Sasse Says Raimondo’s Budget Fails to Address RI's K-12 Education Problem

Sasse Says Raimondo’s Budget Fails to Address RI's K-12 Education Problem

Recently released data by the Rhode Island Department of Education showed the state's school children are lagging far behind Massachusetts in performance on the same standardized test. Gary Sasse joined GoLocal LIVE and said that the recently released budget by Governor Gina Raimondo fails to take on maybe Rhode Island’s most critical issue.

Sasse said that Raimondo’s budget has a number of weaknesses and that "there's no strategy, there's no plan -- she had said not one word one, frankly, of how we're gonna fix our education system, what we're going to change, so...those are the kind of policy questions the legislature has to deal with.”

Sasse, who heads the Hassenfeld Institute at Bryant University, formerly served as Director of Administration.

In late November, RIDE released performance results for students in grades 3 through 8 on the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) -- and on average, Rhode Island scored 17 percentage points lower than Massachusetts in ELA and 20 percentage points lower in mathematics, according to RIDE. 

RICAS is the Rhode Island administration of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) -- an no Rhode Island district scored within the top 10 percent of Massachusetts communities.

WATCH THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW ABOVE

“We should 'start education from the cradle to the grave and the taxpayer has an obligation to pay for college now' - that's the liberal orthodoxy right now that appears in the budget,” said Sasse.

Sasse says the budget fails to address what appears to be a cooling economy and potentially exposes Rhode Island to severe revenue shortfalls.

In addition, Sasse has been the advocate for an education bill of rights that would guarantee Rhode Island's children and their parents certain rights.  READ MORE HERE