the visiting team seemed taken with the new Hope High School.
“I was a teacher for many years and from what I’ve seen here today, I’d want to come here,” said Jimmy Jeffress, a state senator from Arkansas.
“This is the kind of leadership that I never got. I commend you and the state for what you’re doing. I’d be willing to come out of retirement to work here.”
Upgrade plans for 2 Providence schools make progress
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Plans for both a renovated Nathan Bishop Middle School and an enlarged Hanley Career and Technical Center, the first two projects in the city’s sweeping school building overhaul, are on track for a fall 2009 completion.
Alan Sepe, the city’s acting director of public property, said the Nathan Bishop renovation has gone out to bid, while Gilbane Inc. has been awarded the contract for the Hanley addition and construction of an adjacent athletic complex.
In December, the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education approved a $35-million renovation of the East Side middle school and a $40.8-million expansion of Hanley in the West End, next to Central High School.
The middle school project has been championed by the East Side Public Education committee, a group of parents who organized after Supt. Donnie Evans decided to temporarily close the middle school last year, citing chronically poor student performance and declining enrollment.
Parents urged Evans to reconsider and he did, appointing a study committee to come up with a design for a new middle school. Under the approved plan, Nathan Bishop will have a planned enrollment of 750 students, larger than the 450 to 500 students recommended by the parent-led study committee. Plans call for retaining Nathan Bishop’s “doughnut-shape” with a major renovation of the interior, including a two-story library and media center and numerous energy-saving additions.
The new Nathan Bishop will offer student advisories, team teaching and an advanced curriculum open to all students, depending on their interests.
Meanwhile, the Hanley Career and Technical Center has been greatly expanded. The original plans called for renovating the school and connecting it to a smaller building that includes the gym and cafeteria at a cost of $32 million.
DeJONG consultants, which conducted a citywide survey of the district’s 42 public schools last year, recommended building a second career and technical high school next to Mount Pleasant High School. However, as the School Department considered the proposal, it became apparent that a second technical high school would be too expensive. Sepe said it made more sense to combine Hanley with the new career high school.
The plan now is to demolish the existing Haney cafeteria and gym building and replace it with a 100,000-square-foot addition that will be connected to a new athletic complex. The complex, which will be 65,000 square feet, will include an indoor track, tennis courts, three indoor basketball courts and additional space for academics.
The Hanley project will cost $72 million. The school will accommodate 800 students, twice the current enrollment. Demolition of the old Hanley cafeteria and gym will begin within the next four weeks, with construction beginning in late spring.
Bishop and Hanley are the first phase of a projected $792-million school renovation project. The city is responsible for floating 20-year bonds to pay for the projects but the state reimburses the city for 80 percent of the costs.
Arts education a struggle in Providence schools
Posted Thursday, March 6, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Katharina Shroeter has her hands full. She divides her time between two elementary schools, Martin Luther King Jr. and Reservoir Avenue. Between them, she teaches art to 700 students.
Shroeter, however, has a better deal than many of her elementary school colleagues, who see between 900 and 1,000 students a week. (Middle school teachers see 260 students a week while high school teachers have 130 students). Still, this veteran teacher is stymied. With classes lasting only 30 minutes, she said students barely have time to get started on a project before it is time to clean up.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” she said. “They are not getting a lot of painting. We used to have ceramics. We have a kiln at Martin Luther King. But there isn’t enough time to set up.”
There have been cutbacks in art and music instruction since the first round of budget shortfalls in 2002. In December 2006, Peter McWalters, the state education commissioner, ruled that the Providence schools were in violation of their basic education plan and ordered the district to restore art and music programs.
In his letter, McWalters criticized Providence for not providing a comprehensive program of art instruction, including separate facilities for the creation, storage and display of arts work, supplies and materials. There is no evidence, he said, that the city’s high schools have access to the kinds of courses that provide in-depth work in art history, criticism and career education required by the basic education plan.
Although McWalters acknowledged that the school district has dealt with several years of budget cuts that resulted in the loss of many art and music teachers, he also said that budget constraints were no excuse for not meeting the education plan.
In response, Supt. Donnie Evans submitted plans to restore the arts. However, in a Feb 8 letter to the Providence Teachers Union, McWalters said that the district is still not complying with the basic education plan.
Despite his earlier comments, McWalters said that he was not going to demand compliance because the district “at this time does not have the adequacy of resources to meet these requirements, especially in small themed high schools.”
“Given the complexity of the issues faced by the [school district] in meeting the basic education plan,” he said, “we acknowledge that the [district] is not in compliance with the [basic education plan].”
Since the state Department of Education has been asked to revise the state’s basic education plan, McWalters, in his letter to the union, said that it doesn’t make sense to launch any further investigation into the district’s fine arts offerings.
Meanwhile, art teachers are trying to do more with less. Shroeter said she is fortunate to work at King Elementary because the school has a large, well-stocked art room, thanks in large part to the generosity of the Parent Teacher Organization and retired teachers. At the Reservoir Avenue School, however, the supplies are depleted. Last year, she said, the school was left with little else than crayons and paper.
“This is my 13th year of teaching,” Shroeter said. “When I first started, we had hour-long blocks with the same children. We had two teachers at Carl Lauro Elementary School. We had art clubs. And we had all the arts supplies we needed.”
Martin Luther King is fortunate in other respects. The East Side school also offers art enrichment — smaller, project-based classes for students who are either gifted in art or struggling in core subjects such as English and math. The school also excludes art and music teachers from lunchroom duty in recognition of their heavy teaching schedules, according to Principal Michael Lazzareschi.
“We’re really the exception to the rule,” he said. “We have an after-school program funded by the PTO. Parents [who] play instruments have taught pieces of the music class.”
But even at King, Lazzareschi said that it is difficult to squeeze arts classes into the schedule because of the increasing emphasis on math and literacy instruction.
Even the district agrees that students are getting shortchanged when it comes to the arts. Earnest Cox, administrator of advanced academics and fine arts, said art classes are not long enough and added that it is the “ultimate goal of the district that art and music classes have the same amount of time as other courses.”
Elementary students receive either 30 minutes a week or one hour every two weeks. At the middle and high school levels, art classes last 55 minutes except at schools with a block schedule, in which case students may have 90 minutes of art.
Not every teacher has to split time between schools, however. Cox said that elementary schools with more than 900 students have a full-time art instructor as do middle schools. Every high school has at least one art teacher, except the Providence Academy of International Studies, which offers dance instead of art.
Cox also acknowledged that school supplies, in general, are limited because of budget restraints, adding that art teachers have a limited amount of money to buy materials. The district, however, is looking into grants to support art education.
In response to McWalters’ order, Cox said the district has taken some steps to provide more art and music offerings:
•Art and music have been restored to every middle school.
•The new Adelaide Avenue High School has an additional art teacher as well as a music teacher.
•And the district is working on schedules to make sure that elementary school children receive an hour of art and music instruction every other week.
Meanwhile, Shroeter tries to connect her art classes with what colleagues are teaching in other subjects. If a fourth-grade teacher is doing a unit on ancient cultures, then she will teach a related class on hieroglyphics.
Still, it isn’t easy to carve out time to plan assignments with other teachers.
“You end up exhausted by the end of the day,” she said. “Mondays, I take a nap. Young kids have so much energy.”
Teachers sound off about state of the schools
Posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Donnie Evans got an earful yesterday. School buildings are falling apart. There aren’t enough books and supplies. Layoff notices leave teachers feeling helpless. Changes are made without consulting the classroom teacher.
But Evans wasn’t put off by what he heard from nearly two dozen teachers yesterday. He was glad. Last month, Evans revived the long-dormant Teachers’ Council to get honest answers about how teachers are feeling about their jobs and what can be done to improve teacher morale, which has been buffeted by deep budget cuts, layoffs and protracted contract negotiations.
The council, which has representatives from every public school in the city, met with Evans for the second time yesterday at the Providence Academy of International Studies, on Thurbers Avenue. Evans asked teachers to identify some of the biggest hurdles that prevent them from doing their jobs.
He might have gotten more than he bargained for.
Colleen Driscoll, a teacher at Alan Shawn Feinstein Elementary School on Broad Street, found out during a party that she had been assigned to teach another grade level.
As Driscoll said, “It was really unprofessional.”
Bumping, the process by which teachers with more seniority displace those with less, generated a lot of complaints. One teacher retained her job because her number was picked out of a hat. In her case, three teachers were hired on the same date. All of them held the same certifications and had comparable evaluations. In a process called a tie-breaker, each teacher was assigned a number and the number that was selected got the job.
Teachers said they are extremely frustrated because they have no control over their futures. Even senior teachers are losing their classrooms this year. In some cases, a fourth grade teacher is assigned to teach first grade because the certification is the same. That teacher, however, might love fourth grade and have little interest in teaching 6-year-olds. In other cases, teachers are bumped from schools where they have worked for years because of the bumping process.
Not only is the teacher’s life disrupted, but, if enough teachers are transferred, the entire teaching culture is undermined.
“This is not in the best interest of the School Department or the teachers,” said Tracy Carcamo from Lima Annex Elementary School. “Now, you’re looking at teachers who have to do something they don’t want to do. We have to find a better way of doing this.”
“Talk about morale,” said Thomas Morra, a science teacher at Mount Pleasant High School. “How can you keep quality people if every year you keep laying them off? There is no continuity.”
Evans said he was as frustrated by the system as the teachers.
“I agree that the process stinks,” he said. “We are seeking to do things differently.”
Teachers also said that new programs and curricula are imposed on them from above without input from the rank and file. In one school, the faculty spent weeks working on its School Improvement Plan, only to have the district re-work the entire plan over the summer. In the future, one teacher said, faculty will be reluctant to volunteer because they fear that their efforts will be wasted.
Hope High School is a case in point. Teachers have spent a couple of years developing a portfolio system to collect students’ work over time. A few weeks ago, however, the faculty heard that the district was abandoning portfolios in favor of senior projects because students are so mobile that keeping records of their work is next to impossible.
“Why does it always have to be one way or another?” a Hope teacher said. “This shows a real lack of respect for faculty.”
The condition of school buildings also struck a chord among the council. At Gilbert Stuart Middle School, students plastered the lockers with eggs in September. Six months later, the mess remains and the teachers are ready to file a grievance.
At Roger Williams Middle School, a student needed medical help after punching out a window, but the phone system was so antiquated that she couldn’t get through to the main office, even when she used her own cell phone. “This was a real safety issue,” she said.
Other schools don’t have soap because the maintenance staff is afraid that students will make a mess, teachers said.
Supplies are another chronic problem. Barbara Ashby, a school librarian, said she is fortunate to get $200 a year toward the purchase of new books. She said that it’s been 10 years since she has any significant funding at all. At another school, teachers sent back all of their computers because they no longer worked. They expected to get new ones that did work. They didn’t.
At the end of the meeting, Evans wanted to talk about solutions to these problems, but the council first wants to conduct a citywide survey of teachers about these issues
Evans goes to Greene for direct input
Posted Tuesday, February 26, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Donnie Evans yesterday walked into a seventh-grade class at Nathanael Greene Middle School and asked the students point blank: Do you feel safe here?
Several students said yes, a few said maybe, and one student said no.
“Who said no?” Evans asked, a big smile on his face to show that there was no right or wrong answer.
One girl raised her hand: “How can you be safe with the gangs?”
Evans asked if she had been harassed by gang members and she said no.
“Any other problems?” he said.
“We have food fights and stuff,” one boy said.
“The cafeteria ceiling is falling apart.”
“The rooms are either too cold or too hot.”
“Any other problems?” Evans asked.
The room was silent.
Evans was at Nathanael Greene after complaints by some teachers there that students were acting out because of a lack of continuity in the school’s leadership. Over the past three months, the school has gone through four principals and six assistant principals, a turnover that several teachers claim has been disruptive to students and staff.
The district’s largest middle school and home to the city’s only advanced academic program, Greene has experienced three major food fights and a couple of afterschool fights since principal Nicole Mathias Thomas went out on sick leave before Thanksgiving.
After a series of principals cycled in and out of the building, retired administrator Joseph Maguire, who once led Gilbert Stuart Middle School, was appointed acting principal about a month ago.
Yesterday, Evans announced that Maguire will stay until late April, when Thomas has said that she will return. Evans said he spoke with Thomas last week to confirm her plans.
The principal turnover has been compounded by the loss of an assistant principal, who is also on sick leave. To provide more stability at the top, Evans has appointed Regina Winkfield to serve as an assistant principal until the end of the school year. Meanwhile, Edward Halpin, an administrator who is well-known by teachers and students, will remain as an assistant principal at Greene.
In an informal conversation with Evans yesterday, Maguire stressed that the school was under control, and said that he was surprised by the level of concern expressed by teachers during a recent School Improvement Team meeting, when members called for a stricter set of rules to crack down on misbehavior.
“Absolutely,” Maguire said, “I think that the kids feel safe.”
Last week, a couple of teachers, including the vice president of the Providence Teachers Union, said there has been evidence of gang activity, including some tagging or graffiti on school walls. Yesterday, Maguire confirmed that there has been some gang tagging and colors as well as two incidents where outsiders came into the building at dismissal.
“Students here are in gangs,” Maguire said, adding that one student was caught selling a product containing a gang insignia. The principal said that he might ask a member of the Police Department’s gang squad to speak to students and possibly meet with members of the Parent Teacher Organization at their next meeting.
“We want parents to be informed,” Maguire said.
Several teachers and parents have also said that Greene is receiving more than its fair share of students with discipline problems, claiming that the school received six such children during a recent two-week period.
But School Department spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly said those numbers are overblown. During a three-week period, three students with discipline issues were sent to Greene. Another child transferred to Greene for safety reasons and two newcomers to the district were enrolled during the same time period.
“I have a huge problem with this,” Evans said, referring to the practice of moving a troublemaker from one school to another. “We need more alternative school offerings. Why would anyone think that a child who is a discipline problem at one school would do any better at another?”
Because of the turnover in leadership, teachers also complained that it’s taking too long for students to be disciplined, which renders the punishment meaningless and undermines the authority of staff and principals alike.
Since he has arrived, however, Maguire said that it rarely takes more than 48 hours between the time an offense is reported to his office and the consequence is imposed. He also said that punishment isn’t the only solution to inappropriate behavior.
“I’ve been here a lot of times and the students are happy,” said Evans, who previously visited Greene on Feb. 8. “They love being here.”
If Greene is in good shape, however, then why are some teachers complaining about the lack of order in the hallways and the growing disrespect on the part of students?
Evans thinks that two things are going on: First, Thomas is a strong principal whose very presence makes people feel secure. Her absence, Evans said, creates a tremendous amount of insecurity in the same way that a parent’s absence sparks anxiety in his or her children. The second element, he said, is that certain individuals have “another agenda,” one that may be motivated by best intentions rather than malicious intent. He didn’t elaborate.
Evans acknowledged that the district has to do a better job of growing its own cadre of leaders, adding that the pool of administrative talent in Providence isn’t very deep. One possibility involves tapping teachers who have administrative certification to fill voids created when a principal leaves.
During his tour yesterday, Evans spoke with PTU Vice President Mary Beth Calabro. She was candid with the superintendent about what she perceives as a loss of order in the building. The day before school vacation, Calabro said, a handful of teachers volunteered to monitor the exterior doorways because there had been problems with intruders sneaking into the building. She also said that there has been little consistency in the way discipline is meted out.
“Has there been an increase in discipline problems?” Evans said.
“Yes,” Calabro said. “Kids test boundaries. They are showing more defiance and disrespect.”
Calabro said that she would love to serve as an assistant principal, adding that she did it briefly this winter when one of the assistants was out sick.
“I know a lot of these kids,” she said. “I know when they need a break. The kids respond when they see a familiar face.”
School superintendent speaks up
Posted Thursday, February 21, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Supt. Donnie Evans has received quite a beating over the past two months. Members of the City Council have called for his dismissal. The Providence Teachers Union is voting next week on whether to issue a vote of no confidence. But Evans, in a wide-ranging interview yesterday, said he has no plans to start job-hunting.
“I’ve given a lot of thought to that,” he said, adding that job postings cross his desk all the time. “But I’ve never worked in a system where I didn’t finish what I started.
“There were people who discouraged me from coming to Providence,” he said. “They said that it was impossible to be successful here. Well, I’ve survived two and a half years. I have a lot of bullet wounds. There are a lot of people who wish I wasn’t here. I like challenges.”
Evans is at a critical point during his tenure as the leader of the 26,000-student district. The School Board will decide next month whether it will renew his contract, which will expire Sept. 19.
Evans’ leadership has been assailed on all fronts: from parents who were dismayed that their children were stuck on school buses during the Dec. 13 snowstorm to neighborhood activists who objected to the closing of West Broadway Elementary School.
Yesterday, Evans said that some of the criticism is typical when someone new tries to shake up an entrenched system. Some of the dissension in the ranks, he said, is triggered by the protracted labor negotiations, which Evans had hoped to wrap up by Christmas.
Evans agrees that communication with staff and parents continues to be a challenge but he promised to announce some significant initiatives in the next few weeks to address that problem, a persistent one during his superintendency. In the meantime, Evans said he is trying to find less formal ways to reach out to teachers and the public.
Evans recently convened a teachers’ council, which will give him informal feedback on what’s going on in the schools. He has organized a districtwide Parent Teacher Organization to do the same thing, and next month, he will launch a Saturday morning breakfast with school principals. His office also plans on holding two more public forums to hear from the community.
“I need to be hearing from parents, teachers and principals in a less formal way,” Evans said. “People are right when they say that I and my staff need to communicate more directly with the public.”
At a recent meeting of the High School Steering Committee, Evans and one of his top administrators suggested that there might be a shift away from small, theme-based high schools, which gained currency under Supt. Diana Lam and her successor, Melody Johnson. At that meeting, Evans said that research has challenged the effectiveness of site-based schools in high-poverty urban districts.
Yesterday, however, Evans said that he had no intention of abandoning site-based schools such as the Cooley Health & Science Technology Academy. In fact, he said that he would like these schools to exercise more autonomy, especially in the area of schedules and after-school programs.
“It’s clear that we, as a large urban district, have to have consistency in our curriculum,” he said. “A child sitting in algebra I in one high school should be getting the same content as a child in another school. We don’t have that now.”
Small schools such as E{+3} will continue to have the authority to hire their teachers and will continue to have greater flexibility in the way the school day is organized. But what is taught must be seamless across the district’s 11 high schools.
While student performance has continued to improve at the elementary and even the middle school level, high school performance stubbornly resists change. Even at Hope High School, the district’s poster child for high school reform, academic performance has not budged as much as school leaders would like.
Under a state order to break up into smaller learning communities, Hope High School created three theme-based schools, each with its own principal. Every teacher was asked to sign an agreement that spelled out certain commitments, and faculty members can’t be assigned to other schools when there are layoffs, a process called bumping.
Hope also received a sizeable infusion of cash to train teachers, reform curriculum and create individual learning plans for each student.
Is Hope a model for the district’s other high schools?
“You can change school culture,” Evans said, “but we could not do what Hope did without additional resources.”
Evans said there are other models that can produce similar results. In one case, the district hires a second tier of assistant principals who are responsible for discipline, freeing the first tier of assistant principals to focus on curriculum and administration.
“What we do know,” Evans said, “is that the current high school model is not getting us where we want to be.”
Evans said he is proud of the progress that his administration has made on the academic front: steady gains in student performance, including a 25-percent increase in reading scores; the fact that two high schools are accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and the remaining schools are on the way; and the introduction of new math and literacy curricula designed to raise basic skills of struggling students.
He also said that his effective schools model, which is all about creating schools where students are respected, parents are welcome and teachers are committed to high standards, is starting to take hold, especially in the elementary schools.
Asked to name his biggest challenge, Evans mentioned a better working relationship with the teachers union:
“We have to sit down person-to-person and find common ground,” he said. “We have to put the past behind us and say, ‘We’re here for the kids.’
“If I were to leave everything on my shoulders, I’d be a miserable person,” Evans said. “A lot of wrong has been done to me, growing up in the South during the ’50s and ’60s. If I held onto that, I’d never get anything done.”
Lack of leadership cited for lack of discipline at Greene
Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Nathanael Greene Middle School has been through four principals and six assistant principals during the past four months and several teachers say the rapid-fire change in leaders has been disruptive to students and staff.
The school, the site of the district’s only gifted program for middle school students, has suffered from constant turnover at the top, which began when Principal Nicole Mathis Thomas went out on sick leave before Thanksgiving. Greene went without a principal for one month and then a series of acting principals cycled through the building. Approximately three weeks ago, Joseph Maguire, a retired administrator, was appointed as acting principal until the end of the school year.
Students at Nathanael Greene, the district’s largest middle school with 820 pupils, are feeling the effects of the so-called leadership vacuum. Since Thomas left, there have been three major food fights, during which apples and milk cartons were hurled across the cafeteria, and a couple of fights after school, one of which was videotaped and posted on a popular social networking site, according to Mary Beth Calabro, a special education teacher and vice president of the Providence Teachers Union.
Another teacher, Kathleen McDonough, said that signs of student unrest are everywhere. Students are disrespectful to staff; they refuse to put away cell phones and follow orders. Several teachers say the hallways have become chaotic.
According to Calabro and McDonough, there is evidence of gang activity, with students wearing gang colors and writing graffiti on the walls. At the beginning of school, some children were so afraid they spent their lunch period in the library. Two parents who belong to the Parent Teacher Organization, however, said the climate at Greene isn’t as chaotic as some teachers say. PTO President Michelle McKenzie said it would do a disservice to Greene to say that the school is chaotic or out of control.
“There is no question,” she said, “that there has been a strain, but I’m not willing to say that it’s deteriorated into chaos.”
A recent meeting of the School Improvement Team drew more than 60 teachers, who repeatedly complained about the growing lack of order in the building. McDonough said morale is at an all-time low, adding that teachers feel stymied by what they perceive as a lack of support from central administration.
“We’re all frustrated,” said Anna Sacoccio, who chairs the School Improvement Team. “What’s missing? Leadership.”
One of the reasons there has been so much instability at Greene is that no one knows when Thomas will return to work. According to Supt. Donnie Evans, Thomas told the central office that she would be back in a couple of months. Since then, Thomas has extended her sick leave. Adding to the instability, one of the assistant principals is also out on sick leave.
“My goal is to stabilize that school,” Evans said Monday. “I’ll call Mrs. Thomas myself. Part of my job is to talk to her and see what’s happening.”
To provide some consistency, Evans said he asked Edward Halpin, a well-respected assistant principal at Greene, to take over the helm but Halpin declined. “He was my first choice,” Evans said.
Compounding the problem, retired administrators can work only a maximum of 90 days, and Deputy Supt. Tomas Hanna said many of the district’s retirees don’t want to commit to working fulltime.
“Mrs. Thomas is assigned to this position,” Hanna said Monday. “We’re aware that the staff is pleased with her and we’re hoping she can come back and bring folks back together.”
Because of the turnover at the top, teachers say it has been difficult to impose consequences for misbehavior. Sometimes, they said, the punishment doesn’t take place until days after the behavior occurred, rendering it meaningless. Calabro and members of the PTO also complained that Nathanael Greene has become a “dumping ground” for students who have been removed from other schools because of disciplinary issues. Greene, they said, received six such children during a recent two-week period.
Renee Baskerville, who has two children at Greene, is vice president of the Parent Teacher Organization and spends nearly every day at the school as a volunteer. Students, she said, are acting out because they feel that the adults aren’t able to keep them safe.
“The children are taking over,” she said. “We have kids who are getting in from the outside, from other schools. Yesterday, some intruders came in looking for one of our students. I’m concerned.”
According to Baskersville, students are asking, “When is Miss Thomas coming back?” and, “What happens if someone gets in here?”
Last week, the principal canceled the Valentine’s Day dance because another food fight disrupted the lunch room, teachers said.
Several parents, including Lee Kossin, the PTO secretary, said the biggest issue isn’t violence but the breakdown in communication between the school and parents and between central administration and the school. No one, she said, ever informed parents about Thomas’ medical leave or the steady stream of administrators who have taken her place.
“There is absolutely no communication,” she said. “Dr. Evans talks about communication but he is the worst communicator in the world.”
Kossin said the Parent Teacher Organization is holding a meeting on Tuesday to bring parents up to date about the leadership at Greene and to air some of the issues around communication and school discipline.
Meanwhile, the school has begun to take specific measures to return order to Nathanael Greene. Following a Feb. 8 meeting, the School Improvement Team asked faculty to insist on hallway passes, confiscate cell phones and other electrical devices and eliminate the practice of lining up students outside the classroom. Instead, teachers are asked to allow students to enter the classroom as soon as they arrive.
In a memo to faculty, the team made the following comments: “There has been an increase in disruptive, defiant, potentially dangerous behavior by students at Greene … An increase in gang activities has been noted. Discipline assemblies are needed ASAP.”
The School Improvement Team sent a copy of the memo to Evans and he has agreed to come to their next meeting, on Feb. 28.
Feinstein School receiving national attention
Posted Friday, February 15, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is coming to the Alan Shawn Feinstein Elementary School on Broad Street today, and when she does, the fifth graders will explain why they did so well on the New England Common Assessment Program.
“We kicked butt,” said Blanco Colato, one of a half-dozen fifth graders who composed a welcoming letter to Spellings.
Feinstein, a turn-of-the-century brick schoolhouse in Washington Park, showed the greatest rate of improvement in Providence on the latest round of NECAP tests, which measure student proficiency in English, writing and math. The tests are given every year in grades 3 through 8 and again in grade 11.
•In reading, only 37 percent of students in grades 3 through 5 were proficient in 2006. A year later, that number has jumped to 50 percent.
•In math, only 27 percent of the students tested were performing at grade level in 2006; in 2007, 42 percent were.
•In writing, student performance doubled in one year, from 30 percent in 2006 to 60 percent in 2007.
Feinstein, a kindergarten through grade 5 school, didn’t add any instructional bells and whistles to produce these strong gains in student performance. According to Principal Christine Riley, teachers made a concerted effort to use the test data to pinpoint student weaknesses at every grade level and, for every student.
At Feinstein, common planning time is carved out of the school day. Once a week, teachers from each grade meet to analyze test data and fine-tune instruction to address gaps in knowledge. As a team, teachers decide on a goal and set a timetable, typically six weeks, to see if the new approach is working. If it isn’t, the staff tries something else.
This is something that effective schools have in common: they use test data to pinpoint weaknesses in math or reading, then try fresh instruction methods to address those areas.
According to Riley, a federal program called Reading First has trained teachers in early literacy skills. Children who don’t understand what they are reading will also have trouble understanding related subjects, such as word problems in math. Reading First trains elementary school teachers to be teachers of reading, something that isn’t always taught in schools of education. Eleven schools in Providence participate in this voluntary program.
With the NECAP, one of the biggest challenges is persuading students to take the tests seriously, because the assessments don’t count toward a grade, nor do students receive credit if they reach proficiency. Savvy schools like Feinstein, however, come up with a host of creative strategies to get students to pay attention.
This fall, Feinstein held pep rallies before school began and the fifth graders came up with their own chant, which sounds like this:
“Hey students, can you do it?’
“Do what?”
“The NECAP?”
“No way.”
“Beat the NECAP!”
“OK”
Using model questions, teachers drilled students on the material they would encounter on the test, however Riley emphasized, the practice tests were incorporated into regular classroom instruction. In other words, teachers weren’t simply teaching to the test, a common criticism of the recent national emphasis on testing.
Students were also trained how to prepare for the test. Teachers explained testing strategy: for example, if you reach a question you don’t understand, move on and go back to it. Or, as one fifth grader said yesterday, “Take time to reflect on the question.”
Students were given homework assignments, including fill-in-the-bubble tests and their parents received worksheets to help their children become familiar with the questions. Signs posted around the school advised students to “Relax and count to ten,” and “Get a good night’s sleep.”
Even the younger students were brought into the act. Faculty members urged students in first and second grade to be kind to their older classmates and to walk quietly when the testing was taking place.
As Riley said, “It was a total team effort.”
When the scores came in, Riley made sure there was a schoolwide celebration. Children who performed well received certificates from the principal during an assembly and the one class that had 100 percent attendance, Room 303, got a pizza party.
“This wouldn’t have happened without the teachers,” Riley said. “They are so committed. They’re here before school and after school.”
Yesterday, Riley asked a handful of fifth graders why the NECAP is important:
“It shows what we’ve learned over the years,” said one student.
“Most of us were at the bottom and now we’re almost achieving a perfect score.”
“It shows what we need to work on.”
Students expressed a mixture of excitement and curiosity about Spellings’ arrival. The secretary of education will be joined by Governor Carcieri, Sen. Jack Reed, Mayor David N. Cicilline, Supt. Donnie Evans and others.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet the secretary of education,” said Luis Molina, 11.
“It’s astounding that we get to meet her in real life,” Michael Jimenez said. “She runs No Child Left Behind.”
Hope High still in transition
Posted Wednesday, February 13, 2008
By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — No one disputes the fact that Hope High School has made tremendous progress since state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters intervened four years ago. Now the question is whether the district has the ability to sustain the improvement.
“There is no disagreement about the excellent work done here,” McWalters said. “We have something here that we need to both support and replicate, but, at the same time, we have to support the core mission of the district.”
The dilemma is this: How do you balance the district’s need to ratchet up the quality of all high schools without sacrificing Hope in the process?
That tension was evident during yesterday’s show-cause hearing on whether Hope High School should remain under the authority of McWalters’ intervention order or whether the school should be returned to the district’s control.
While many of yesterday’s speakers cloaked their true feelings about the potential loss of state oversight, Providence Teachers’ Union President Steve Smith didn’t mince words. Unless the district is held accountable, he said, Hope will regress and the progress made to date will be in vain.
“We need your help,” he told McWalters. “Your office must maintain a level of support and oversight that will force the Providence School Board and the administration to keep its promises. To do otherwise would be a mistake of monumental proportions.”
But Supt. Donnie Evans asked McWalters to weigh the needs of one school against the needs of many. He also noted that the climate has changed dramatically since the intervention order was issued. In 2004, only one school, Hope, was classified by the state as being in corrective action. Now, the entire district is eligible for state intervention under state and federal law.
“One of the issues,” McWalters said, “is the degree to which the district can support Hope at a time when the district is trying to move the entire system.”
Evans made it clear that his mission was to create a common core of standards across the district’s 11 high schools. He said that the district needs to create a uniform curriculum and set of graduation standards before it can fully support the work of site-based schools — smaller, theme-based schools that operate with much more autonomy than larger comprehensive high schools such as Classical and Mount Pleasant.
But McWalters, on more than one occasion, said he was reluctant to turn his attention away from Hope, even though the district’s other high schools are in serious need of a similar intervention. And he acknowledged that Hope High School benefited from additional financial support, resources that neither the state nor the district has to devote to the city’s other highs schools.
Other individuals spoke of the important role that the state played in getting Hope to where it is today. It was McWalters who insisted on a new leadership team, who ordered the school to break into three smaller learning communities and who demanded that the school forge meaningful relationships with students, parents and community partners.
During the past three years, Hope has undergone a transformation from chaos to order, from a school where students felt lost to a school where they feel respected. Hope has created student advisories to promote stronger ties between student and faculty, created individual learning plans that spell out each student’s academic, social and career goals and forged vital partnerships with several area colleges, including the Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island College and Johnson & Wales University.
The school’s faculty has revamped its curricula, created teacher-led study groups and begun to build stronger relationships with parents where there once was none.
Last spring, Hope High School was removed from the warning list and received full accreditation from the prestigious New England Association of Schools and Colleges. At the time, only one other Providence high school, Classical, had the same accreditation.
Yesterday, principals and teachers argued that the high school was able to turn itself around precisely because of the state’s intervention order. One of the reasons why Hope has been so successful, they said, is because the faculty has remained untouched by the annual round of layoffs, which can wreak havoc with school culture.
Some slippage has already occurred, according to some faculty. Because Hope was over-enrolled this summer, the school had to abandon its plan to create separate schedules for each learning academy, which undermined efforts to create three distinct high schools for arts, technology and leadership.
Because Hope has been given the authority to create its own schedule, teachers meet regularly to discuss student work and the entire school meets once a week to talk about global issues, a rarity in the district’s large high schools. Becky Coustan, the school’s head coach, wondered whether common planning time would continue without the state’s intervention order.
Hope has devoted considerable resources to develop portfolios of student work as part of the state’s new graduation requirements. Now, that work may be undermined because the district has decided to adopt a senior project, a new graduation requirement for all of the high schools.
According to Mary Ann Davidson, the school’s director of guidance, “If Hope is no longer under a state order, I’m afraid that advisories would disappear.”
“Is Hope a site-based school or not?” said Paul Sproll, the director of teacher education at RISD and a longtime partner. “The school believes that it is. But it needs a clear direction from the district. This ambiguity needs to come to a halt.”
At the end of the three-hour hearing, McWalters praised principals, teachers and students for undertaking a Herculean task.
“There are wonderful, wonderful things going on here,” he said. “But we’ve got to resolve this issue |
