Rhode Island: College and Career Policies

RIDE--The Rhode Island Department of Education has reviewed recommendations from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, which was launched with a focus on identifying strategies, policies, and practices to “attract, deploy, develop, incentivize, and retain top teaching, leadership and management talent,” and from the Rhode Island Urban Education Task Force, which has recommended the development and implementation of a statewide educator performance management system to improve educator quality.  Anticipating the development of a performance management system that addresses the human capital cycle of acquisition through development, deployment, and advancement to accountability and exit.

The Rhode Island Department of Education adopted standards for educator evaluation systems developed on the local level. Districts may choose to develop their own system that meet the standards, or may choose to simply use the RIDE Model system.

In order to become a certified teacher in Rhode Island, an applicant must complete an approved teacher education program at an accredited institution and earn passing scores on content examinations.

Rhode Island adopted five standards for teacher preparation programs.

In 2014-2015, Rhode Island will introduce the new PARCC (or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) assessments in English Language Arts (ELA)/literacy. These assessments will replace the NECAP Reading and Writing assessments that we used for the past 9 years. NECAP tests are administered to Rhode Island students in third grade through high school.

In 2014-2015, Rhode Island will introduce the new PARCC (or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) assessments in mathematics. This assessment will replace the NECAP Mathematics assessment that we used for the past 9 years. Rhode Island also participates annually in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation’s Report Card, where a sampling of students (from grades 4, 8, and/or 12) are tested in several content areas as part of a nationally representative assessment of student performance. In addition, Rhode Island administers the American Diploma Project (ADP) Algebra II End of Course Exam, considered an important benchmark for college-bound students.

Renewal is based on previous levels of effectiveness from the educator evaluation system.