“Thirty minutes is a big impact,” Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green told Channel 12 last June. “Anything less than that, we wouldn’t really see the impact of that.”
“With wage increases, additional professional development time, and an unprecedented extension of the school day, this agreement will move Providence Public Schools forward,” Governor Dan McKee said in a press release announcing a one-year contract with the Providence Teachers Union, which extended the school day.
“We know that our students succeed when they are provided high-quality education by teachers who are supported,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said in the same press release. “Anytime we can expand those opportunities and extend learning time it’s a win for Providence students.”
Big impact. Unprecedented. A win.
JK, the adults now say.
The district is rolling back its elementary school day to 6 hours and 15 minutes, while middle and high school will fall back to 6 hours and 45 minutes. If you’re keeping score at home, the 30-minute cut amounts to more than two weeks of lost learning over the course of a school year.
“I cannot imagine that the students of Providence are all learning at grade level,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University. “It can’t possibly be time to say: ‘Mission accomplished.’”
Indeed, Providence remains one of the poorest-performing school districts of its size in New England. The most recent results on the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System exam showed only 13.1 percent of kids in grades 3 through 8 are considered proficient in math, and 16.6 percent are reading at grade level.
Those proficiency results are from the 2022-2023 school year, which was before the 30-minute extension of the school day last school year. We won’t get updated RICAS scores until the fall, but we do know that students showed modest improvement in English and math on a separate interim assessment last year.
It’s too soon to say whether the 30-minute extension of the school day worked, but it’s one of the few tangible changes we’ve seen implemented since the start of the takeover. As Lake told me, “extended learning time is known to be an effective way to accelerate learning.”
So why in the world would the district allow this to happen?
Money, of course.
The 30-minute increase to the school day last year was paid for using $25 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, and now that money is running dry. That funding includes an extra 30 minutes to the school day and an additional 90 minutes of professional development every other week.
That may sound like a steep price tag, but if you think something is working, you find a way to pay for it. Trim the millions of dollars you are spending on consultants. Cut some central office staff. Ask the Rhode Island Foundation for help. Get creative.
Instead, Superintendent Javier Montañez said he never even asked the Providence Teachers Union to consider making the extended day permanent. He also never made the case to the public for keeping the extra 30 minutes. He’s been fighting with Mayor Smiley’s administration about extra school funding, but never once mentioned that the money could be spent on keeping kids in school.
Want to save a few bucks? Start by eliminating the superintendent’s job until it’s time for the city to take back control of the schools from the state. Montañez’s contract expired June 30, and he’s a much more talented principal than he is in his current role as superintendent-in-name-only.
We shouldn’t let the teachers off the hook here, either.
Providence Teachers Union President Maribeth Calabro has legitimate gripes about how the extension worked, but those were problems that could have been solved with slightly better planning. She told Machado that it was a “missed opportunity” because the district added only a few minutes to every period of the day rather than providing “direct, targeted instruction for students in need.”
Of course, rather than do something about it, the union did what it always does: It allowed the problem to fester, and then counted down the days until the school year ended. Calabro even acknowledged that her members probably wouldn’t have agreed to a contract keeping the extended day intact even if the district came up with the money. The union’s contract expired Aug. 31.
So much for caring about the kids.
At this point, it’s unclear if anyone is actually looking out for the students in this district. Not one leader in any position of authority, from McKee on down, has decried the decision to take 30 minutes of school away from nearly 20,000 students.
And there’s the perfect synopsis for this takeover: The leaders are always around to claim victories, but never held accountable when they bungle the basics.
Get Rhode Map
A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.