LETTERS

Was system working just fine?

Posted 9/4/14

To the Editor:

On Aug. 5, Eva-Marie Mancuso was quoted in a Providence Journal article entitled “R.I. moratorium on NECAP found to have little impact on graduation” as saying that she was …

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LETTERS

Was system working just fine?

Posted

To the Editor:

On Aug. 5, Eva-Marie Mancuso was quoted in a Providence Journal article entitled “R.I. moratorium on NECAP found to have little impact on graduation” as saying that she was “appalled” that “a cornerstone of the department’s high school graduation policy, one that was years in the making, was discarded by the legislature in the waning hours of the session.”

She also suggested that the people responsible for the bill postponing the use of high stakes standardized testing should have “trusted the professionals” at RIDE and the Board of Education rather than “running behind [their] backs and going to the legislature.” She said that the system “worked just fine.”

These were strong words in opposition to the changes to RIDE and the Board of Education’s high school graduation system made by the legislature that rolled back by three years the use of high stakes standardized tests as a graduation requirement.

I am curious what Mancuso thinks of Gist’s recent proposal to roll back the use of standardized tests as a graduation requirement by another three years, to the year 2020. Is she also opposed to Gist’s proposal? Or does she perhaps think that maybe “the system” wasn’t working “just fine” after all, and that maybe some people were justified in going to the legislature for help when RIDE refused to take them seriously?

Ron C. Poirier

Riverside

Poirier is a teacher in the Pawtucket Public School System.

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