Contributed by Genesis Carela

My research explores the Providence Public School District (PPSD) takeover in Rhode Island. Takeovers are an extreme version of accountability policies which impose a new governance structure with the aim of remedying financial mismanagement of school districts and improving academic outcomes for students. Takeovers occur when the mayor or governor strips local education agencies of their power and places struggling schools or districts under the authority of the mayor or state. The PPSD takeover officially commenced on November 1, 2019 as a result of an evaluation released by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy in June of 2019. The report pointed to an antiquated governance structure and inefficient bureaucracy that stifled change. In addition, the report found low levels of academic instruction throughout the district, including the lack of an aligned curriculum, broken school culture, unsupported teachers, and parents that felt excluded from their children’s education. To reverse decades of inaction, the governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo and the education commissioner, Angélica Infante-Green have assumed responsibility of the district in an effort to enact transformational change which includes closing equity gaps, increasing academic proficiency for all students, and recruiting and retaining competent educators.

More specifically, my research will examine the effects of PPSD takeover on racially minoritized students and parents who have been denied a formal role in the takeover. Literature on mayoral and gubernatorial takeovers indicate that takeovers are implemented in a way that systematically targets minority school districts. Although the intention of implementing this policy is to improve chronically low-performing schools and districts and to promote financial stability, the outcomes often disenfranchise minority school districts and disrupt the existing local organization of school districts as well as relationships between educators, district administrators, and families.

The kind of in-person interviews I would have preferred to conduct have been made impossible because of COVID-related restrictions. Online interviews with underage research subjects also posed thorny ethics and informed consent challenges. Faced with those obstacles and the need to gather data for my thesis paper on a limited timeline, I have revised my plan of research to rely on secondary data. Luckily, there is abundant information available publicly. I am gathering interviews of student organizations conducted by local media outlets as well as transcripts of community hearings, documents from the Rhode Island Department of Education, popular press coverage, and Rhode Island Board of Education meeting minutes. Through a content analysis of this qualitative secondary data, I will gain a deeper understanding of the context and implications of district takeover in PPSD.

While the data may not be able to answer all of my research questions, it should give me a strong basis for future research based on open and semi-open interviews to get more, richer information from students and parents.

Contributed by Alonso Velásquez

On October 7, 2020, El Instituto co-sponsored a roundtable discussion “Rise of the Latinx Vote,” with the Connecticut Democracy Center (Old State House). This virtual event was co-organized by CDC events organizer, Mariana García, and El Instituto’s Director, Samuel Martínez. Moderated by UConn Political Science/El Instituto Associate Professor Charles Venator, the panel included prominent academic experts from across the country alongside two Connecticut State Representatives.

Western Carolina University’s Dr. Ben Francis Fallon started the event with an overview of the history through which Latinos first came to be a political voice in 1960 with the “Viva Kennedy” campaign, which was mostly composed of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, which had and continue to be the largest communities. With the Civil Rights Act, the use of Spanish became legally protected, as discrimination due to one’s language became illegal. With US society historically seen along White/Black lines, both parties sought to appeal to Latinos, often, however, without taking account of regional and national origin particularities. The concept of “the Latino vote,” for Professor Fallon, was in no way a pre-ordained outcome but involved tense compromises among community issue leaders and the Republican and Democratic Parties’ leaderships. SUNY Albany Professor José Cruz followed Fallon, to make the point that the Latino vote is on one hand a myth (there being no unity of opinion among Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Mexicans) but that disunity among the Latinx community is not necessarily a bad thing: politicians who know each community’s issues and opinions can zone in on what matters to people of each nationality.

In Connecticut, Puerto Ricans constitute over half of the entire Latinx population and are 8% of the entire state’s population, the largest out of any state. Democratic State Representative Geraldo Reyes said he felt Puerto Rico had been unfairly treated by the Trump administration, citing tensions underlying Puerto Rican Governor Wanda Vásquez’ endorsement of the president. The University of Texas’ Professor Victoria DeFrancisco Soto said that the Latinx vote remains a “sleeping giant” in large part because politicians have mostly not yet learned how to recruit its support. She said that politicians tend always to tie the Latinx community to immigration, even though polls have shown that other issues, notably healthcare and the economy, are higher concerns. She also said that immigrants are more likely to be closer to their roots and have more conservative values, such as opposition to abortion. The discussion was rounded out by State Representative Christopher Rosario, who voiced great uncertainty about how the COVID-19 pandemic would impact the Latinx turnout, noting how greatly physical distancing had changed campaigning by limiting door-to-door canvassing and appeals. Ultimately, in great part to early mail in voting, an unprecedented number of Americans, including a record number of Latinos, voted in the 2020 elections.