Ouch....

An Education Horror Show
A case study in public school failure and lack of accountability.
By The Editorial Board
July 7, 2019 4:47 pm ET

Providence, R.I. Mayor Jorge Elorza, center, gestures during a panel discussing education and development during the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Boston, Friday, June 8, 2018. PHOTO: CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The National Education Association held its annual convention this past weekend, and the Democratic presidential candidates made their pilgrimage to promise the teachers union more money—and even more money. One word we didn’t hear on stage was “Providence,” as in the Rhode Island capital city whose public schools were recently exposed as a horror show of government and union neglect.


Peeling lead paint, brown water, leaking sewage pipes, broken asbestos tiles, rodents, frigid and chaotic classrooms, and student failure were all documented in a 93-page review by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. The review was conducted in May at the request of the Rhode Island education commissioner, and it deserves attention nationwide as an example of government failure.

“Very little visible student learning was going on in the majority of classrooms and schools we visited—most especially in the middle and high schools,” the report says. “Our review teams encountered many teachers and students who do not feel safe in school. There is widespread agreement that bullying, demeaning, and even physical violence are occurring within the school walls at very high levels.”

No surprise, then, that only 5% of Providence eighth graders on average scored proficient in math in the 2015 through 2017 school years. That compares to 21.3% in Newark, N.J., where students have similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Low-income students in Worcester, Mass., not far away, were twice as proficient as those in Providence.

“Teachers did not press students to become engaged with the mathematics instruction, resulting in a variety of student off-task behavior: chatting with peers, checking phones, staring into space, or, in some cases, taking phone calls and watching YouTube videos,” the report says. Student performance actually drops the longer students spend in Providence schools. Proficiency in English fell from 18.7% of students in fifth grade to only 8.5% in eighth.


One student reported that “my best teacher’s desk was urinated on, and nothing happened.” Another noted a teacher “was choked by a student in front of the whole class. Everybody was traumatized, but nothing happened.” One district leader observed, “the students run the buildings.”

One culprit are policies that discourage student discipline. Rhode Island Democrats in 2016 passed legislation backed by the American Civil Liberties Union that limits school suspensions, which progressives claim discriminate against minorities. Teachers are reluctant to punish students, and violence and misconduct make it harder to retain good teachers.

The reviewers also note that collective-bargaining agreements limit the ability of school principals to fire lousy teachers. “In the case of an abusive teacher, s/he is placed on unpaid administrative leave but then ‘lawyers up’ through the union and ultimately returns to the classroom,” one principal noted.

Another principal was forced to accept a teacher with a history of falling asleep in class and lying about grades. “We fought her placement but the union prevailed,” the principal said. Teachers who skip school face few repercussions.

By contrast, Providence charter schools have been “successful,” the reviewers note. But the city council can’t decide “whether to expand charter schools or to pause their growth.” “If we went the charter route, we would circumvent a lot of issues,” one council member said. “But I don’t see the Providence Teachers Union going anywhere.”

That’s for sure. The union’s latest political focus is “evergreen” contracts that stay in place even after they expire, giving the union more leverage in negotiations with the school district. Student results are an afterthought. Democratic Mayor Jorge Elorza reflected the liberal political class’s low expectation by telling the Johns Hopkins reviewers he’d give Providence schools a C grade.

Democrats as ever blame a lack of funding, though the district spent nearly $18,000 per pupil in 2017—about 50% more than the national average. In a system with any accountability, this would all be judged a disgrace and people would be fired. But this is a government failure, underwritten by entrenched union power. That’s why the Democratic presidential candidates won’t show up in Providence, but maybe Donald Trump should.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Trump as sub for a day. I'm all for it!

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Whenever charter schools are used as a counter-example to public schools is the selection bias controlled for?

The point about lousy teachers being bullet proof is so true. It sucks when unions are abused to protect the terrible in any sector.

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Yeah, more money will fix this.

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Disciplining people hurts feelings and makes them feel bad. Most don't want the headache and know they won't get support from the parents.

18K per student. I wonder if the admins are paid well...Let's give em more money. That will help!

It's tough, both sides are arguing over an issue they can't solve. If the child doesn't value education or the child's parents/guardian/home don't emphasize it's importance then it's hopeless. Charter school, suspensions, more money -- doesn't matter.

Unions have a choice in who they protect.

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Teacher Unions aren't the albatross that MANY seem to think they are.

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1) pension payouts > teacher contribution in?
2) each year of HS my kids always had 1 teacher that mailed it in and had no business being a teacher....protected by the union.

so...no.

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We have to start with the premise that the entire system is failing. There are large portions of the population that are getting a poor education. It is easily demonstrated by global test scores. I read the book referenced below, and it seems Finland has the best answer. It is particularly notable because it fares among the world’s best while many of its neighbors face the same problems we have.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-08-21/smartest-kids-world-look-schooling-finland-south-korea-and-poland

Essentially our teachers are among the least qualified in the developed world as it is one of the easiest degrees to get. Finland on the other hand has a very comprehensive system to train and then pay teachers that only lets the best into the classroom. The higher pay and prestige of their teachers make it an attractive job for prospective employees.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

That's easier to do in a country of 5 million than in a country of 330 million.

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Pretty much. Sometimes a teacher can help foster new interests, but that doesn't happen too often. Charles Murray's answer--why invest in them?--would make sense if it didn't scare the Christ out of me. Still, if people want to learn later, there are avenues to do so when they are motivated--I teach some of those classes--but most, even if motivated, are still there for the grade, because that's all they can envision. I would hate to work with someone (in a decent, career-type job) who lacked the ability or desire to solve problems creatively.

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And poverty fucks up our attitudes towards and exposure to education. Suomi has a lot less of that.

Reminds me of (well, a better phrase would be, "This brings my mind to") the sometimes steamy 50 cent novel I bought at Woolworth's in sixth grade called Molotov Cocktail. It was about young Finns fighting the Ruskies in '39 and making love. I had to hide that damn book. I remember thinking how awesome it would be to be twenty years old, gettin' it every night from some Finnish triple agent.

It didn't quite work out that way.

good dolphin once had a funny joke about Laplanders giving lap dances.

Yup. We have 10x as many immigrants as they do total people. That alone makes it much harder on our schools.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The school profiled in Finland has about 30% immigrants mostly African and Middle East. It dispels the two myths you guys just posted. I was skeptical like you.

Finland faced in the 70’s what we face today, which forced them to make huge changes.

It is crazy to read what they did and how it works. Basically their teachers go through schooling and apprenticeships akin to our doctors and are among the best paid professionals in the country.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I'll check it out.

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Poverty is not a myth and it is a huge component of inner city education issues in this country.

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There are plenty of charter school teachers doing exactly the same thing without union protection and without contrbuting to pensions.

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Are we not talking about the whole system?

There are schools doing well here too.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

All immigrants are not similar. Some groups do quite well. Others enter the underclass at an alarming rate. About the immigrants to Finland I know nothing, but it's possible that if those groups face any kind of ghettoization or any of the other problems you see in most Western cities, they're going to have problems.

The contexts of the US and Finland are so different it would be hard to compare them, but if something works in one place, it may work in another. The problem is that each person drags so many variables with him or her that it's hard to adopt what works in one context in another.

It's a psychological thing more than anything else. That's where things get messed up. One thing I detest about conservatives is how they ignore this. Libertarians just don't empathize with those who are different from them (not racially, but psychologically).

Poverty or lower working-class-ness or whatever you want to call it also has been deflating aspirations in rural America. It's amazing how much class as a psychological mechanism limits us or shapes us. I'm out.

More like a vulture than an albatross. Out here in California it is extremely difficult to fire a bad teacher.

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An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

Maybe they can fire you into the ocean

I'd think it would be a motivator.

Learned helplessness exists, though. Remember the experiment about the dog that kept getting shocked?

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