Commissioner's Remarks

Letter from the Commissioner
Information Works! 2004

Dear Fellow Rhode Islanders:

Welcome to Information Works! 2004, Rhode Island’s official “state report card” on public education.

Information remains a cornerstone of our public-accountability system. In cooperation with our partners at the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy, at the University of Rhode Island, we have been publishing Information Works! for seven years. The “state report” is published in booklet form and is distributed throughout Rhode Island. It is also posted on this website, along with the reports for each public school and each school district.

As you look through these reports you will be able to see how well our students are performing on the state assessments in English language arts, mathematics, writing, and health education. You will see which schools are improving and which are not. You can measure and compare the performance levels of various groups of students within each school. Using our “value-added” charts, you can determine how well each school is doing when its students are compared with similar students statewide. And you will find several charts on school spending and municipal finances.

Remember, though we gather information at the student level (from test scores and surveys, for example), all of the information that we report at the school, district, or statewide level. Though we have rigorous standards and challenging assessments in place to measure student proficiency, we do not have so-called high-stakes tests for students in Rhode Island. We do not administer exams that all students must pass in order to graduate or be promoted. We have high stakes for adults, however: We hold the adults in the system – the professional staff and the administrators – accountable for student achievement. Our tests are used to measure the effectiveness of our programs, as one of the many measures of school and district improvement.

New information is included in this year’s report

This year’s Information Works! reflects the changes we have made in our statewide accountability system.

For the past three years, we have classified schools based on student performance on the state assessments. This year, our classification system has been revised so as to bring Rhode Island into full compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. As required by federal law, our schools and districts are classified based on the performance of all students and on the performance of various groups of students within the school: Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, White, students learning English, students living in poverty, and students with disabilities. We also use three additional indicators to determine the classifications: attendance rate, graduation rate, and participation rate on the state tests. Ultimately, schools and districts must meet 21 targets each year, and those that miss targets are classified as “in need of improvement.”

The Information Works! reports show you how well our schools and districts measure up against each of the targets.

We are continuing to make progress

As I look over the reports, I am struck by how well most of our schools and districts are doing, despite formidable odds.

In the first year under the tough standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, 189 schools – that’s nearly 2/3rds of our schools – met all 21 of their academic targets.

Our elementary-school pupils continue the progress they have been making for several years, particularly in the English language arts. Their scores in 2003 improved once again on the statewide tests, with nearly 2/3rds of all 4th graders achieving full proficiency on this difficult set of exams.

The mathematics scores, though somewhat lower than the state’s reading scores, continue to make us proud because of dramatic improvements. On the set of tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known informally as “The Nation’s Report Card,” our 4th graders and 8th graders reached a 10-year high in mathematics. And on our state tests, our 10th graders improved in mathematics by more than 3 percentage points, and our high-school seniors attained an all-time high on the SAT mathematics scores.

Last year there were 16 schools that had improved in both English language arts and mathematics for two years in a row. These have been designated as “Regents’ Commended Schools.” In addition, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded three public schools in our state with its highest honor: the Barrington Middle School and the Arlington School and Norwood Avenue School, both in Cranston, have been designated as Blue Ribbon Schools.

We still have work to do

Despite these accomplishments and positive trends, we still have work to do. Nearly 100 schools – about 30 percent – were classified as “in need of improvement, insufficient progress.” Some of these schools missed only one or two targets, and they may well move to a higher classification next year. Other schools missed several targets. These schools in particular will have to improve if we are to bring all children to the level of proficiency by the year 2014 – the goal of the No Child Left Behind Act.

In addition, 11 of our 36 school districts were found to be “in need of improvement.” Six of those districts have been in that status for three or more years. All six are urban districts, further evidence that there are in fact two Rhode Islands: one suburban or rural, where schools receive adequate community support and where students perform reasonably well; the other an urban Rhode Island where the local tax capacity is already strained and where many students come to school with economic disadvantages, learning disabilities, limited proficiency in English, or other special needs.

The R.I. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (RIDE) has concentrated its efforts on helping these urban districts, through the process known as Progressive Support and Intervention. Our much-publicized intervention effort at Hope High School, in Providence, has shown early signs of success, thanks to the hard work of leaders and teachers in the school. Attendance, for example, has soared this year from 65 percent to 85 percent. We will continue to work with the Providence School Department and the Providence Teachers Union and with the other urban districts to help bring about better school climates, better instructional practices, and better student achievement.

Many statewide initiatives are under way

Though we have focused on the districts that are most in need, we have many ongoing statewide initiatives that will affect all schools and all students.

For more than a year, we have been working with our colleagues in New Hampshire and Vermont to develop a uniform set of standards – called “Grade-Level Expectations”- that will guide curriculum and instruction in all three states. We have adopted the standards for English language arts and mathematics, for grades 3 through 8, and are now in the process of writing the high-school standards. You can review the standards already in place on our Web site, www.ridoe.net.

In addition, in collaboration with the Office of Higher Education, we have begun to align our standards, curriculum, and graduation requirements with the post-secondary expectations to ensure that our high-school graduates are well prepared to enter college.

The Board of Regents’ High School Reform Regulations are being implemented across the state. Over the next few years, all high schools will be reorganized into small learning communities, and all the high schools will adopt new graduation requirements under which students will demonstrate proficiency through such means as senior projects or portfolios. To help us guide schools as they develop these new graduation requirements, we have received the support of a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Building on the success of the high-school reform initiative, we are convening the first Middle School Summit later this year. We hope the summit will lead to a middle-school initiative that will lead to statewide reforms at that school level.

We were fortunate this year to receive a $2.7-million federal grant for the Reading First Program, which will train teams of teachers to work on reading skills with children in the early grades. Reading skills form the basis for all learning. Under new state regulations, school districts must establish “personal literacy plans” for all students who are reading significantly below their grade level. As more students benefit from these teaching strategies and from personal literacy plans, we expect student achievement to continue to improve across the state.

Ultimately, good learning comes down to good teaching. We have long been proud in Rhode Island of the excellent professional qualifications of our teaching force. We took several steps this year to ensure that all of our teachers and our teaching assistants are designated as “highly qualified” under the provisions of the federal law. In addition, we have established procedures to enable highly qualified professionals from fields outside of education to become certified teachers in areas of highest need, such as science instruction. These new teachers will still undergo rigorous training and ongoing mentoring once they are in the classroom.

Improving public education is a challenge to all of us

As you read through Information Works! and learn more about public education in Rhode Island, you will see that we have made much progress but we have much work to do. We must raise student achievement across the board, but especially in our middle schools and high schools. We must ensure adequate and equitable funding for all of our school districts. We must hold adults responsible for aggressively responding to student needs. We must guarantee that all schools have sufficient instructional time built into their school day, and that all teachers receive excellent training and adequate time for course development and common planning. All of us – not just professional educators but also business leaders, community members, labor leaders, and above all parents – must work together if we are to achieve these goals.

Sincerely,
Peter McWalters
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education