March 17, 2024 Letter

I hope you are enjoying Saint Patrick’s Day. When my children were younger, I celebrated by serving them green scrambled eggs (in a nod to Dr. Seuss), much to my enjoyment and their annoyance. This week’s letter discusses student attendance, education funding and the Senate study commission reviewing Providence Public Schools.

1.     Student Attendance

This past Wednesday, the Rhode Island Department Education (RIDE) presented its program to the Senate Education Committee. RIDE began with a description of its Attendance Matters campaign, focused on reducing chronic absenteeism (when a student is absent for 10% or more of the school year). RIDE presented this chart to show the absenteeism-related achievement gap:
The chart suggests an absenteeism-based achievement gap of 20%. The existence of this gap is intuitively clear, but I believe RIDE’s chart does not isolate the effect of chronic absenteeism. I used RIDE’s database to prepare this table that looks at demographic factors correlated with student achievement:
The table presents the achievement gaps by socioeconomic group with which we are familiar, and matches them against absenteeism rates. I am particularly struck by the achievement gap and attendance gap based on poverty status, which raises a question: how much of this achievement gap is the result of the multiple other challenges faced by students in poverty (living struggles, homelessness or mobility, etc.) and how much by chronic absenteeism? I asked RIDE to disaggregate their absenteeism data by socioeconomic group to help us understand this issue and develop programs that are targeted in the best possible way.

2.     School Spending Data

Rhode Island’s school aid funding formula aims to ensure that each school district has adequate funds to pay for “core instructional” expenses. RIDE collects data from school districts to monitor whether they are in fact spending sufficient funds to pay for the “core instructional” budget that the State is providing aid to maintain. On Thursday night, RIDE presented this chart:
The red dotted line that runs across the chart indicates the “core instructional budget” tabulated by the State formula, and the blue bars indicate each school district’s actual spending as a percentage of that core amount. The chart indicates that almost all school districts meet or exceed the State figure, with the exception of four property-poor districts including Providence, whose core instructional budge is 98% of the State calculation. RIDE plans to use this data as a tool to encourage school departments and municipalities to meet the State level.

It is worth noting that the four school districts at the far right of the chart have the smallest relative property tax bases in the State and are among the highest proportion of students in poverty and/or multilanguage learners. I believe these districts are most in need of a revision to the funding formula’s “state share ratio” described in last week’s letter. In other words, it will be possible to close the funding gap in these four communities by amending the funding formula to match that of Massachusetts.

3.     Senate Study Commission

The Senate study commission reviewing Providence Public Schools received a Draft Report at its January 29 meeting, which it discussed at that time and at a meeting held on February 5. The Commission will meet tomorrow, Monday March 18 at 5:00 p.m. in the Senate Lounge to review a second draft of the report. You can view the agenda by clicking here.