State Report Card
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, 36 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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