Providence Schools Violated State Law
Monday, August 01, 2011
Each week during the 2010/2011 school year, high school students were dismissed two hours early every Wednedsay, which adds up to nearly two weeks of lost learning time. Middle school students across the city were allowed to leave an hour early on Tuesdays throughout the year.
The reason: Beginning with last year, the state requires middle and high schools to dedicate at least one to two hours each week toward “common planning time,” an inititative used by “teams of teachers, administrators, and other educators for the substantive planning of instruction, looking at student work, addressing student needs, and group professional development,” according to the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE).
Councilman Wants Issue Addressed
In Providence, that extra planning time came at the expense of the students’ school time. Rather than extending the day and spending an estimated $5 million in extra pay and benefits for teachers, the School Department chose to schedule the common planning time during the school day and dismiss students early one day each week.
Providence City Councilman and former School Board member Sam Zurier, who has two children in the school system, said he became aware of the policy last fall prior to being elected and continued to research the issue throughout the year. In a letter sent to his constiuents in June, Zurier said he remains concerned.
“While school policy is not typically a City Council issue, I became concerned about the impact on our children’s education, as well as the cost we will have to assume if (as I expect) RIDE enforces this requirement next year,” he wrote.
Zurier said he plans to hold a hearing in three weeks to “invite the School Department to explain how they plan to address this issue in the coming school year.”
It’s Almost Criminal
It is unclear how the School Department managed to bypass both the School Board and RIDE in making the decision to allow students to leave school early each week. The Taveras Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
The rule is spelled out very clearly by RIDE. According to June 2004 guidelines regarding the length of the day, “the school day shall consist of not less tan five and a half (5 ½) hours (three hundred thirty (330) minutes) of actual school work, excluding lunch, recess periods, study halls, homeroom, common planning time, student passing time, pre and post teacher time, and any other time that is not actual instuctional time.”
But even parents say they were caught off guard when they learned about the early dismissals. Dawn Clifton, a mother of three with a son in a Providence high school, said her family did not reciever proper notice from the School Department.
“The early dismissal came as a very unwelcome surprise at the beginning of the 2010/2011 school year for my family,” Clifton wrote in an e-mail to GoLocalProv. “We did not receive adequate notice from PPSD and I have not seen any evidence to support how the common planning time has benefited my son. In fact, I find the loss of approximately 185 hours of instruction time per year, for a district that is failing miserably from attendance issues (students and teachers), low test scores and dropping graduation rates is irresponsible, unnecessary and almost criminal.”
Extend The School Day
While Maryellen Butke, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Campaign For Achievement Now, said she is in full support of common planning time, she agreeed that the loss of two hours of instructional time each week is unacceptable.
“Goal oriented common planning time has been shown to improve student outcomes,” Butke told GoLocalProv. “Unfortunately, in Providence, common planning time occurs on Wednesday afternoons during the school day, with students ending the day nearly two hours early. This academic time is critical for Providence students, especially with the proficiency levels so low in our capital city.
She said the school day should be made longer so teachers can adqequately prepare and students can continue to learn.
“Every minute that students spend with time on task is critical to the development of their skills,” she said. “The Providence school day should be longer in order to accomodate both common planning time for teachers as well as extended time for students.”
Difficult Year For Providence Schools
The news of the city violating the state’s minimum class time requriement comes on the heels of a difficult year for Providence Public Schools.
The city made national headlines when Mayor Taveras announced that he would be issuing termination notices to every teacher in the district (the notices were rescinded. In March, Superintendent Tom Brady announced his resignation on the same day four additional city schools were added to the list of the state’s "persistently lowest-achieving" list. And in June, GoLocalProv reported that 41 percent of high school seniors had missed at least 20 days of school, which under School Board rules, would make them inelibile to graduate.
The common planning time rules only add to the disruption, according to Clifton.
“I am utterly and completely against the early dismissal days for PPSD,” she said. “t may work for other districts, but I don't think it's best for our students at this time.”
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Comments:
Concerned Taxpayer
6:23am on Monday, August 01, 2011
This is Mr. Zurier's childish response to an elected school board. He is angry he cannot push "his" reform agenda through. A school year later he is complaining about early dismissal; where has he been? This practice has been going on for several years! Mr. Zurier, why don't you worry about your constiuents tax increase?
guy smily
6:55am on Monday, August 01, 2011
Students need more time in school period. The school day should be made longer for all school systems. Many of our students are not learning and are being pushed out just to graduate them. Compared to other countries we are behind. As for Providence, how do you feel about David Cicilline now?
Buc Kner
7:44am on Monday, August 01, 2011
Zurier has FINALLY..FINALLY..found his stage..and now we cant leave the theater for another 3 more years..LUCKY US
Stephen DeNuccio
8:37am on Monday, August 01, 2011
Yup.....! Business as usual here in the City of Providnce regarding is public school system. With the performance numbers in the toilet in Providnce Schools, one has to wonder what the motivation was behind allowing students to leave the "learning process" two hours early. Hmmmm .....This was last year, yet another Cicciline Stamp of failure and then RI sends him to congress to do more damage. ?????
maria sowa
10:00am on Monday, August 01, 2011
This was no big secret and the State was fully aware of the fact. As for parents not knowing, the city had early release EVERY OTHER WEEK the previous year so it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN that shocking! And a question for Zurier? Why didn't Nathan Bishop do well on State Testing after ALL the work he did to get only select teachers and students into the building? Zurier only cares about his own children and not paying tuition to the East Side schools! He is so transparent and self serving....................
David Tedeschi
10:23am on Monday, August 01, 2011
Do your research GOLOCAL, as many schools were released at 1:25, which is 90 minutes a week, not 120. The schools that were released 2 hours early was because kids could take their lunch home and did not have their lunch period that day.
Anony Mous
10:56am on Monday, August 01, 2011
I happen to be a student in the Providence Public Schools Department. There are many, many things wrong with it, but I do not find the early-release days "illegal" or "unethical". It certainly shouldn't have been a suprise, only discovered in the middle of summer. This has been going on for at least two years. One would have only had to look outside on a Wednesday afternoon to see the sea of students coming out early. It wasn't negative - true, we lost a little school time, but we gained a lot of other time which we could use for studying, homework, or after-school activities. How can Classical, the highest-performing school in Rhode Island, be suffering from the early release days which it was part of. It was also a motivator, in my opinion. It kept us looking forward in the week and from having a monotonous school year. I personally loved them, and I hope that they are reinstated in the future.
C B11
11:04am on Monday, August 01, 2011
All that time set aside for planning and the kids are STILL failing miserably! Forgive my sarcasm, but it doesn't sound like they missed much on the learning side by being dismissed early! Since allocating this time for teachers has proven NOT to have had any good influence on the students' grades, these meetings during school hours should be stopped immediately. If this is truly "all about the children" and for their benefit, they can always allocate time for this AFTER school hours, right? RIGHT? ...yeah....that's what I thought....
stephanie zhou
11:20am on Monday, August 01, 2011
Who cares who brings it to the public's attention, some one has to be brave enough to speak up. OUR children are being deprived of at least 70 house of teaching due to this rediculous policy. Each and every child attending school in Providence has the right to a full day of teaching.
I do not receive extra compensation for completing work after five oclock or travel time.
Where is the productive discussion ??
Nichole Hersey
12:55pm on Monday, August 01, 2011
CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION would send emails to the department heads telling us what to do for this common planning time. Every week we had a form to fill out about one of the GSEs. We had to look up what was previously learned in the grade before it and the grade after it, and tell the differences.
WASTE OF TIME. Hardly any common planning. Blame the central admin again. They ENFORCED it and DICTATED what we had to do during that waste of time.
Joe Pvd
6:40pm on Monday, August 01, 2011
is it possible to have someone from central administration of Providence Public Schools comment or clarify?
james phelan
7:23pm on Monday, August 01, 2011
@Nicole Hersey...you are a brave woman, speaking out publicly about Central Administration. Don't you know that you will be blacklisted by the Exectutive Director of High Schools for speaking your mind. You better hope your school doesn't close or go into intervention or you will be "swimming in the pool". I kid you not.
Nichole Hersey
7:48pm on Monday, August 01, 2011
Hi James. You are insinuating that our Central Administration is either Fascist or a Dictatorship.
Unfortunately, I am quite sick of hearing how schools are out of compliance because of decisions out of the school's hands. I'm sick of being blamed for teachers doing nothing. I'm sick of hearing about extending a school day for students who don't attend school regularly nor do they come to school on time. Extending a day won't help the kids that are constantly absent or come in late! They still miss instruction.
All these things have a negative effect on MY job. No real problems are addressed and we just get negative publicity for issues completely our of our control. This so called common planning time had to be an accepted policy by the powers that be. Why all of a sudden is it this big "scandal" when we have been doing it for years? It would have been more productive if we could have teamed up with people we work well with to plan our lessons for our classes or share things that are useful instead of filling out forms incessantly.
Regardless, common planning or no common planning is NOT going to solve our problems. You need to address the root first then the little stuff later. Anyone with common sense knows that. Unfortunately, most don't admit it.
Nichole Hersey
8:01pm on Monday, August 01, 2011
You know, I co-taught this year with a special ed teacher. We worked so well together and I learned so many strategies from her that it was better than any professional development I have taken and better than any "common planning time" "task" that was assigned to us to complete.
These strategies were useful with the special ed AND the regular ed students.
I'm honest, and my co-teacher is honest. Put us together in a room to figure out strategies and plan. We aren't going to just sit there getting paid to goof off. We had a chance when writing modifications for the special ed student's final exam. It worked perfectly. We worked by ourselves, went through the test, and made the modifications. We shared them with the whole department. This was an example of successful common planning time. Unfortunately, this only happened once with this teacher and me last year.
james phelan
9:22am on Tuesday, August 02, 2011
@Nichole...no, I'm stating that at least one of the Central Office Administrators acts like a dictator. Hiring is micromanaged, the principals do NOT have the final say. A blacklist of teachers who "were not liked" was created until the union stepped in and investigated. That supposedly put a stop to it but be careful. Some administrators are not there to support the children but instead to use their power to "get even" with people they perceive as slighted them.
Nichole Hersey
6:34pm on Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Hi James!!!!
I think I know to whom you are referring. I had friends lose jobs or titles because they weren't like by admin.
I certainly know that school admin don't have final say. We have nice admins at my school... I've been at others where the admins were spies for downtown and split the faculty into those who snitch and those who don't. It was awful.
You are correct about getting even.... some building admins were like that too. Scary isn't it?? I'm guessing you work in the system. Maybe someday we will meet at a union meeting.