NEWS

Report finds RI schools ‘in crisis’

Warwick falling behind says DiBiase

Posted 10/26/22

Warwick schools are a disappointment to Michael DiBiase.

The president and CEO of the Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council made that clear following the agency’s release on the state of …

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NEWS

Report finds RI schools ‘in crisis’

Warwick falling behind says DiBiase

Posted

Warwick schools are a disappointment to Michael DiBiase.

The president and CEO of the Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council made that clear following the agency’s release on the state of K-12 education in Rhode Island and recommendations to improve the system. In its analytic study, RIPEC found Rhode Island’s education system is in “a state of crisis” that worsened considerably during the pandemic, resulting in unacceptably low student outcomes overall and wide proficiency gaps across demographic and geographic lines.

“Rhode Island needs to take action now to fix K-12 education for students, families, and the future of our state,” said DiBiase said in a statement. “We need to approach this issue with the priority and urgency demanded by the crisis, and this report can serve as a foundation for policymakers to develop a roadmap for reform that will benefit students and educators.”

Asked specifically about Warwick schools, DiBiase said, “The school district has demographics that are more positive (than other districts) yet is falling behind.” He noted that 72.7 percent of the city’s population is white, 14 percent Hispanic, less than 5 percent Black and 5.9 percent multi-racial. He said free and reduced price lunch used as a measure of child poverty is 35 percent in Warwick as compared to 43.6 percent in Cranston, yet student proficiency scores in Cranston are generally better than Warwick.

He is perplexed by Warwick’s level of teacher absenteeism which was 9.5 percent in the 2020-21 academic year putting it the fourth highest rate in the state behind Bristol-Warren, Smithfield and Central Falls.

“There seems to be no rhyme or reason,” he said.

The report says the state “historically has had high levels of teacher absenteeism” and suggests that “chronic absenteeism by relatively small numbers of teachers could skew the numbers in smaller districts.”

Additional Warwick data in the report is no less encouraging. The report found chronic Warwick student absenteeism (absent 10 percent of the 180 school days or more) for the 2020-21 academic year was 34.2 percent as compared to 12.4 percent in Cranston. The city’s four-year graduation rate of 80.9 percent in 2021 made it the sixth worst in the state.

Report data on limited English proficiency (LEP) would suggest that Warwick students are better equipped to handle the work than their counterparts in other communities. The proportion of LEP students in Warwick for 2021 is 2.2 percent as compared with Johnston at 7.4 percent and Cranston at 9.1 percent. Central Falls has the highest proportion of LEP students at 44.4 percent.

Yet data on the proportion of students with individual education plans (IEPs) for 2021 would suggest Warwick faces greater challenges than Cranston. A total of 17.2 percent of the city’s student population have IEPs as compared to Cranston at 14.9 percent. Woonsocket at 26.3 percent is highest in the state.

The Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS)ELA (English Language Arts) proficiency rates for the 2020-21 academic year put Warwick at 30.1 percent and math rates at 14.5 percent. Comparatively, the Cranston rates are 33.3 percent for ELA and 14.6 for math.

Statewide the report found only one in three (33.2 percent) students in grades three through eight could demonstrate proficiency on the ELA portion of the exam and only one in five (20.1 percent) students could demonstrate proficiency in math. On the SAT, less than one half (48.3 percent) of high school students were able to demonstrate proficiency in ELA and about a quarter (26.4 percent) could do so in math. For both exams, proficiency rates were likely even lower than reported due to sharp declines in participation rates, particularly for historically disadvantaged subgroups.


Warwick looks for improved scores

In a joint email, Warwick Superintendent Lynn Dambruch and Lisa A. Schultz, Ph.D. Director of Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, and RTI write, “Our scores for iReady K-8 this fall show a slight improvement from last fall's scores, which is a step in a positive direction.  This indicates a potential increase on our RICAS scores, which should be released in early November. We recognize that there is work to do in order to increase our scores overall, but we feel confident that with the plan that we currently have in place, we will accomplish a strong growth measure this year.  There are gaps in our data, which is also reflected in the state's data. Warwick has always been close to the state average in our data set, but we are not satisfied with this and are constantly working to improve our scores.”

Asked what he hoped the report would achieve, DiBiase said it is not aimed at placing blame, but rather revealing the state of the system with the hope of elevating education as a priority for the public and state leaders. He placed education as fourth or fifth in issues of concern behind the economy and inflation. DiBiase believes education should be in first place.

“While Rhode Island ranks 12th highest for spending per student, its student outcomes are middling compared to the nation overall and low compared to other New England states,” said Justine Oliva, RIPEC’s Manager of Research. “Equally as serious are the stark gaps between student outcomes across lines of geography, race and ethnicity, and other demographic features including poverty, disability status, and English language proficiency. The Covid-19 pandemic and the related closure of schools only exacerbated these issues.”

Rhode Island posted the nation’s third highest white/Hispanic proficiency gap for eighth grade reading on the 2019 National Assessment for Education Progress. On the same assessment, proficiency rates for Rhode Island’s limited English proficient students were significantly lower than rates for these students in the U.S. overall. The gap between the graduation rate of Rhode Island’s special education students, economically disadvantaged students, and Hispanic students and their peers who are not members of these subgroups was greater than that seen in most states.

“Rhode Island has large populations of nonwhite, limited English proficient, and economically disadvantaged students, compared to other New England states, and the proportion of non-white students and limited English proficient students in Rhode Island have grown markedly in recent years,” said Oliva. “Rhode Island must take immediate action to support students, enhance professional development for teachers, recruit more teachers in high needs areas, and increase funding for economically disadvantaged districts,” she said.  

RIPEC’s report additionally provides an organizational overview of the state’s governance structures; a historical analysis of statewide education reform initiatives from the 1980s to present; an analysis of teacher certification, compensation, and demographic trends; and analyses of student demographic and outcome trends over time, in comparison to the region and nation, and across school districts.


What needs to be done

Given its findings, RIPEC’s report offers to policymakers the following considerations:

  • Education reform should be pursued by all stakeholders with the level of priority and urgency commensurate with the current crisis. At the same time, policymakers should resist imposing piecemeal mandates and requirements on school districts and teachers that have no meaningful effect on student outcomes and divert time and resources away from improving academic achievement.
  • The state’s school funding formula should be reformed to increase the state share of overall education funding and target more state aid to support disadvantaged communities.
  • Policymakers should reform the governance of Rhode Island’s K-12 system to streamline authorities, clarify responsibilities, and improve accountability.
  • More time and resources need to be invested in teacher professional development that is content-centered and teacher-driven, particularly for math instruction.
  • More needs to be done to recruit, retain, and support new teachers, particularly teachers in high-need areas and teachers of color, including through adjustments to new teacher compensation and the reinstatement of the state’s beginning teacher induction program.
  • Resources should be directed towards English Language Learner certification for existing teachers, teacher preparation programs should be required to provide training in teaching limited English proficient students, and the state funding formula should be revised to include dedicated funding for limited English proficient students.
  • Policymakers should make room for innovation and choice so that school districts and educators can address the great disparity of student backgrounds and needs presented across Rhode Island’s K-12 system.

In responding to the report Dambruch and Schultz note the state rollout of new, high-quality standards and the need for new curricula that follow these standards.

“In Warwick, we have adopted all state-of-the-art curricula that meet these standards.  We only will accept the best for our students,” they write. They say professional development is continuing and the department is “laser focused” on student discourse “to help combat the negative effects of Covid-19 and are also moving forward with the Right to Read Act Training, which teaches all educators in the district about the Science of Reading.  In this way, all educators understand the basics of reading instruction and how to connect with students.”

They continue, “Our professional development also dives deeper than it has in the past due to spending more than one day on a topic.  For example, we have had a partnership with iReady for mathematics over the past five years, and they have been involved in coaching and walk-throughs at our schools K-8 for the last two. We are doing this same coaching model with Wit and Wisdom this year, our new ELA series for K-5. Again, we understand that there is work to do, but we are willing and ready to get it done.”

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  • ThatGuyInRI

    They're using absenteeism rates from the 2020-2021 school year to make a judgement on students and teachers.

    Do they realize that HEALTHY students and teachers were REQUIRED to be absent during this timeframe due to a "close contact" with someone who had tested positive for COVID19?

    Do you think there is any chance being forced to be absent had an impact on absenteeism rates?

    Thursday, October 27, 2022 Report this