Courageous stand for poor students

The fight over Achievement First’s expansion is about more than one charter school in Providence. It is a test of whether innovation will be permitted to shake up the poorly performing status quo in public education in Rhode Island. There are very powerful political forces resisting change here.

This battle will help determine whether poor and minority children get a fair chance to rise in this state, or whether special interests will keep them in the dust. It will also help determine whether Rhode Island has much of a chance to grow its economy, since the state cannot hope to reach its potential unless it does a much better job of educating its students.

Gov. Gina Raimondo has displayed considerable political courage and great compassion by strongly backing the expansion of Achievement First from 720 students to more than 3,000 over the next 10 years. The school has shown spectacular results in teaching mostly minority students from some of the poorest neighborhoods in the state.

Her education commissioner, Ken Wagner, noted on these pages Tuesday (“Achievement First will benefit Providence”) that more than 15,000 students attend Providence schools that are performing poorly. The story is very different at Achievement First.

“In math, 76 percent of Achievement First’s third graders met or exceeded expectations — the second-highest percentage among all school districts in the state. In English, 46 percent of its third graders met or exceeded expectations — above the state average,” he wrote. And that happened in a school where more than 80 percent of the students are from low-income families (compared with 47 percent statewide).

Critics whose power is invested in the status quo — the Providence City Council, the American Federation of Teachers and, to some extent, Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza — have raised concerns about the impact that expansion might have on students in traditional schools, since state education dollars would follow the Achievement First students to their new school.

Mark Santow, a Providence School Board member, expressed the idea at a hearing Tuesday night: “This is a high-risk experiment … that siphons money away from the district schools to create a second, less accountable one.”

The real “risk” to students, of course, is being stuck in poorly performing schools where they are not given the tools they need to succeed in life. The critics’ approach to seems to be to imprison as many of them as possible in traditional schools lest the system be forced to face competition, become more effective and change with the times. It is clear that the success of growing numbers of students at Achievement First will put increasing pressure on the education establishment to replicate this excellence throughout the system — the real reason, we suspect, for the fierce opposition.

Mayor Elorza, elected in part to help the city’s Latino community, needs to embrace change. Parents who want better for their children should make that clear to him. Lifting poor and minority students up is the civil rights challenge of our time.

We urge the state Council on Elementary and Secondary Education to support this expansion at its Dec. 20 meeting. And we urge those who care about public education to be more generous to poor and minority students who lack political muscle.

As Commissioner Wagner asked so powerfully in his Commentary piece: “If one is opposed to the Achievement First proposal, what is the alternate plan for the children of Providence? And how is this plan different — truly different — from what we have already tried over the past 25 years?”