Education chief sees progress,<br> but also much left to do

PETER McWALTERS, the state education commissioner, recently testified before Congress on improving No Child Left Behind. /
PETER McWALTERS, the state education commissioner, recently testified before Congress on improving No Child Left Behind. /

Peter J. McWalters has been Rhode Island’s elementary and secondary education commissioner since 1992, leading the implementation of several key reforms – from Article 31 and the detailed data collection, reporting and student testing systems it created, to the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
He has ordered the restructuring of two major urban schools, Hope High School in Providence and, most recently, Central Falls High School. On March 21, he testified before the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee on ways to improve NCLB.

PBN: What are your feelings on No Child Left Behind?
McWALTERS: I was the president of my national association [Council of Chief State School Officers] in the year it was passed. … Both myself and the association were supportive [in that] it is appropriate and evident that a high-quality education for all kids should be a national interest. … But I think that some of the mechanics in it are problematic. … Things like how you establish targets and what the consequences of not getting them are were much too descriptive and not really administrable.

PBN: How so?
McWALTERS: The target of having all kids to proficiency by 2014 is the right thing. There’s no reason why a country of our standing, power and resources can’t solve this education-for-all-kids problem. But instead of dealing with it as if it was a search for the best practices and a search for how do you do it in big cities … the bill said you already know how to do it, and if you just get up in the morning and do it the way we want you to do it, and do it right, it would happen. I think that we’re finding out now … [is] that it’s very complicated, and there’s no silver bullet here. That’s what I said to Congress … you need to be more flexible and contextual. Even the places that are most in compliance are not getting to the scale that is required to meet those targets, so we’re clearly still searching for best practices.

PBN: How could change NCLB to address these problems?
McWALTERS: We need to continue to push for voluntary national standards where you don’t have 50 versions, but you probably don’t want the federal government to do it right now. … [And] I think they completely underestimated the requirements for resources. They didn’t even fully fund what they authorized. They never fully funded the special education law. They never fully funded Title I. … I think if they stayed with those investments as they are regionally designed you’d see a much different response to the capacity gap.

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PBN: How do you feel the state’s schools are performing?
McWALTERS: When I came here in 1992, there were no state standards. We gave an off-the-shelf … test, and there were no benchmarks for participation rates or graduation rates. So there were no targets, there was no accountability. We started the accountability conversation in this state in 1997. That’s when I was directed by our governor and legislature to start getting state standards, to bring up state testing, have an accountability system and get information. … There’s much, much better testing now, and in that new world we had a tremendous year. The gains were remarkable, and they were the very best among the lowest-performing kids. So I don’t want to act like it’s done – two years does not a trend make – but clearly we’ve got the right agenda.

PBN: What are the major stumbling blocks to the state reaching its education goals?
McWALTERS: I would argue that there were two big holes when the feds passed their law. They drove money to the districts, and they kind of cut the states out. We have fewer federal resources at the state department than we had 10 years ago, and yet the states are the ones trying to lead the new system. So one argument we’ve been having with Washington is you should invest more money in my ability to go out and intervene. At the same time what’s happening all over the country is NCLB exposed the lack of an urban agenda. This issue about the urban agenda is not adequately financed either by states or by the feds.

PBN: The General Assembly is trying to figure out how much it should cost per child to provide a quality education. Do you think more funding would make the system work better?
McWALTERS: When I first got here, Providence was about $2,000 a kid behind the state average, and when we multiply that by 26,000 kids, that’s a huge number. Between 1994 and 2000, the legislature incrementally moved the urban numbers up to the state mean. So now Providence is spending close to the state average, but that includes the federal money. Even though we’re a high-cost education system, we’re a low-contributing state, and education as a component of the budget is low. But that’s not an argument for more money – that’s just a frame of reference. … Money alone will not make a difference. It has to be targeted.

PBN: How much more money do you think is needed?
McWALTERS: I don’t think that analysis has been done. When I look at [the current research], they assume the system we’ve been running is the one we’re trying to finance, and I think many people would say ‘I’m not sure you want to finance the system you have. Don’t you want to design a system you think would work and find out what that would cost?’ If you go to all [the research nationally], they use the benchmarking strategy, and I’m not sure you can extrapolate from Barrington to Central Falls.

Interview: Peter J. McWalters

POSITION: Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education
BACKGROUND: In 1970, following a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, McWalters took a position as an ESL teacher in Rochester, N.Y. He worked in the district until 1992, as a middle school social studies teacher, a magnet school programmer, budget director and eventually, from 1985 to 1992, as superintendent. In January 1992 he became the commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education in Rhode Island.
EDUCATION: B.A in philosophy and history, 1968, Boston College; M.P.A., 1979, and certificate of advanced study in educational administration, 1981, State University of New York at Brockport
RESIDENCE: Providence
AGE: 60

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