R.I. Ed. Commissioner Wagner defends his support of charter school's expansion
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- State education Commissioner Ken Wagner defended his recommendation in favor of Achievement First's expansion by saying he is under no obligation to consider the impact on Providence's public schools.
Wagner, in an interview Tuesday, said state law requires his office to look at the charter school's fiscal, educational and programmatic impacts on the larger community, not on the school district alone.
"These are unanswered questions," he said of the future impact on the city's schools. "Not only do we not have a window into future decisions by Providence, I suspect Providence doesn't know what (an AF expansion) would do. To the extent that they do know, we included that information in the report to the council."
The Achievement First charter school, which runs two elementary schools in Providence, wants to grow to more than 3,000 students in 10 years. The Council on Elementary and Secondary Education will vote on Wagner's recommendation on Dec. 20.
Wagner also defended a study conducted by a professor at Brown University that has come under criticism from a leading economist at the University of Rhode Island and two other analysts, including the current and former directors of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, a pro-business policy group that is generally supportive of charters.
Wagner said the so-called Hastings report by the Rhode Island Innovative Policy Lab at Brown was based on a study performed by statisticians from Stanford, Colombia and Brown universities whose findings were cited by President Obama in his 2012 State of the Union address.
"It was deemed so important that Obama called it out," Wagner said. The study looked at the correlation between students exposed to high-quality teachers and the students' income later in life. It did not, however, say that Achievement First was the only school with high-quality teachers in Providence.
"John Simmons and Gary Sasse are not statisticians, period," Wagner said, referring to Simmons, who heads RIPEC, and Sasse, the former head of RIPEC and the current executive director of Bryant University's Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership.
The city's internal auditor concluded that the district schools would lose $28 to $29 million a year if AF is allowed to grow to its full proposed enrollment.
Asked if that fiscal impact would have a devastating effect on the regular public schools, Wagner said:
"Achievement First is working on the same money as the district. If Providence wants to find a way to have more adults in the classroom, to provide a longer school day, to have parents agree to a contract, they can figure that out.
"We're trying to provide a healthy balance. Having another service provider (AF) pick up 10 percent of the district's kids feels like putting healthy pressure on the district."
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