Commissioner's Remarks
May 1, 2003
Dear Fellow Rhode Islanders:
Welcome to the 6th edition of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s
official “state report card” on public education.
Information is a cornerstone of our public-accountability system.
As in the past, this report contains a great deal of information
that will help you understand what’s going on in our schools. You’ll
find easy-to-navigate charts on our state assessments of student
performance. You will be able to see which schools are improving and
which are not. You will see “disaggregated” data, that is, charts
and tables that show the performance levels of the state’s various
racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic subgroups. Using our “value-added”
charts, you can see how each school is doing when its students are
compared with similar students statewide. And you will find detailed
information on school spending and municipal finances.
Remember, we gather information at the student level; our reports
are based on the test scores of individual students. But we make use
of this information at the school, district, and statewide level.
Our system in Rhode Island does not include high-stakes tests; we do
not have an exit examination that all students must pass in order to
graduate. We hold the adults in the system—the teachers, the other
professional staff, the administrators—accountable for student
achievement.
This Year’s Report Contains New Features
This year’s report includes a new section on what we call
“learning-support indicators”: graduation rate, health education,
instruction, parental involvement, school climate, and time in
school. These learning-support indicators are a way for us, in a
sense, to “take the temperature” of our schools, which is especially
important for schools with lagging test scores. For example, if the
indicators show that a school has a positive school climate and
strong instructional practices, then the test scores in that school
will soon improve as well. The learning-support indicators, in
short, show us whether conditions in a school are conducive to
learning.
This year’s report also includes a new section on students with
special needs, which enables us to see how well students with
disabilities are performing on the state assessments. In Rhode
Island, we are committed to bringing all children to proficiency. If
any group of children, including those with special needs, falls
behind, then we have not achieved our goal.
Our Schools Are Improving
In December 2002, the R.I. Department of Elementary and Secondary
Education (RIDE) released its second annual list of
“school-performance categories.” We categorized schools as either
high, moderately, or low performing, and we noted which schools were
improving and which were not. The good news is that 60 percent of
our schools are improving, up from 42 percent the year before! Among
our elementary schools, a full 70 percent of the schools are
improving. Among our high schools—a major area of concern that I
discussed in last year’s report—59 percent are improving, and 10
high schools moved out of the low-performing category.
Overall, 16 schools moved out of the low-performing category and
19 schools moved into the category of high performing.
Those are real signals that our public-education system is making
progress. There were 26 schools that have been improving for two
years in a row in both English language arts and mathematics. These
have been honored as “Regents Commended Schools.”
On the other hand, 35 schools have been low performing and not
improving for two years in a row. These have been identified as
“schools in need of improvement.” For some of these priority
schools, provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
require that parents be allowed to transfer their children to other
schools in the district or that the district offer free
“supplemental educational services” to some of the students in the
school.
We Have Stepped in to Help Low-Performing Schools
For six years, the Education Department has been gathering data,
analyzing the information, and reporting the results to the public.
But gathering, analyzing, and reporting information is no longer
sufficient. We have moved to the stage where we are taking direct
actions regarding low-performing schools. Last year, we identified
low-performing schools and met with each district that had a
low-performing school. Each district had to submit its plan to
improve student achievement in each of its low-performing schools.
This year, we are already seeing the results of that action and of
the hard work at the schools. We have about 100 low-performing
schools in the state—but half of those schools are also improving
schools! In time, these schools will move out of the low- performing
category.
We are taking direct action in schools that continue to be low
performing. As you may know, we became so concerned about the low
test scores and high dropout rate at Hope High School, in
Providence, that the state intervened in that school last year. We
have been working with the Providence School Department to ensure
that Hope High School is redesigned as a school of small learning
communities, an environment that should provide a better school
climate, better instructional practices, and better student
achievement.
Changes Are Under Way in High Schools
In a way, Hope High School may foreshadow what will happen in
other schools—all high schools in the state will be undergoing a
process of reform, thanks to regulations passed early this year by
the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education. The
Regents’ high-school reform regulations require that all high
schools create more personalized learning environments and that they
adopt graduation requirements that go beyond semester hours and
course requirements. In addition, all schools in the state must
provide extra support and instruction for all students reading below
their grade level.
It will take some time to put these regulations into practice,
but the end result will be a reinvigoration of high-school education
for all of our children, throughout the state.
School Improvement Requires Resources
It will take money, too. School improvement requires real
resources. We want our high schools to be more personalized. We want
our schools to have the teaching staff that they need. Our teaching
force in the state must remain highly qualified. All of this will
require investments—by the local communities, by the state, and, I
hope, by the federal government as well.
Our teachers are highly qualified. All of our public-school
teachers must be certified. To receive certification, a teacher must
have earned a bachelor’s degree, with extensive course work in
education and (for secondary-school teachers) in an academic field,
plus completed student-teaching requirements. Our teachers are also
well paid. Their average salary is the 7th highest in the nation,
according a recent report from the Rhode Island Public Expenditure
Council. Over the next few years, as we continue working to improve
student achievement, we will need to develop procedures to ensure
that teachers can spend more time with the most needy students.
We have high academic standards in Rhode Island, and it will
require hard work to bring all children to those standards. Some
children will need to have more instructional time. For example,
teachers will have to spend more of their time developing effective
teaching strategies. To do this well, they will need more
common-planning time and more time for professional development. All
of this may cost money, and it may require changes in the way we go
about the business of educating our children.
Together, We Face a Challenge
Rhode Island’s Comprehensive Education Strategy and the federal
No Child Left Behind Act have set before us an opportunity and a
challenge. Can we really bring all children to the level of
proficiency by the year 2014? It’s obvious that the course has been
set, that we’re well prepared, that we have already taken more than
the first steps—we have made significant progress. But the journey
is not over. We won’t succeed unless all of us—educators, business
leaders, community members, labor leaders, and especially parents,
our students’ first teachers—work together to attain our goal.
Sincerely,
Peter McWalters
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education
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