Commissioner's Report

May 2007

Dear Fellow Rhode Islanders:

I am pleased to report to you that this year we have seen significant gains in student achievement across the entire state.

In January, we released the second round of results from the New England Common Assessment Program, a set of tests that we developed in partnership with New Hampshire and Vermont. These tests are set to very high standards agreed to by all three states, and they are administered simultaneously in the three states. We first administered the tests in 2005, and last fall we administered them for the second year.

The improvements were dramatic. Statewide, reading scores rose 4 percentage points and mathematics rose 3 points. More important, the gains were enjoyed by all student groups:

Moreover, we saw improvement in nearly all school districts. In fact, we saw the biggest gains in our core urban districts (Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence, Woonsocket), where scores improved by 5 points in both mathematics and reading.

This is great news for our state, and it marks what I believe will be the first stage of continued improvement as we work together to bring all of our students to proficiency.

Rising Test Scores: How Did We Do It?

As we take a moment to celebrate these improvements in test scores, let’s bear in mind that these excellent results are the product of many years of wise investments and hard work by students, educators, and community leaders around the state. This year, in fact, marks the 10th anniversary of the passage of “Article 31,” which became the Rhode Island Student Investment Initiative, the set of laws that laid the foundation for a decade of education reform and school improvement in Rhode Island.

Ten years ago, public education in Rhode Island was almost entirely a local responsibility. There were no state standards and no state tests that were based on standards, no school-performance classifications, no graduation requirements other than course credit hours, and no systems in place for helping schools and districts in need.

Over the past ten years, public education has increasingly become a state responsibility, and I truly believe that we have changed forever the way our educators teach and our students learn. We have:

• Adopted the first statewide standards – what students should know and be able to do at each grade level – in English, mathematics, and science

• Joined with two partner states to implement new state tests based on those standards

• Put in place an online Statewide Curriculum in mathematics, reading, and writing

• Developed our first statewide accountability system to classify schools and districts based on their annual performance

• Established a new Diploma System to ensure that all students must demonstrate that they have achieved proficiency in six core subject areas in order to graduate

• Ended the practice of lifetime certification for educators and put in its place a new process for certification that is based on individual learning plans (I-Plans) for all educators

• Brought support to schools and districts that missed their annual targets

• Intervened in or restructured schools and districts that have missed their targets consistently

• Focused on early intervention in order to help all students who are reading below grade level

• Published the first statewide PreK-12 Literacy Policy to guide and unify all state literacy initiatives

• Hired expert teachers in mathematics and science to improve instruction statewide in these vital subject areas

With these initiatives in place, I am confident that we have taken the necessary steps to ensure that our students will be well prepared for college and for the world of work.

The Problems That Lie Before Us

Though we can take a moment this year to celebrate the achievements of our students and their teachers, we must not be complacent. We still have much work to do. Though we did see higher test scores among all students groups and across the state, it remains a troubling fact that our suburban schools still far outperform the schools in our urban districts. Equity gaps still exist across the state. The test scores of English-language learners, students with disabilities, and students living in poverty fall well below the annual state targets.

For example, among elementary- and middle-school students, 62 percent were proficient in reading – but only 44 percent of students living in poverty, 27 percent of students with disabilities, and 23 percent of English-language learners attained proficiency. In our suburban districts, 74 percent of the students were proficient in reading, but in the urban districts only 40 percent were proficient. These gaps must be closed.

To do so, we need to develop a consistent, reliable, and fair method of financing public education. Through many years of support from the Governor’s Office and the General Assembly, we have reached the point at which all districts get enough state and federal aid to equalize their per-pupil spending.

Unfortunately, the needs of the districts are not equal. Our urban districts enroll many students who are new to the country and who have limited knowledge of English. They enroll a high percentage students living in poverty, many of whom come to school from unstable family backgrounds and with little or no preschool preparation. In Providence, for example, about 75 percent of the students live in poverty and about 15 percent of the students are English-language learners.

Moreover, our system for funding education relies heavily on the property tax, but our urban districts have limited ability to raise funds at the local level. Our urban districts consistently have the lowest property-tax capacity (the amount of property wealth available for taxation) and they make the greatest tax effort (the amount of taxes levied on property). As a result, the urban districts are largely or entirely dependent on state and federal aid.
This year, a legislative committee of the General Assembly has received reports and testimony regarding the requirements for an equitable funding formula that would take into account student needs and district capacity. Staff members at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (RIDE) are providing technical assistance to the legislators to help them as they proceed in the important work of developing a formula for state aid to education.

Information Works!: The State Report Card

A successful system of public education can be established and maintained only if the public is well informed. In Rhode Island, we have developed over the past 10 years a robust system of public reporting and accountability. We conduct and publish the results of the annual SALT Survey of all students, parents, and teachers. We collect and publish school financial data through our In$ite program. We are in the midst of building the RIDE Data Warehouse, through which all education data will be accessible to educators and to the public at large. And we have published our annual set of school, district, and state report cards through Information Works!.

Information Works! 2007 serves as the official Rhode Island State Report Card, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act. In this report, you will find state-level data as well as many tables that give data for all schools and all districts. If you are interested in more detailed information on any school or district, you can read the individual school and district reports on this Web site.

As you look through Information Works! 2007, you will see how well our students are performing on state assessments. You will also find reports that summarize the findings of our annual SALT Surveys regarding instructional practices, school climate, and parental engagement. And you will find charts and tables on school spending and municipal finances.
Information Works!, now in its tenth year, is the result of a successful partnership between RIDE and the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy, at the University of Rhode Island. Since 1997, there has been basic policy agreement on education, shared by the legislature, the Regents, and the Governor. I hope that you will use this report to become more engaged in public education, no matter what your community of interest. School improvement is a challenge for all of us – parents, teachers, and students of course, but also business leaders, labor leaders, and community members. Let’s continue working together to ensure the best possible education for all of our students.

Sincerely,
Peter McWalters
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education