220 West Exchange Street, Suite 007

220 West Exchange Street, Suite 007

Providence, Rhode Island 02903

Telephone  401-274-4940

Facsimile  401-274-4941

Date: April 2, 2014

To:House Health, Education and Welfare Committee

Re:In support of:

H-7581(Study School Suspensions)

H-7672 (Prohibit Use of State Assessment or Standardized Testing Regarding Eligibility for High School Graduation)

H-7836(Use of Holistic Assessment for High School Graduation Requirements)

All three of these pieces of legislation have two things in common. First, is they are all designed to alleviate some of the negative outcomes that our public school system have in regards to at-risk students. Second, is related to fairness and equality.

I have over 40 years working with students and youth who for a myriad of reasons, many of which are outside of their control, don't quite fit into “the educational system”. From my experienceI learned that neither standardized testing results nor ineffective disciplinary practicesareaccurate predictors of success as adults. The more we restrict our ability to accurately measure a students learning as a graduation requirement and the more we exclude students from the learning environment, the more we enhance the possibility of poor outcomes for those students as adults.

I have learned over these years that the school must “draw” at-risk students into the school environment and not push them out. With graduation rates in some urban environments leveling off between 66% to 70%, I see nothing in our current policies regarding out of school suspension and high-stakes testing, that will improve the horrendous graduation rates. Throughout the years, as a volunteer, I brought my banjo, guitar and folk music to literally hundreds of classrooms in elementary schools. It always broke my heart to engage kindergarten and first grade classes with this wonderful activity of singing songs and learning about music then realizing that the one third of the students sitting in front of me would not finish their school career. The “pushing out” of students who have behavioral issues begins at a very early stage through the use of harmful and ineffective disciplinary policies.

I provide many workshops to social workers, teachers, and agency professionals to help them provide a more effective disciplinary process applying consequences, which I call the “Natural Consequence System”. The system simply requires that before any consequence is applied to a behavior that the authority must answer “yes” to three questions.

1. Does the consequence have a direct relationship to behavior?

2. Does the consequence have a reasonable chance of positively effecting the targeted behavior?

3. Can the consequence actually be carried out?

If these three questions are answered in the positive then the child, observing students, parents, staff, and others understand the application of the consequence giving the intervention a much greater likelihood of success. If not all three questions can be answered in the affirmative, then the intervention will likely fail, sometimes with very severe unintended consequences. It is important to note here, that the system can be used the majority of time but in cases of danger to self or others it may not be applicable. Safety is always the first concern.

H-7581 (Support)

It is my understanding that the Committee has received, in adequate measure, the ACLU report regarding suspensions as applied to minority groups in Rhode Island. Therefore, I will not cover that information in this testimony. What the Committee may not be aware of is the Issue Brief No. 1 (March 2014) entitled Data Snapshot: School Discipline published by the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. This report covers the following areas:

• Suspension of preschool children, by race/ethnicity and gender.
• Disproportionately high suspension/expulsion rates for students of color.
• Disproportionate suspensions of girls of color.
• Suspension of students with disabilities and English learners.
• Suspension rates, by race, sex, and disability status combined.
• Arrests and referrals to law enforcement, by race and disability status.
• Restraint and seclusion, by disability status and race.

In each of the above categories minority students with disabilities were found to have a disproportionate number of school discipline actions including suspension. In regards to Out of School Suspensions, the following statement appears on page 11:

Five (5) states reported male suspension rates higher than the nation for every racial/ethnic group: Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

In the seven categories of race/ethnicity, Rhode Island not only followed the trend of higher suspension rates for male minority students (Black/African American), but has 3% higher rate of white students also. This at least raises the possibility that institutional discrimination is at play related to Rhode Island suspension rates and perhaps suspensions overall is an overused means of handling discipline.

In the school year of 2011 – 2012, Rhode Island had 142,481 students receiving services in public, charter and collaborative schools. During that same year, there were 2019 elementary suspensions, 13,710 middle school suspensions and 24,845 high school suspensions. When students are suspended theyare not learning. Furthermore for some students, they may be left unsupervised at home which can result in additional problems in the community.

In an alternative school for students with severe and persistent behavioral issues, I was responsible for operating from 1983 through 1999, the number suspensions implanted could be counted on less than two hands. In another setting, as the Director (Principle) of a public alternative school in Massachusetts from 1999 through 2002, suspensions were only used when required by law and there were very few of them. We also had excellent graduation rates and acceptance into the colleges, despite students having very disrupted education experiences prior to coming to the middle/high school due to the following characteristics:

• 100% of the students were on an IEP for severe emotional disabilities.
• 75% of the students self-reported chronic and active substance abuse.
• Over 70% of the students had been involved in the criminal justice system.
• Over 75% of the students had experience a serious suicide attempt or reported serious suicide ideation.
• All students had received multiple suspensions while attending their sending schools.
• No student, even with intensive individual tutoring, were able to pass both elements (Language and Math) of the MCAS, yet all graduated students obtain jobs, went on to college and/or served in the military.

Taking in consideration all reports provided the committee and all the stories like this one presented, it should behoove the Rhode Island Department of Education to study suspensions as a whole, as well suspensions handed out to minority students. Learning and finding the truth is what education is all about.

H-7672 & H-7836 (Support)

This Committee has been deluged over the years with expert opinions, studies, and stories of personal experiences regarding how we assess students for graduation. I will not repeat that information in this testimony instead will pass on my many years of experience in the field.

No student learns, retains and utilizes information in the same way. Many occupations did not require the level of education that are outlined on the standardized testing programs in use today. I use myself as an example. I am a successful professional social worker, who has successfully worked as a clinician, administrator, adjunct professor, grant writer, and many other professional activities. Yet, at this time, would be at risk of passing both the language and math components of the standardized high school graduation test. The highest level math computation I need to usein my current jobs, is to use a formula for figuring a percentage. Due to severe language-based disabilities as a child, I was unable to read until I was in fifth grade. During that time I missed all of the fundamental skills taught in reading and writing and struggled in education until I reached the college level, where I excelled. However, I'm able to intuitively write and comprehend complex reports, teach grant writing at the professional level, write testimonies effective for this General Assembly as well as at the Congressional level, effectively correct academic papers at two colleges, and author several successful commercial historical books on baseball. If I had been pigeonholed as a senior student in high school because I could not pass a high-stakes test, I guarantee you my life would've been dramatically different.

During my years of professional experience working with and within private and public schools, I have seen many students who for a variety of reasons, do not test well, yet possess the knowledge and skills to be highly successful in their chosen occupations. By relying on unproven high-stakes testing mechanisms as a graduation requirement, we run the risk of permanently creating a large group of “second-class” citizens, who would have been successful if we did not relied upon a “one method” process for accessing skills and knowledge.

Vetted research to determine the efficacy of high-stakes testing is almost nonexistent. Most articles written have not been scrutinized by academic standards and reliability is in question. From a practical standpoint, we do know that educational systems using high stakes testing, inevitably “teach to the test” and that there exists a loss of other disciplines such as art, music and artistic literature. Questions that are raised above related to the lack of bona fide research should bring into question the changing of a whole education system based on assumptions. Even if high-stakes testing miraculously overhauls our educational system, what happens to the students who for various reasons, including disability, do not pass the “test”? History tells us many students have succeeded as adults even though they do not test well. This is of course prior to the mandatefor passing high stakes test to graduate. Are we, through our high-stakes testing policy, contributing to sentencing students to lifelong poverty, lack of fulfillment, hampering of independence, and potentially contributing to our criminal justice system?

I do not believe the evidence merits wholesale changes in an educational system we have relied on since the beginning of public school. I do believe there is much educational reform work to do in light of our technological advances and changing societal roles. I do not believe that high stakes testing is one of those reforms other than to get rid of it. We need to learn from the many excellent interventions that have been applied to students with disabilities and use these interventions for all students. We need to enhance the learning of every single student regardless of ability to fit in with the structure of ours schools and change that structure when necessary. People learn, retain and use knowledge very differently. Our school systems have to adjust to all styles to be successful.

Respectively Submitted,

Richard Harris, LICSW

Executive Director