RIDE Commissioner Speaks at Rogers About Student Performance, Absenteeism

Rhode Island Department of Education Commissioner Deborah Gist addressed a sparse crowd during Monday night’s lecture about transforming education in Rhode Island. The small turnout at Rogers High School was one of the main concerns several School Committee members in attendance had about their ability to affect change throughout the school district.

Gist has visited each district at least twice in her two years as commissioner.

Gist’s presentation, meant to be an update for each school district around Rhode Island, became a back and forth between her and the committee members, teachers and parents present.

Although her message was to emphasize the importance of the quality of education for all Rhode Island students, the audience was quick to bring up issues affecting Newport students, such as chronic absenteeism, select cases of parental ambivalence and communication between the school administrators and school committee to the public.

According to Gist, Newport’s absentee rate is significantly higher than the state average: 26 percent as opposed to the state’s average of 16 percent. Audience members credited lack of accountability in the judicial system by not following through with chronic absentee hearings, as well as outside factors that keep students from arriving to school on time, or at all.

“When the kids are young, it is the parent’s responsibility,” Superintendent John Ambrogi said.  It is not an easy issue he said, especially since Newport has the highest percentage of students in public housing in Rhode Island.

Gist said one course of action would be to look for trends in absenteeism to address the issue.

Newport does have a lower drop-out rate than the state average, 12 percent rather than 14 percent, and has a graduation rate of 78 percent opposed to Rhode Island’s 76 percent average.

In a worldwide sense, Rhode Island has some catching up to do, Gist said. Even Rhode Island's top students, the honors students, valedictorians and salutatorians, are in the bottom quartile compared to the world’s top students, as well as compared to some other states. She said while it is important to focus on raising underachieving student up to proficiency levels, there needs to be attention paid to the high performing students to maximize their potential as well.

“While we can talk about things we’re concerned about, there is still work to be done,“ she said. The Race To The Top grant, received as one-time funding, is a “huge opportunity” to turn around education in Rhode Island, she added.

“To have the best public schools in America. . .takes the whole community,” Gist said.

A common goal for all students in public school, she said, should be to prepare students for some type of post-secondary education. That is not to say each student should go to a four-year, liberal arts college, she noted, but they should be at least prepared for community college or a technical school to foster success in their continued education, career and life in general.

School committee member Robert Leary suggested that increasing the school day or school year would be a way to achieve these results. Gist said that, ideally, the school year would be extended, but the $300 million budget deficient hinders progress on such an intensive reorganization.

Besides the economic deterrent, Gist said she did not believe that many schools make the best use of the time they already have, and should maximize on classroom time already allotted before allocating more. The higher performing schools are typically the schools that are the most time-efficient, she said.