English, math scores lag behind Bay State
Rhode Island continues to make strides in work force development – from the K-12 level to college and its welfare to work programs – but three out of four key economic indicators drew red flags from a state panel.
Rhode Island’s Family Independence Program (a welfare to work program) job retention is among the best in the nation, and earned an excellent rating in the latest Economic Opportunity Scorecard from the R.I. Economic Policy Council.
However, the state only slightly outpaced the nation in college completion, and is far behind Massachusetts. And over the last 11 years, Rhode Island has improved by only 1 percent the number of fourth-graders proficient in reading, and the number of fourth-graders proficient in math dipped below the nation and Massachusetts.
The results have prompted some ambitious long-term goals.
“In terms of work force development and education, we set the bar very high and we haven’t given ourselves any excuses,” said Kip Bergstrom, executive director of the EPC. “If we want to play in the innovation game, we need to be performing at the level of the top metros. We’re doing all the right things; this is just saying we have a long way to go.”
Gov. Donald Carcieri charged the EPC with keeping score on the state’s economic performance, to track the progress of creating 20,000 jobs during his four years in office. The resulting scorecard is the second in a series to keep leaders and citizens informed about the state’s economic performance.
The scorecard addresses issues like the link between education and economic growth and recommends strategies for improving educational attainment, including restructuring the Human Resources Investment Council, improving adult education and taking a more “holistic approach” to school reform and neighborhood revitalization. Upcoming scorecards, to be released quarterly, will include quality of place and political economy.
“The HRIC, since it was created, had the authority to build and coordinate an integrated work force development system, but it had been running the Job Fund, just a portion of that,” Bergstrom said. The restructuring was self-imposed, he said.
As adult education improves, it will move more people along in the education system, Bergstrom said.
“We know where the bottleneck in the entire system is; it has the most people and the fewest resources,” he said. “There are as many as 200,000 people who need a skills foundation and they either didn’t get it in school, or they dropped out,” or they’re immigrants. “As we loosen the bottleneck … it will create more demand for colleges and in-house training programs.”
Officials realize that upward mobility, people moving from low-wage and low-skill jobs to better jobs, begins at the neighborhood level, Bergstrom said. The EPC looked to a successful model in the Met schools for the educational component, and suggested that neighborhoods need to be improved simultaneously around schools.
“You won’t get upward mobility in a neighborhood that’s run-down, one with a lot of transients versus a good one with community networks and lots of homeownership,” he said. “We know schools don’t work if the neighborhoods don’t work. The dropout rate at the Met school is less than 5 percent.”
State officials have set a goal (based on 2003 figures) of increasing college attainment from 29 percent to 40 percent by 2010. In the last 10 years, Rhode Island has outpaced the nation slightly in growth of college completion in people ages 25 and older, but Massachusetts is far ahead at almost 38 percent. The national average is about 27 percent.
A brain drain in the state is an issue. Bergstrom said the state needs to focus on not only making a lasting connection with out-of-state students during college, but also work to keep Rhode Island students here.
“People say we need to just get better jobs here, but the jobs are going where the talent is, so we need to do both,” he said.
Rhode Island has also set goals for reading and math proficiency improvements. In reading, the goal for 2010 is to increase the number of proficient fourth-graders from 29 percent (in 2003) to 57 percent, which would allow the state to converge where Massachusetts would be if it continues on its present rate.
Twenty-eight percent of fourth-graders tested proficient in math in 2003 compared to 13 percent in 1992. Math scores are keeping pace with the national trend, but Rhode Island remains consistently below average. Carcieri and Dan Smith of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems have designed and will co-chair “Project Making the Grade,” a plan to identify program and performance gaps in math and science education and to develop solutions.
The state’s Family Independence Program, under which several major welfare indicators are defined, job retention rate ranked 10th in the nation in 2002, but the goal is to be one of the top 10 states in job retention performance.
“Part of climbing the job ladder is getting off welfare and onto the job ladder,” Bergstrom said.
