New website full of information on K-12 policy in Rhode Island
January 10th, 2013 at 12:54 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
You don’t have to like Michelle Rhee to find value in the report card on Rhode Island education policy that her organization Students First released this week.
Rhee, the polarizing former Washington schools chancellor, is a strong advocate for changes such as charter schools and pay-for-performance that aren’t popular with supporters of traditional K-12. Her group gave Rhode Island a C+ on the report card, one of the best grades in the nation.
“Rhode Island is a leader in education reform by prioritizing great teaching and using resources wisely to raise student achievement,” the report card says. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Students First’s major criticism is that Rhode Island law limits the number of public charters that can be opened.
Check out the Rhode Island report card here – whether you buy Rhee’s prescriptions or not, it provides an overview of what policies Rhode Island has in place right now. (There’s also a four-page PDF version.)
Tags: charter schools, education, K-12, michelle rhee, schools, students first
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
I agree. I learned something about our educational policy from this list, even though it’s almost comically biased. My favorite is where they say that pension cuts make retirement packages more attractive to teachers. I don’t think even Gina Raimondo would agree with that.
It could be that the new hybrid system is more attractive to the younger teachers. After all, you can take your 401(k) with you if you change school districts even if you leave after only a couple of years. With a pension you rally had to stay around for the duration to benefit from it.
Michelle Rhee is a level headed patriot without preconceived notions of job protection and unions. She wants what we all should want and that’s a great education for our kids.The progressive educational gameplan has produced 30 plus years of disaster. The pitiful performance of our state and nation prove that paying the same educators more and more money does absolutely nothing to improve our results. The hard work that Michelle Rhee is doing, however, will be diluted greatly by the free market competition which will soon destroy the educational model that is teetering today from kindergarten to University.Tenure and work rules are not going to exist in the very near future.
Every time Mike Riley takes to the keyboard he proves how the conservative view of the world is skewed. ( and Ted, why keep playing to that audience BTW, with all these rightward posts? Is your new Sunday show associating you with too many business types?)
For the past 30 years we have seen a the false promise of charter schools producing in most cases worse results than traditional schools, defunding public education, especially in urban centers, and actually, Mr. Riley, teacher salaries drop in relation to where they were 30 years ago. The highest unionized states have better results than the non union states.
I liked it a lot better when you took to you tube for your rants than they keyboard.
I use my real name, facts and defensible positions. Thanks for your comments and viewership “Mr Fish”.