Two years ago in these pages I wrote “PPSD in Peril” to mark the five-year anniversary of the state assuming control of the Providence Public School District and my general take on it. Rereading it now, I came off a tad cynical about the bureaucracy, the theater, and the posturing behind it all. Now, the city will be taking back control after seven long years. Expect a similar sense of cynicism throughout this follow-up piece.
Back in 2019, a Johns Hopkins in-depth deep dive into public schools nationwide found the city of Providence to be one of the worst-performing in all metrics, from staffing, to building conditions, to test scores. At the time, my son was in the system at Gilbert Stuart Middle School, now completely razed. City-wide, people were scrambling to address the dilemma at heart: how do we make public schools better? I sat on a Community Advisory Board regarding the issue and later played moderator for RI Department of Education town hall meetings.
Immediate state intervention seemed imminent, despite some community pushback when it came to relinquishing control. Nobody could have predicted a pandemic the following year, to further debilitate education across all levels. Something else that few dared to fathom was the arrival of Trump, The Sequel, to drain even more funding from an already starved system. And so, regardless of state control, the same pivotal problem only grew worse: a lack of resources to provide the services that are needed.
Despite all of those hurdles, let’s take an honest look at what was accomplished over the last seven years. Test scores did improve, absenteeism did decline, and graduation rates did rise, but nowhere near the target rates that were envisioned. A Turnaround Action Plan was implemented which, in part, included $1 billion in capital improvements and construction. This would result in six new or renovated schools. But even with all of that, only about a quarter of the 43 benchmark goals laid out in the original plan have been met.
So, is it too soon to remove the guardrails? The debate is ongoing statewide, with opinions on all sides. Many claim we are right back where we started, and that with no significant changes in senior leadership, we will revert to where we were in 2019. Others see this as a golden opportunity for the School Board, the City Council, and future Mayor to work in conjunction towards a collective good for all.
By the same token, we need to address the elephant in the room: the rise of charter schools. City officials need to be cognizant that they no longer have a monopoly on public education, hence their shrinking student numbers. Parents now have a middle-ground option that is neither government-run, nor a high-priced private academy. Charter schools nationwide have proven that they are willing and able to fill a gap where public education comes up short. While there is plenty of room for all to exist on the landscape, the PPSD and the board need to be very aware that they will lose whatever credibility they still have if we find ourselves swirling around the same pool in the immediate years to come.