Save Rhode Island: Do the Math
Saturday, April 14, 2012
This is a story of hope, but you will have to read all the way to the end to know why.
This past October, all of Rhode Island’s 11th grade public school students sat down to take the NECAP test. As recently reported in the Providence Journal, one of the questions went like this:
Courtney walks three laps around a ¼-mile track. How many feet does she walk? (1 mile = 5,280 feet.)GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
A 440 feet. B 1,320 feet. C 3,960 feet. D 7,040 feet.
Being able to multiply and divide four-digit numbers would have helped but as long as students understood the problem and the concept of fractions, a rough estimate (what is ¾ of 5280?) would have given them the answer: C.
Sixty-nine percent of them chose the wrong answer.
Shortly after the NECAP, in November, United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to Rhode Island to speak. For those who heard his remarks, the results of that math problem won’t come as a total surprise. Secretary Duncan turned his attention to global competitiveness: according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, he said, “all students in twenty-four nations are more likely to be proficient in math than just the white students here in Rhode Island…In math, Rhode Island’s white students trail Iceland, Estonia, Slovenia…[as well as] their counterparts in 37 states.”
An Epidemic
Rhode Islanders have a general sense that low math achievement plagues our urban school districts, though perhaps most are not aware of how drastic the situation is. Of the 1180 11th graders in Providence Public Schools other than the select Classical High School, only 40 – less than a busload – are proficient in math. Imagine them on that one bus with a few seats to spare.
Secretary Duncan’s point, however, was that poor math performance is not restricted to Rhode Island’s most disadvantaged students. It is epidemic.
Teaching Americans math and science has been essential to the health of the U.S. economy for a long while. According to the National Science Foundation (2004), scientific innovation has produced roughly half of all U.S. economic growth in the last 50 years. Going forward, it will be even more important: according to a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor in 2007, “of the 20 fastest-growing occupations over the coming decade, 17 will be in health care and computer fields.”
An emphasis on teaching science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) makes economic sense. We hear more about STEM every day, and yet the rhetoric is not matching our practices.
With the second highest unemployment rate in the nation, persistent in a way that defies the recovery of neighboring states, Rhode Island simply must adopt bold and proven educational strategies to improve outcomes for our kids.
Three years ago, I met a student named Freddy. He was five years old, new to Rhode Island, didn’t speak a word of English, was not literate in his native Spanish and wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. It was his first day of kindergarten. Freddy’s mother had enrolled him in the state’s first Mayoral Academy. Freddy had smart, committed, well-trained and well-supported teachers and support staff. Freddy went to school from 7:45am to 4:00pm and sometimes on Saturdays. Freddy’s teacher was available by cell phone until 9:00pm to help with home assignments when necessary. There were teachers and staff in Freddy’s school who could speak to his family in Spanish. By the end of kindergarten, Freddy could read in English. He was also, it turned out, among the best math students in a school now full of proficient math students.
I don’t tell this story so briefly to make it sound easy – quite the opposite, it is really hard work. But it must be done. Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy, Freddy’s public school, was given the autonomy and flexibility it needed to succeed with a very diverse population of students and it has done so, and not just with kindergarteners. When 5th graders entered BVP Mayoral Academy middle school last year 48% of them were proficient in math, about what you’d predict based on proficiency in the sending districts of Central Falls, Cumberland, Lincoln and Pawtucket. After only one year, that same group of kids was 89% proficient, good for third place among 6th graders in the state behind only Barrington Middle School and the Compass School in South Kingstown.
Do More of What Works
Seeing the diverse population of BVP Mayoral Academy scholars succeed (about two-thirds live in low-income families, about half are Black or Latino) brings tears to my eyes. I helped found their school, am emotionally connected to it, and I believe that the promise I see in them is Rhode Island’s promise. But I refuse to see them as a magical exception. They are just kids – Freddy, Hannah, Dynacty, Dylan, Genesis, Emily, Aidan, Marcus, Alejandra, Zoe and over 500 others -- who learned, over the course of a year, what every kid should have learned. Teachers and students worked very hard in a system that set them up to succeed. It is as simple and as difficult as that.
The fate of our state depends on abandoning 20th century turf wars and backbiting nonsense and instead focusing on improving outcomes for large numbers of kids, however we can.
We need to do more of what we know works and we need to do it now.
And I am full of hope. I have seen whole schools of adults and children, rowing in one direction, accomplish things that few thought they could. Let’s all insist that Rhode Island adopt what’s working, change and improve. The desks where our Rhode Island children learn (or do not learn) to multiply and divide rest at the intersection of economic growth and social justice. Whatever your political persuasion, we can’t have one without the other. It’s a matter of simple math.
Mike MaGee is CEO of Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, a non-profit organization supporting a growing network of Mayoral Academy public schools across Rhode Island.
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