Middletown's State Funding Cuts, Teacher Concerns Subject of Forum with Gist

To the Middletown parents, educators and town leaders who met with her Thursday night at , Rhode Island Department of Education Commissioner Deborah Gist acknowledged there remains some anxiety among teachers and parents over the continued overhaul of the state’s education system.

But the state’s top education administrator also maintained with much conviction and confidence on Wednesday night that Rhode Island is "heading in the right direction.”

To her critics who say she’s been moving “too fast,” Gist responded that the state “can’t move fast enough” and points to last’s year’s $75 million “Race to the Top” federal grant award as the vehicle to get Rhode Island there.

“I have parents telling me that they have a sophomore in high school now and couldn’t we somehow make these changes sooner,” Gist told the group of about 40 people who came out to hear what the state’s top education administrator had to say regarding Rhode Island’s education system today and the direction it’s heading.

“There is an urgency right now. But it’s finding that right balance of not sacrificing quality of education for urgency,” Gist said of the timetable to develop and implement such aspects as statewide curriculum and the new teacher evaluation system, which is set to roll out in September.

 “It’s ambitious but it’s reasonable,” Gist said. "I do think that we're going at the exact pace we need to."

The forum on Wednesday night was part of a listening tour that Gist has undertaken to visit communities and meet with parents and educators throughout Rhode Island. The tour also seemed to be, in part, a way for Gist to set the record straight on a number of issues where’s she’s received phone calls and emails, she says, based on false information or confusion spread by word of mouth, presumably the result of some of those anxieties among educators and parents as changes continue to unfold.

“I love Rhode Island dearly, and this is my home, but there is a telephone chain here like I’d never seen before,” mused Gist lightheartedly later in the evening. “One person says something and it just spreads like wildlife until eventually I get the phone call and I say, ‘You heard what?’ ”

The questions from parents and educators Wednesday night seemed to touch on the main issues Gist has seen elsewhere in Rhode Island: concerns about state education funding, teacher evaluations, standards-based curriculum, and what Race-to-the Top means for Rhode Island.

Race to the Top

Of that $75 million award to Rhode Island's Department of Education, Middletown stands to receive $88,000 earmarked primarily for professional development. Gist said the raw allocation number alone doesn't show the other ways in which Rhode Island's $75 million package will be used to help Middletown.

While some communities are receiving more than others, a large portion of funds is also being used to development statewide programs and support systems that will affect all cities and towns, Gist noted.

"It's almost like we were looking at the whole state as one district and how we could most effectively pool resources to help all the individual districts. That's how we wrote the grant and one of the reasons why we received the grant," Gist explained.

Lessons from Massachusetts

Often citing Massachusetts’ education system as a model to follow, which is among the leaders in the United States for student achievement, she noted that our neighbor to the north implemented standards-based curriculum about 20 years ago. Rhode Island has much to learn from Massachusetts and continues to do so, she said, especially when it comes to math and science, the two areas seen as the major weaknessed within the American public schools system due to a lack of structured curriculum at all levels, but particularly at the elementary levels, she explained.

The lack of science and math scholars has a direct impact to the nation's innovations, economy and workforce, she said, noting that many high paid science and math-based professions are often outsourced to professionals in other countries because America simply doesn't have enough qualified candidates to fill those positions.

"We do some things really well that other countries don't do, but science and math is not one of them," she said.

“Massachusetts was not always the best in the country. They’ve learned that, and we’ve modeled what we’re doing after what they’ve done,” Gist said.

Middletown's loss of state education funding

Given the timing of Gist’s visit, when Middletown works to close its foreseen $3.1 million structural deficit due in large part to the loss of state and federal education funding, the topic of the state’s new funding formula drew several questions from the crowd, mainly concerns about why Middletown ended up on the losing end of the statewide adjustment.

Gist’s answer came down to issues of fairness and attempts to right the wrongs established over nearly two decades.

Before she accepted the commissioner’s position, she explained, her research showed that Rhode Island was the only state without a true funding formula. That happened because education aid numbers had been locked in during the early '90s for communities and since that time had failed to adjust for the changing needs of each town, such as demographics, populations and other factors.

The result was that after more than 15 years of blind funding, with across-the-board level adjustments made in good and bad economic times, some communities ended up with much more than their rightful share, while others were severely shortchanged.

She cited one example involving two neighboring municipalities where one had double the state funding over its neighbor, despite the fact that they had nearly identical demographics and other indicators.

“So talk about out-of-whack. It was just not good,” Gist said.

Working with analysts as Brown University, the Department of Education came up with a formula that will gradually restore each community to its appropriate funding level over a 10-year period to minimize the negative impact to some communities on the losing end, such as Middletown.

The new funding formula will, however, constantly adjust with the changing needs of each community, Gist noted.

Teachers' concerns

Gist also heard from Middletown teachers on the changing curriculum and new teacher evaluation system set to begin in the Fall of 2011.

Some in the audience said they worried they cannot be as creative or passionate when teaching standards-based curriculum.

“I know that some people feel constrained but it doesn’t have to feel that way,” Gist said. “You can look at things you’re already doing and doing well, things that you’re passionate about, and see how you can make the standards part of that lesson, or how to re-work that lesson so that it also includes the standards.”

To the issue of professional evaluations, Gist didn’t mince words when she spoke of school districts needing to identify “ineffective teachers,’” but she maintained that the goal would be to work with them on areas for further skills development and improvements.

“Our goal is to design a system so that they can grow as a professional and improve,” Gist said. “We know there are ineffective teachers out there, unfortunately, and that’s a fact everywhere. But the majority of teachers simply don’t fall into that category.”