Now Begins Phase Two

A Look Back and a Push Forward

It’s June. The school year has flown by us. As long as we survive our inescapable exams, we are virtually home free until September. Advice for your summer: enjoy it, but do not waste it. This school year represents a milestone. It is an ending. It is a beginning. It is the end of a school where students can graduate without proving theoretical “proficiency” through a diploma system. It is the beginning of a grim reality. When May and June roll around next year, the class of 2008 may still be guinea pigs. Keep in mind, though, the ball is in our court.

We have made a lot of progress. However, that progress will need to continue rather than dwindle if anything substantial is to transpire. I want to take this time to look back on the school year, specifically on the second semester. Second semester of this past school year, to me, was phase one. Together, we reached our administration. Together, we reached the RIDOE. Together, we reached the USDOE. And together, we will achieve more.

Now, we focus our efforts. As we move into summer, instead of relaxing, we need to gain momentum. After being enlightened with experience over the past few months, we now know more specifically where our solution resides. It resides in concentrating our resources on the correct targets, so to speak. And because of the events of the past few months, we now know precisely who and what those targets are.

Write a letter. Or borrow the one(s) I plan on posting in the near future as reusable templates. This may seem redundant, as I have advised you to write letters in the past. However, this time my message is different. At that time, back in February, I saw our issue as a national one. I believed its roots rested in No Child Left Behind.

I was mistaken. As Mr. Sentance, the regional representative for the Secretary of Education, the USDOE official who came to visit our school, explained to me, the USDOE does not create graduation requirements. The USDOE only cares that graduation requirements exist. It is, in fact, the RIDOE’s responsibility to specify what those requirements entail.

Our aim is a new one. First, we must write to state government officials, such as Dennis Algiere, our local State Senator. Also, we must reach out to Governor Carcieri and inform him of our woes as well. For now, I believe these are two viable “targets” for our purposes. Begin to write your own letters, but if you do not feel compelled enough or capable enough to do so, I will create template messages for you all to utilize.

Welcome to phase two…

History is Repeating Itself

Throughout history, the populous of Rhode Island has fought for what it believes in despite its small size. Pioneers such as Roger Williams originated the colony based on the undeniably American principles of free religion. However, feats like this were not accomplished at the hand of one person. Only together, as a unified state, were their philosophy and culture able to persevere and flourish. In the same vein, only as a unified constituency will we achieve our goals.

Across the world, PBGR systems have failed to hit their mark. At Beacon School in Manhattan, they believed they had finally solved their problem of how to best asses their students. They instigated the portfolio system. Like many other schools, their beginning was a struggle to perfect their system, but eventually worked into a pattern which allowed the portfolio system to succeed, for a time.

This success, however, did not last long for troubles soon came to their students. Students had trouble managing their school work, studying for their regents exam - one of the toughest of its kind - and attempting to complete their portfolio. Beacon's students only experienced stress and frustrations. Not only were they required to pass their classes and receive the necessary amount of credits to graduate, but they also had to pass a statewide standardized test and complete their portfolio.

Many faculty, educators, and students at Beacon School and other schools throughout the nation find the system to be “very time consuming” and "Officials object to using portfolios for assessment because they are too subjective". Depending on a given teacher’s standards, a student could pass the assignment with one teacher, and fail it with another.

Our state education department claims that the diploma system has a valid purpose, but I disagree. On the contrary, the system is invalid. The history, the facts, and our very own school’s experience collectively contradict this supposition. We cannot allow our government to control us. We cannot lower ourselves to becoming nothing but wet tar ready to be steamrolled by an authoritarian power.

We must stop the injustice. We must accelerate our campaign against this unnecessary hindrance to our graduation. All it has caused for students is frustration and turmoil. The system itself may slowly improve, but not in a manner great enough to suit our student body, or our state. We must become an impetus for the entire state; the impetus for the change we so dearly need. No person by themselves can change the system, but together, as a student body, we can accomplish any feat. So it’s up to you to join the cause in making our education a more sensible and less frustrating system than it already is. After all, it is our education…