State
Senator John C. Sheehan was one of many people in Rhode Island who wondered
what State Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist wrote in the dissertation she
completed in June 2012. It was about creating a new teacher evaluation system
for the state, and Gist would not allow anyone to read it.
Sheehan eventually got a copy of
the embargoed dissertation, and he understood why she wanted to keep
it under wraps. The theory she wrote about was leadership based on respect and
collaboration, on trust and “buy-in,” but her practice was heavy-handed,
confrontational, and top-down.
Sheehan
wrote:
“As
soon as students underperformed on tests, teachers were blamed for the failure,
resulting in unprecedented low morale. The Gist reaction was on national
display when all of the teachers at Central Falls High School were fired. The
individual merits of the teachers did not matter nor did it matter if students
had applied themselves or were disadvantaged. Under Gist’s leadership
philosophy (corporate reform), all teachers were held strictly accountable for
low school test scores. Educators were again broadsided by the mass firing of
all of the teachers in Providence, a year later. What hurt the commissioner’s
credibility in Providence was her defense of wholesale firings, calling them a
“good and just cause” [ignoring RIDE’s own case law which would have prohibited
firing all teachers].”
“Good
leaders lead by example. If Gist were to do so, she would hold herself to the
same standard and consequence for performance failure as she does teachers. In
the new evaluation, teachers must develop Student Learning Objectives to be
used to demonstrate their students are continually making progress based on
standardized tests or other measures of student performance. If teachers do not
meet this standard, they can be deemed “ineffective”. If teachers do not
improve after a year, they face termination as had teachers in Central Falls
Ironically, the Department of Education, at Gist’s request, has set 33 targets
for statewide student performance. The bulk of them are related to closing the
achievement gap while a few involve graduation rates and how students do after
high school. In 2012, the state reached just 1 out of those 33 targets. In
other years, under Gist’s leadership, RIDE did not fair much better. Yet, the
commissioner is not held to account for these dismal results.”
He
added:
“Gist
failed to get the level of “buy-in” necessary to create a fair evaluation
system that would garner the support of a majority of teachers. That failure
was not due to teachers’ fear of change or being held accountable, but to the
Commissioner’s own poor leadership ability. Befittingly, 82% of public school
teachers polled had a negative view of Gist’s job performance! All things
considered, I can appreciate why she wanted to keep her dissertation out of the
public eye as long as possible.”