Key findings by the Johns Hopkins School of Education’s Institute for Education Policy are enough to make anyone concerned with education blanche. The report on the Providence School System concluded that the school culture in the Capital City is broken. The great majority of school children are not learning at or even near grade level, parents feel shut out of their children’s education, and teachers feel demoralized and unsupported.

Almost immediately, the blame game among constituencies reared its ugly head. The reality, however, is that everyone is to blame with differing degrees of responsibility. Virtually all adults interviewed stated that the collective bargaining agreement is the heart of the problem.

Indeed, it is. A little over a year ago (February, 2018) Providence Journal reporter, Linda Borg, noted that the then-Superintendent of Schools announced a five year plan where he hoped to cut teacher absenteeism from 58 percent to 54 percent. In effect, this means that nearly 6 out of 10 hired teachers are out of the classroom for 11 or more days. It is little wonder that the Johns Hopkins team found very little engaged teaching/learning in the classrooms. Students weren’t “showing up” either since the classrooms were in constant flux. In the present contract, teachers can be out on 15 sick days with a total of 150 days at full pay after being in the system for 5 years. Excuses from a physician are not needed until after 4 consecutive days.

The school teaching force is loaded with substitutes. The report found that a thicket of bureaucracy makes it difficult to know who is in charge or, indeed, who is in the school to teach that day. Throw in the fact that the school days must end no later than 3:30 p.m. (elementary) or 4:30 p.m. (high school), and it is extremely difficult to engage parents in the joint venture of educating their children.

So, now that another study is completed, what is the response? At a press conference the governor and the mayor talked tough but essentially punked out of any real reform. The system needs to be taken over by the state. Period.

What is particularly pathetic is that the findings in 2019 were already presaged in a 1993 “blue ribbon report”. Back then the study documented that Providence school children spent far fewer hours in school than in their peer cities. In 1993 the panel found that the teachers' "working day and school year" had to be lengthened if teaching goals were to be met. The report called for a redesign from top to bottom. After a similar “weeping and gnashing of teeth”, nothing fundamentally changed.
Apparently, we will all be reading in another 25 years a similar dire report as today’s politicians lack any guts to challenge the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.

All taxpayers should be outraged. Make no mistake about it, you pay now or you pay more later. As it is, your pocket is picked already through the allocations made by the General Assembly. Isn’t it past time to do the right thing by the students in Providence, many of whom are behind the eight ball already because of poverty?

Stop the cheap rhetoric, state and local leaders. The reforms are all laid out. Get to it!

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.