Providence Schools: A Profile of Dysfunction

The majority of students in Providence, Rhode Island's public schools are not learning, teachers there feel demoralized and unsupported, school buildings are deteriorating to the point of being dangerous and parents feel shut out.

The searing findings, which reportedly left some investigators in tears, were part of a top-down assessment of Rhode Island's 24,000-student school district that were issued this week and serve to showcase the immense challenges facing urban school districts across the country.

"Creating strong academic outcomes for urban students, many of whom are economically challenged and speak English as a second language, is a challenge across the United States – not only in Providence," investigators wrote in the report. "That said, as our report lays out, our team found unusually deep, systemic dysfunctions in [Providence]'s education system that clearly, and very negatively, impact the opportunities of children in Providence."

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza, and the state's Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green commissioned researchers at Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy in April to review the Providence Public School District after the most recent state test scores showed that 90 percent of students were not proficient in math and 80 percent were not proficient in English.

The review team was charged with visiting schools and listening to teachers, principals, parents and others about the challenges they face in the classroom and central office – everything from governance to instruction and curriculum.

The resulting 93-page report showed how the low level of academic instruction combined with broken school culture, poor teacher morale and overlapping sources of governance and bureaucracy have molded Providence into one of the worst school systems in the country.

"These are nationally represented challenges," David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, says. "In Providence we see very disturbing examples of how difficult these challenges can be, but they are certainly shared in other districts."

Among other things, investigators found "an exceptionally low bar for instruction and low expectations for students."

In almost all the classrooms that investigators visited at one school, students sat quietly with headphones on, stared at their phones and, as described in the report, were "completely disconnected from the environment around them."

At another school, investigators consistently witnessed classrooms where no instruction at all was taking place.

"In several cases, teachers were missing with no clear reason, and we noted with surprise that it was not apparent that the principal had a clear picture of who was where, teaching what, and when," they wrote.

With the exception of one school, the buildings were in complete disrepair – the conditions of one in particular reduced members of the review team to tears.

"Students here wanted my [review team member's] magic wand to fix the 'crumbling floors,' they wrote. "They wanted locks on the bathroom stalls; they said that 'sometimes the water is brown.'"

Notably, principals reported feeling powerless over replacing ineffective teachers, largely blaming the collective bargaining agreement and characterizing it as a "a 'thick' teachers' contract which gives a green light for grievances on 'almost anything' and funds only one [professional development] day per year."

Raimondo, the state's governor, called the report's findings "devastating" and said in a statement that she was "committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that Providence public schools are delivering high-quality education for every student."

Meanwhile, the outgoing superintendent of Providence schools, Christopher Maher, blamed the mayor's office, telling investigators that he was frustrated "with the need for micro-management of every initiative through endless layers, players and budget limits."

Maher said in a statement that the report "creates a much-needed sense of urgency around the educational needs of Providence public school children and the system that strives to support them."

"My hope," he said, "is that this sense of urgency translates into concrete actions that improve outcomes for our young people."

For his part, Elorza, who was elected mayor in 2015, accepted some of the blame.

"I ran on the platform of education," he said. "The buck stops with me. I am the one the residents hold accountable."

The report serves to underscore the challenges of urban school districts across the country, which are struggling to figure out how to effectively serve poor students and rapidly changing student demographics that include an increase in Latino students and those from immigrant families.

In Providence, nearly 40 percent of families live below the poverty level and the median income of households of parents with school-aged children is $31,000. Additionally, more than 40 percent of students are Latino, many of whom speak English as a second language.

Johns Hopkins researchers said the challenges mirrored some of what they see in Baltimore schools, and they also compared its profile to schools in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Newark, New Jersey – though they made a point to say in each instance that the challenges in Providence were degrees more severe.

"Providence has had difficulties for many years in ways that other big city school districts have not," says Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 74 of the nation's largest urban school districts.

"It has a concentration of needs that are severe even by urban school standards," Casserly says. "It's got many of the same challenges that other big cities have, but historically hasn't had the capacity to solve them in ways that other cities have."

Casserly says other cities have experienced what Providence is going through. Cities like Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Denver and the District of Columbia have experienced big improvements in their school systems over the last decade.

"While not reaching the promised land, they have improved substantially over the years," he says.

The report did not include recommendations for the school system, but Steiner says the method of using publicly available student outcomes and pairing them with an analysis of what's actually happening in classrooms "is potentially powerful way to really hold up a mirror to a district and let them think about what they see."

"This model is replicable," he says.

From now until mid-July Mayor Elorza and Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green will hold eight different community forums to address the report.

"It is critical that we hear from parents, teachers, students, community leaders, and anyone else with a stake in the future of Providence schools about their reactions to the report, views on how we should address the challenges, and how we can all do better together," they said in a joint statement.