Warning: This Game Is Not for Children
Thursday, February 03, 2011
In the middle of this winter of our discontent, the rearrangement of a state education Board may be going unnoticed by busy, weary families. But changes announced this week for the state Board of Regents has a whole lot to do with the future opportunities these families can expect for their children, whether they realize it or not. Chairman Robert Flanders, who provided strong leadership as an unwavering supporter of the bold reform vision of state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, is stepping down and former House Majority Leader and friend to unions and union lawyers, George Caruolo, is Governor Chafee’s pick for new Board Chairman.
Though it may be unfair to prejudge incoming appointments, it’s a foregone conclusion to state that for the Board to lose Judge Flanders and the equally strong Gist supporters Angus Davis and Anna Cano-Morales all at once spells setbacks for the Gist engine for sure. But to characterize this as a victory for the Chafee-Union alliance, and a defeat for the lightning rod Commissioner is to miss the shameful truth. After all, if the leadership of the teachers’ unions wants to reclaim their turf as the unnamed but fully operating Commissioners of Education, what record of victory are they actually trying to reclaim?
Furthermore, what record of achievement is Chafee so determined to defend and restore? Certain suburban districts perform well but Rhode Island’s overall pitiful rankings in numerous K-12 achievement standards speak for themselves. Very often lost in the exhaustive debates over the public schools is an honest acknowledgement of how the schools are micro-managed by the union contract. Too often when the battle lines are drawn by the media, the emphasis is placed only on disagreements over money. But the real flashpoint, at the heart of the Gist reform efforts, concerns the overreach of the union contract governing the day by day and even hour by hour approach to instruction and dictation of the schedule which chokes the schools, the overreach dictating which teacher will be assigned to which grade, or subject, regardless of proper training which produces mediocre—or worse—results.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThese types of practices is what Gist has run up against in her creed of students’ needs come first, adults’ conveniences and needs second. The decades-long union policy which perhaps most glaringly demonstrated putting the adults' needs first (job security) and the students’ needs well behind (best trained teacher assigned to their class) was the staff “bumping” system, especially prevalent in the Providence schools which allowed seniority and seniority only—to dictate class assignment for teachers. (Gist had to challenge bumping in court.) In the midst of the chaos erupting at Central Falls High School last year, it was noted that the 100-plus page contract can make something as primary as setting a school’s daily schedule a nearly impossible task.
The legions of good and very dedicated teachers who do work hard in our state’s schools will tell you certain practices frustrate them as well but they are governed by the constraints of the contracts. The charter school movement evolved in an attempt to loosen those constraints. Governor Chafee needs to realize that it is low-income children, too often stuck in dysfunctional urban schools, who have benefitted the most by charter school growth, and they have the most to lose by any attempt to muzzle charters.
As the new Board of Regents takes shape, perhaps we can ask the Governor to at least make us one promise: to refrain from resorting to the tired, phony rationale that you are making choices for the “best interests of the children.” Say you are a man of your campaign word, and so you have to fulfill promises to constituencies who got you over the top. Say you promised to appoint a Board of Regents that would see things “their way.” But please Governor, please do not tell us that by making choices which are plainly intent on derailing the woman who embodies the state’s last best hope for a quality public school system, don’t say you are doing this for the good of our children.
Gist has a bright, energetic future ahead of her regardless of any turn of events that occur. It’s our kids’ futures—which an inferior education diminishes—which are at stake. Perhaps her greatest offense has been that she has made Rhode Island take a long hard look in the mirror. It is not her fault that we know we should not be proud of what we see.
Donna Perry is a Communications Consultant to the RI Statewide Coalition www.statewidecoalition.com
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