District+Description+-+Providence

The Providence School District

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Providence is the capital of Rhode Island and the largest city in the state. It encompasses seven zip codes, and the Providence School District consists of the various schools from each of these areas. There is a total of 57 schools in the city, including 31 elementary schools, 9 middle schools, and 17 high schools. The characteristics that best provide a comprehensive representation of this school district include the demographics of the schools, school performance, the school’s expenditure and funding, as well as the assessment and accountability of the schools. Each of these characteristics have been explored in this report, and they help to provide a better understanding of the Providence School District.=====

Demographics
The majority of students in Providence and Rhode Island attend public schools. This accounts for 80% of students in Providence and 84% of students in Rhode Island[1]. The attendance rate within the district has a significant drop off of 8% attendance rate from elementary to high school. It falls short of the state target attendance rate of 90% by 5% in high school, while the state exceeds the target by 2%. The average attendance rate in Providence is 90%, meeting the state target, but falling short by 4% of the state's average. In addition, the chronic absenteeism at 34% is nearly twice as high as the state's average at 18%. The percentage of students who graduated from this district in 2011 was merely 66.1%, an astounding 11% lower than the state's 77.2% graduation rate. This perhaps can be attributed to the dropout rate of 23.6%, nearly twice as high as the state's 12.5% The suspension rates in Providence are also higher than in the remainder of Rhode Island, with the exception of high school and special education students. The high school suspension rate is 39.1 in Providence and 53.1 in Rhode Island. The special education suspension rate is 29.8 in Providence which is significantly lower than the 57.0 suspension rate in Rhode Island[3]. The schools in Providence have qualified teachers who have a higher teacher-student ratio when compared to Rhode Island. The teacher-student ratio in Providence is 1:14, whereas the state has only a 1:10 ratio[4]. 99% of classes in Providence schools are taught by teachers who are highly qualified, and in the rest of the state only 96% of classes are taught by teacher with these qualifications. 21% of teachers in Providence have emergency certification, whereas only 1% of teacher in the rest of the state have an emergency certification[5].

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Racial diversity is one aspect that clearly distinguishes this district from the rest of the state. Providence schools are more racially diverse when compared to other schools in Rhode Island. African Americans make up 22% of Providence schools and only 8.9% of schools in the rest of the state. Hispanics make up 59% of Providence schools, which is a greater percentage of than the 18.4% of Hispanics that make up other Rhode Island schools. The white population in Providence schools is only 12% and significantly lower than the rest of the state, in which white students make up a dominant 68.9% of the population[6]. The diversity in these schools corresponds to the number of students who are bilingual and are receiving ESL classes. The number of students receiving English as a Second Language classes is much higher is Providence than in the state of Rhode Island. 7% of the students in Providence take ESL classes, compared to only 3.6% in the rest of the state. 8% of students in Providence schools are bilingual, whereas only 1.4% of the student population in schools in Rhode Island are bilingual.[7] Since the numbers of ESL students in Providence are so high, there is less money spent per English Language Learner in the city ($317) than the state as a whole ($7,931)(see Funding).=====

Performance
The Providence School District performance is overall in a poor state. There are 21 schools in the districts that are identified for improvement ranging from 1 to 8 years. On top of that, there are no Regents Commended schools. 65% (30 schools) made insufficient yearly progress for improvement while only 16 schools (35%) made sufficient yearly progress in the school year 2007-2008. Each grade levels have their own positives and negatives for performance standards.[8]

Elementary Schools in Providence have 8 schools below comparison level for reading, writing, and math, which is around 31%. They seemed to do the best in math with 10 out of the 26 schools (38%) being above comparison group. The problem is that 10 out of 26 schools is much less than half of the elementary schools preforming above the average in math, while even less are in reading (6 schools, 23%) and writing (9 schools, 35%). Most of the Elementary Schools had met the comparison group in reading with 12 schools (46%), where as in writing 9 schools (35%) exceeded the comparison group for the state.[9]

The Middle Schools fared the best with no schools in the below comparison level range for any subject, although there are only 8 schools total which is less than the Elementary total. The results were pretty consistent with 6 out of the 8 schools (75%) at the comparison level for reading and math and 7 schools (88%) for writing. Above the comparison level only 2 out of the 8 schools (25%) reached this level in math and reading while only 1 school did so in writing (13%).[10]

High Schools in Providence preformed mostly at the comparison level with a few schools towards either end of the spectrum. In math, there were no schools that preformed below comparison level. Math included the most school (12 out of the 15 schools, 80%) preforming the same as the comparison group. Math had the fewest schools above the average with only 3 out of the 15 (20%). Writing had the highest number of schools preforming above comparisons level with 5 schools (34%), but had 3 schools (20%) below average and 7 schools (47%) at average. Reading had the most schools in the below comparison range 5 below comparison level (34%), 6 at comparison level (40%), and only 4 schools above comparison level (27%).[11]

Overall, in math Elementary Schools had the highest percentage of schools (38%) above comparison level out of the 3 grade schools, they also scored highest in writing with 34% above comparison level in writing, only 1% higher than High Schools but still the highest out of the 3. Lastly in reading, surprisingly the High Schools had the highest percentage of schools above comparison level with 27% but also had the highest number of schools in the below comparison group level too. This data shows that the providence district had a lot of work to do to get these schools up to par with the state and to thrive with the best schools. The High Schools seem to me to need the most work, being such an important time for learning and getting ready for college that the schools should all be at or above comparison group. It also seems that their is a paradox with the fact that a school system can have the highest percentage of schools doing above average while they still have an even larger amount below. This district needs a lot of work to get the schools up to state levels, and it must start with the schools meeting the adequate yearly progress which so many did not. [12]

Funding and Expenditure
The state of Rhode Island spends most of its money on instruction for each student. After that comes instructional support and then operations, followed by other commitments and lastly, leadership. The total amount Providence has to spend on it's students ($15,143) is more than the average Rhode Island spends on each student ($14,462). As you can see in the table above, in the categories of General Education, Title I, and Special Education, the expenditures in Providence are also above the Rhode Island average. However, Providence invests almost the same amount as Rhode Island in the Career and Technical Education Field ($4,102 in Providence vs. $4,249 throughout the state). The difference between the state and Providence in expenditures for English Language Learners is alarming. Only $317 are spent for those in Providence as opposed to the $7,931 in the state. This may be due to the fact that 15% of Providence students are in the English Language Learners program, whereas only 5% of students in the entire state participate.

Assessment
Analysis of the Providence school district's assessment charts leads one to believe that this district is below average in achievement standards. It seems even as early as 3rd grade, students are not where they should be in terms of assessment results. There is a very small amount of students that tested into the "Proficient with Distinction" or "Proficient" categories, and the majority of students (65%) are fall into either "Partially Proficient" or "Below Proficient" categories. One would hope that students would be achieving at higher levels early on, because research has shown that students that fall behind early on may continue to have problems later in their education. This seems to be true in Providence because in middle school (8th grade), students are continuing to fall behind. In reading assessments, only a mere 40% of students are are considered proficient with distinction or proficient, and 72% of students are considered partially proficient or below proficient in math. Scores that are this low in middle school could lead to problems in high school because the curriculum is often more challenging in the higher levels. Scores from 11th grade students again show a decline in achievement. A shocking amount, 85%, of students are considered partially proficient or below proficient in math. This is alarming because this means that the vast majority of students that graduate from Providence high schools are not proficient in math. Also, only 29% of students are proficient with distinction or proficient in writing, which could lead to many problems for these students in the workforce and/or college. However, there is good news amongst all this discouraging information. Reading scores in the 11th grade rose to 55% of students testing proficient with distinction or proficient. Compared to the other scores in 11th grade, this is an achievement. However, this score is not close to where it should be in terms of state and national standards. Unfortunately, this information leads us to believe that Providence school districts are below average in terms of achievement standards in all levels of education and are not preparing students to succeed after school.

Accountability
Providence is a much more diverse community than Barrington with only 12% of its student population being Caucasian. Because 59% of Providence's students are Hispanic and 22% of Providence's students are African-American I decided to use these two groups to examine Providence's accountability seeing as they carry the most weight in scores. In Elementary education neither Hispanic nor African-American students met the state targets but the ELA target was counted as met due to sufficient progress shown toward the target. In Middle School Education, Hispanic students met the state target for Math however the ELA and Math targets were counted as met for both Hispanics and African-Americans due to the same reason as before. In high school education both Hispanic and African-American students met the state target for ELA and were seen as having met the state target for Math as well due to, once again, showing sufficient progress towards the target. Math scores for these two groups were noticably closer to the state targets in Middle school than either Elementary or High school and ELA scores appeared to get closer to the target from Elementary to Middle School and then surpass the target in High School.

Conclusion
Overall, Providence is a racially diverse, low performing school district. While this school district spends more per student than the average amount spent per student in the rest of Rhode Island, and most of the money and funding the district receives is spent on the instruction of students, the performance levels are still low. When compared to the rest of Rhode Island, the Providence School District is below average in achievement standards in all levels of education. Based on these indicators, it is clear that there is much room for improvement and progress, and this report helps to highlight these issues.