By many measures, Rhode Island has long had a troubled education system. While most major gubernatorial candidates have at least paid lip service to it in the past, this year several are making education policy a key centerpiece of their platforms.
They include incumbent Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, Matt Brown, who is challenging her in the Democratic primary, and Patricia Morgan, a GOP challenger. Brown, a former secretary of state, co-founded City Year Rhode Island, an urban school initiative. Morgan is a former special education teacher in Mississippi and Rhode Island.
Raimondo, now seeking a second term, made education policy and building improvements a greater focus of her budget priorities, starting in 2016.
Initially lifting a moratorium on school construction, Raimondo this year won approval from lawmakers for a $250 million bond request to provide a state share for district school improvements. The request will go to voters in November.
In K-12 policy, Raimondo expanded access to full-time kindergarten across the state, and introduced computer science instruction, with the help of corporate sponsorships.
She tried to create a comprehensive free-college tuition program in 2017, but legislators didn’t endorse her four-year approach. Instead, lawmakers agreed to provide funds to make community college tuition-free for Rhode Island high school graduates who maintain good academic standing.
If re-elected, she said she will try again to expand the Rhode Island Promise program to include the last two years for a bachelor’s degree, at either Rhode Island College or University of Rhode Island.
For working adults, she pledges to find funds to make the community college degree tuition-free, even if they attend part time.
And for people who don’t want a college degree, but need professional training, Raimondo said she will double the number of Real Jobs RI partnerships with employers. These apprentice-style positions train people for specific occupations, at state expense, until they are hired by the company.
Raimondo now refers to her education policy as the “Universal Education and Job Training” plan.
“If we don’t continue to expand our successful promise scholarship and Real Jobs RI partnerships, thousands of Rhode Islanders will never get the job training and education they need to keep up and get ahead,” she said.
Some candidates, including Cranston Mayor Allan W. Fung and Giovanni Feroce, both Republicans, have yet to release detailed education plans.
Brown, meanwhile, has released his own vision for a new education system.
He is making a direct appeal to teachers by promising to restore the pension cuts they absorbed years ago when Raimondo was state treasurer.
He has proposed to cover the cost of that, as well as educational improvements, by repealing tax cuts on corporations and high-earning individuals.
His “Education First” program also is heavily focused on the education of children learning English as a second language. Those students are increasingly reshaping school needs in city schools and appearing in greater numbers across Rhode Island.
A report published by the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University in 2013 found that the Latino-to-white-student education gap – the difference in graduation rates and test scores – is among the worst in the country.
And Rhode Island has a crisis in English-language-learning education, the report stated, identifying urban schools as having greater problems educating ELL students than suburban or rural districts. Overall, 22 percent of Rhode Island students that year were Latino, one of the nation’s highest populations.
Brown has proposed to redesign the school funding formula, a statewide formula that assigns funding to schools as weighted by educational characteristics, to award more money to districts and schools that have more English-language learners.
Currently, Rhode Island is one of four states that doesn’t assign funding in its formula for ELL services, instead awarding a line-item amount.
“We will ensure schools who require additional funding support for emerging bilingual students get it,” Brown said.
Morgan, the only candidate who has direct teaching experience, released her education plan as part of what she’s calling a “Blueprint for a Stronger Rhode Island.”
She advocates targeted instruction in the primary grades to make sure children who have difficulty reading receive remedial instruction. The program would work with educators in grades 1-3.
She wants to establish a $250 state tax credit for teachers who purchase supplies for classrooms, a nod to the educators who often supplement limited local amounts with their own funds.
Morgan wants companies to play a greater role in developing curriculum and skills-training programs.
And she wants to create a tax credit for companies that help their employees pay off college loans. This would be more effective than providing free tuition, she said. Morgan has criticized the free-tuition program at CCRI because she said it sets achievement standards too low.
“Too many kids are going. They’re taking remedial courses,” she said recently, of the students now enrolled with help from the Rhode Island Promise scholarship.
‘College affordability is one of the big issues for the middle class.’
JUNE SPEAKMAN, RWU chairwoman of the political science department
For 2017, 61 percent of Rhode Island fourth graders were less than proficient in math and reading, and below the national average for math.
In the SAT, Rhode Island had a high percentage of test takers in 2017 (71 percent) but the state’s composite score beat only 15 states.
June Speakman, a professor of political science at Roger Williams University, said education is typically at least addressed by major gubernatorial candidates.
This year, “Many of the higher education policies we see are connected to economic policy, workforce development,” she said. “The Republicans in particular talk about public-private partnerships … working with companies rather than [institutes of] higher education.”
Brown, who has proposed restoration of pension cuts to teachers, is reaching “a particular audience who can be mobilized,” she said. “It’s also the case that it’s consistent with Brown’s ideology, of opposing corporate giveaways, and getting rid of those tax cuts for the wealthy.”
Raimondo’s “free-tuition” expansion program also appeals to a constituency in Rhode Island – middle-class families trying to put children through college.
“College affordability is one of the big issues for the middle class,” Speakman said.
Morgan has one of the most clearly articulated education plans, Speakman said, and it touches on many traditional policies of GOP candidates – including having more direct involvement in schools by businesses, including in curriculum development.
“That’s classic Republican,” Speakman said, “(that) the education system exists to help corporations succeed.”
Gary Sasse, a former director of the R.I. Department of Administration, and founding director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University, said the education plans unveiled thus far lack focus and a set of goals that would tell Rhode Islanders if the state is making progress, for example, moving more students toward proficiency on the national math and reading exams.
“There are a lot of well-meaning initiatives. But how does this move the education needle, how are the dots connected?” Sasse said.
None of the candidates running for governor is talking about how they will improve student performance, he said.
“Improving student performance,” he said, “requires tough political decisions.”
Mary MacDonald is a staff writer for the PBN. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
