Dear Citizens of Rhode Island:

I want to share with you some of my reflections based on this report. I am sure some ideas occurred to you too as you read through this data-rich portrait of education in our state – especially as it relates to our youngest students. I hope you will share your ideas with your local school and community as well as communicating them to others and me at the state level. Public education can succeed in the face of its challenges if everyone does their part.

This report testifies that we have now reached a point in our educational system where information can be brought to bear on specific questions and issues – in this case, we considered what it would take to make all fourth graders proficient in the high standards set by the Regents. I think three steps are essential if we are going to achieve this ambitious goal:

Children are more than minds waiting to be educated. They are people with all the physical, emotional, and social needs that being human entails. We can no longer ignore these other factors and focus solely on intellectual development in school, particularly when so many of our children come to school hungry, emotionally stressed, and within larger systems of support that fail to adequately provide for their human needs. We must expand school breakfast programs so children can learn undistracted by hunger. Schools have to partner more effectively with other agencies that serve children. Each agency has to look beyond its individual agenda to forge new relationships that guarantee that children get the help they need when they need it. Quality afterschool programs involving community agencies and nonprofits have to be innovatively funded and physically located in ways that make them both accessible and affordable so that all children can benefit.

The SALT Survey clearly underscores that both teachers and students need more, and sustained, opportunities to work and learn with Rhode Island’s content and performance standards. School Committees, unions, and district leadership need to create and fund agreements that give teachers time to learn from one another and to focus on improving student learning results. Rhode Island’s institutions of higher education, professional associations, unions, and regional collaboratives have to marshal fiscal and human resources in more effective ways to provide high quality, targeted help to teachers in the challenging instructional tasks that they face on a daily basis. Many organizations have already made strong efforts in this area, but this data tells us we must do more.

Students need more sustained time for learning to standards, too. Historically, students have been given the same amount of instructional time with some learning a lot and others learning little. We need a new way of thinking about learning where the standards are common to all but time, space, opportunity, and assistance is varied dependent on the needs of the individual child. This will require a major rethinking of how we plan and deliver educational services to students and where such learning occurs. Embedded learning within the context of "real" as opposed to "artificial" work must become the norm. Teachers, administrators, parents, and business will have to forge new relationships and understandings about applied learning in real-world environments. Above all, we must maintain the level of rigor that the Regents’ standards embrace but recognize that we will never get all children there if we simply try to do more of what we currently do. We have to reinvent our educational systems to keep pace with the times in which we live and the challenges of the new millennium.

The importance of reading emerges as one clear message within this report. Children who cannot read and read well are doomed to academic failure or poor performance and bleak economic prospects. Students need to be strong readers to perform well not only on Rhode Island’s state assessments but in all areas of the school curriculum. Reading is truly fundamental and a key that opens many doors.

With this in mind, Governor Lincoln Almond and I convened the Reading Excellence Taskforce. The taskforce recently completed its first task of articulating reading policy for the state. We also are working to reform teacher preparation programs so that all teachers will be able to help students read and read well. Ensuring that all of our students become readers and delight in expressing themselves clearly and fully in the English language as well as other languages, must become one of our major educational goals.

These are some of the major thoughts I have in light of this year’s report. I invite your involvement in the dialogue and action of today’s educational reforms. There is entirely too much at stake for anyone to remain on the sidelines. I hope you will use the data in this report and the voluminous information available on the Information Works! website (http://infoworks.ride.uri.edu) and its various publications to engage in informed local conversations about the meaning of the data and planning a way forward. We must persevere and overcome every obstacle to ensure that all Rhode Island children, not just some children, are literate and able to succeed in life and living in the twenty-first century.

Sincerely,

Peter McWalters
Commissioner