Statewide Analysis: Introduction

Productive, caring and mutually intriguing teacher/student relationships:
What's it going to take?

The primacy of the teacher/student relationship

When all is said and done, effective education takes place between a teacher and a student. In a well-supported, well-prepared classroom, teachers and students can both enjoy teaching and learning, often simultaneously and mutually. Good teachers intrigue the students, but are also intrigued by them. Good students know what they're supposed to be doing, are alert, well-nourished and ready for the day's successes as well as the inevitable frustrations. When the chemistry is right, teachers and students laugh, learn, work and even disagree together.

Many widely different factors contribute to supporting the teachers, the students and a context in which teaching and learning can thrive. This year, we'll look at the Information Works! state-level data through the lens of what appears to support or obstruct the relationship most central to education. Meeting the goal of 100% proficiency for all students still poses a major challenge to all of us, indicating that all schools, districts, communities, and most teachers and students either need additional help or to re-think how they contribute to the efficacy of teacher/student relations.

Some supports have been taking shape

In the course of the last few years, certain specific supports have been put in place for the education community. For example, schools now have a considerable information feedback system through the SALT survey, SALT visits and Information Works! RIDE's Field Service teams have been working directly with the schools and are constantly improving their sense of what schools need and how to help them. The state's social services have upgraded certain supports for children and their families, such as access to health care for families who previously found it financially out of reach. In RI, as well as nationally, education issues have come from the back to the front burner as critical concerns for government and public policy. The standards movement has forced real content and specificity into conversations about what a child should know and be able to do. Setting standards and publicly reporting on the progress towards meeting them has revealed serious fissures in the education system as a whole.

These improvements in themselves are still incomplete. Furthermore, we do not yet have a mechanism by which such different initiatives work together to form a comprehensive web of support for teaching and learning. Education is a community function that needs investments of sustained attention, strong commitment and insightful advocacy as much as it needs money.

From legislator to classroom teacher, we have an increasingly shared vision

Perhaps the most important support for RI education is our increasingly shared vision about what the general process of education should look like. The legislature embraced and actively championed the School Accountability for Teaching and Learning (SALT) vision by etching much of it into law in the 1997 Budget Article 31. That Article specified targeted financial investments and launched a public accountability and information system. The Regents set clear standards of proficiency and educators have begun to explore ways to help children reach those publicly-reported marks. Now, three years later -- with the exception of a mere handful of schools and individuals -- the teachers and administrators who responded to the SALT survey tell us that they strongly believe in teaching literacy and numeracy across the curriculum and they believe strongly in standard-based instruction.

Achieving shared vision brings us to the end of the beginning

Even though we have broad agreement, now begins the heavy lifting of making those agreements real in every RI classroom on a daily basis. This job cannot be left up to the teachers alone. Nor can the school carry the full weight. Each of us must do our part to create, implement, fund and protect the supports necessary to a high-functioning classroom.

Return to the Information Works Home Page