RI Bilingual Public Charter School Improved 100% on RICAS, It Knows It Needs to Do More
GoLocalProv News Team and News Editor Kate Nagle
RI Bilingual Public Charter School Improved 100% on RICAS, It Knows It Needs to Do More
The K-8 school first opened in the 2021-2022 school year and 40 students took the ELA RICAS, with 7 percent meeting or exceeding expectations.
In 2022-2023, 59 students at the Nuestro Mundo took the ELA RICAS — and only 10.2% met or exceeded expectations.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTFast forward one year, and 105 students at the school took the ELA RICAS in 2023-2024 and 20% met or exceeded expectations, good for a performance improvement of approximately 100% on the most recent round of testing.
And while it is still below state average, Head of School Danira Ortiz says she is optimistic the data shows that the school is on the right track.
“We were happily surprised — but it was definitely what we worked and hoped for,” said Ortiz.
Statewide in 2023, RICAS ELA proficiency was 33.1 percent; in 2024, that number was 30.8 percent.
The percent decrease in performance between the two years was a drop of 7%.
GoLocal spoke with Ortiz this week about Nuestro Mundo's results — and the next steps for the school with a student population of 300 who identify as 81% Latino-Latinx, 11% White, 6% African-American and 2% American Indian.
Approximately 50% of NMPCS students live on the Southside of Providence and 80% of NMPCS families qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Year Over Year Growth
Ortiz joined Nuestro Mundo in the 2022-2023 school year — its second year of operation.
A native of the Bronx in New York and of Dominican descent, Oritz has worked as an elementary and middle school dual-language teacher in both the NYC Public Schools and later, the Central Falls Public Schools.
She has also served as an elementary principal in the Woonsocket Public Schools, and most recently was the Director of Family & Scholar Engagement for the Blackstone Valley Prep Charter Schools, creating a system of communication and feedback for both families and strategic partners of the network.
And Ortiz took that particular skillset to Nuestro Mundo.
“It was a lot of focus on operations and systems,” said Ortiz of her arrival. “That year and last year was really about dedicating time to teachers, the curriculum, their professional development.
“We applied for some grants for professional development and hired some additional interventionists. So the focus really has been on closing the gaps,” said Ortiz. “Obviously, our students are still really low, but if you look at the number of students meeting or exceeding, we’d still love to increase those numbers. But we know our students are coming to us with gaps, and our focus is on closing that achievement gap.”
As important as their internal focus is, Ortiz says the school is still working to get the word out externally on its mission.
“What I want to highlight is while our community is getting better at seeing what we’re all about — dual language learning — some people still see us as a bilingual school, like with a negative connotation, or 'ESL' or a school for 'kids who don’t speak English.' That’s not what we’re about,” said Ortiz. “Our model is a 50/50 immersion model, and really, our goal would be for fifty percent of our students to be English dominant. They might not even know Spanish. They might not be Latino or Hispanic. We do have some Caucasian families that have no Spanish background but we would love for that to be fifty percent of the population, so that they can learn from each other.”
As a public charter school, application is by lottery — which means the school cannot choose its students.
And like most charter schools in the state, there is a long waiting list of families who are hoping for a seat.
“So that’s really the model we’ve set out to do and we’re doing it as best as possible with the lottery,” said Ortiz. “But we’d love the community to know we’re not just a school for kids who don’t speak English. We’re a community for everybody that wants to be a global citizen.”
Growth Factor
“All of our students are multi-lingual learners. Some of them are learning English, but some of them are learning Spanish. Some schools have five percent, ten percent of students are learning English; all of our students are multi-lingual learners. They’re either learning English, or learning Spanish. And both, in some cases,” said Ortiz.
“So yes, we’re happy about that growth, but we have students who have made growth, who are still learning the language,” said Ortiz. “RICAS is only [administered] in English, so some of our students are not yet proficient. It takes three to five years to become proficient in a language — and that’s not reflected there. If they were to be assessed in Spanish, we would be able to see that they’re capable of so much more, except for the fact the test is English.”
GoLocal also talked with board chair Diego Arene-Morley about the RICAS results.
“I went to a bilingual school growing up in Washington DC, and then I lived in Providence for about 10 years, where I did my undergrad,” said Arene-Morley. “I’m a clinical social worker, and I’ve worked at schools in the Central Falls area with Americorps, so I’ve been with public schools, charter schools. I started volunteering my time at Nuestro Mundo with afternoon activities, homework clubs”
With his background and experience, Arene-Morey said moving to board chair position “seemed like it would be a good fit."
“What jumped out to me with Nuestro Mundo, is that they had a grant with URI that allowed the teaching staff to do collaborative teaching at Levitan, the only truly bilingual public (non-charter) school,” said Arene-Morley. “If you look at the data, the kids at bilingual schools are growing year over year on both English and math, where other schools are staying flat or going down.”
“It’s pretty obvious,” said Arene-Morley of the bilingual education model. “We’re not at the point where we have the majority of students exceeding expectations, but we can keep doubling, keep increasing that 10% every year, we’re going to get there.”