Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 announced new graduation requirements for Rhode Island high school students and a new urban education task force at an education panel held Thursday on College Hill.
Warren Simmons, executive director of Brown's Annenberg Institute for School Reform, will head the state's Urban Education Task Force, which will undertake an evaluation of education in Rhode Island cities over the next 18 months, Carcieri said at the Hope Club on Benevolent Street Thursday morning. The task force aims to incorporate teachers, students, administrators and parents in a discussion about urban education.
Beginning with the graduating class of 2008, Rhode Island high school students will need to meet three major standards of proficiency in order to receive diplomas. Students must successfully fulfill at least 20 courses in six core areas, demonstrate proficiency on state assessments in English, language arts and mathematics and complete an exhibition or portfolio that applies skills they learned in high school.
The exhibition or portfolio will allow students who might not ordinarily test well to demonstrate proficiency, Carcieri said.
Other requirements for graduation include the creation and completion of an individual learning plan that plots each student's course of study and extracurricular activities, as well as special projects adapted to each student's interests.
Before this year, Rhode Island did not have state-wide requirements for high school graduation. A school's principal determined whether a student could or could not graduate.
Efforts to improve public education in Rhode Island came in response to concerns in 2000 from colleges and employers about low student performance levels. The state's Board of Regents led an evaluation of schools using standardized tests, classroom assessments and student projects that demonstrate applied learning. As a result of these evaluations, the board concluded that many students in Rhode Island fall below grade level in reading, writing and mathematics and are not prepared to meet the demands of higher education or the work force.
In addition, the board found that schools are not meeting students' individual needs.
Rhode Island united with Vermont and New Hampshire three years ago to form the New England Common Assessment Program, Carcieri said. This year, teachers from all three states helped develop a new standardized test to evaluate students' learning. The test allows Rhode Island schools to see how they "stack up" with comparable schools in the rest of the state, as well as schools in Vermont and New Hampshire, Carcieri said.
According to Carcieri, scores on the NECAP's standardized tests for elementary and middle school students in Rhode Island have improved by about 5 percent over a three year period. On the most recent tests, 62 percent of students met average reading proficiency, while 53 percent met average math proficiency. Carcieri estimated that average proficiency for students in suburban and rural areas is 70 to 75 percent. The test will first be administered to high school students this year.
A different test evaluated some high school graduates two years ago. Rhode Island high school graduates matriculating at the Community College of Rhode Island were tested on their proficiency in reading, writing and math.
"What came out of that was 55 percent ... of the freshmen going to CCRI required remedial work in either math, reading or writing in order to be brought up to a level where they can be successful in college," Carcieri said.
Students who do not score as proficient on the NECAP tests will need to "bite the bullet" and commit to meeting proficiency requirements, said panel member Peter McWalters, the state's commissioner of elementary and secondary education.
In most states, schools allow students to take standardized assessment exams more than once if they fail them the first time, said Kenneth Wong, professor of education at Brown. He said he expects Rhode Island will follow this example. "How to deal with these students raises the question of capacity and instruction," Wong told The Herald.
Schools will need to coordinate the curriculum with the support of teachers, Wong said. "If they fail it a second time, it might be that students are not benefitting from the way teachers are teaching," he said.
Forty-five other states employ similar systems of standardized assessment, Wong said. "Rhode Island is part of a national move toward examining student performance before graduation," he said.
Though improving suburban and rural education is important, improving urban education is a greater priority for Rhode Island, Carcieri said.
"At the end of the day, if we can't get all the youngsters in our urban communities coming out of those schools with the skills that they need, we're in big trouble," he said.
"What we're doing is not working," Carcieri said. "It's not getting us to where we need to get to." Carcieri added that the sooner the state starts working on "intervention" in urban schools, the sooner Rhode Island will see results.
McWalters backed the call for urban school reform. "We can't afford to have disposable kids," McWalters said.
He attributed the disparity in test scores between students in suburban areas and those in urban areas to "unwritten community standards." McWalters said that though the state hasn't mandated academic proficiency, suburban and rural areas have established their own community standards. "As you get progressively into the urban core, the standard starts to float," he said.
"(Public education) is a self-serving, insidious system," he added. "The state is stepping in and saying, 'Does that have to be? Do I have to predict student results by income, class, family or race?' The answer now is, 'No.' "
Simmons said school officials should also consider focusing more on students' post-graduation opportunities. "After getting kids to reach basic proficiency, how do we provide the opportunities to kids to participate in the economy?" he asked, adding that education does not end in the classroom.
"The task will be how we create a playing field that supports learning inside and outside of school," Simmons said.
