A Little Bit of Rhody in D.C.

For those of you that don’t know, I am a Rhode Island girl, born and bred. I have lived all twenty-years of my life in the state that my boyfriend’s parents routinely jokingly poke fun at with their question, “Is it a road? Is it an island?” At a total area of 1,214 square miles, I’m not really sure what it is exactly. With that being said, it is pretty rare that I encounter anyone or anything from home outside of New England, so when I noticed that the Center for American Progress was having a special presentation on Rhode Island, I was obliged to attend.

The special presentation was titled, “School Finance Reform: Impacts on Equity and Lessons from Rhode Island.” It featured a Keynote Speech from Congressman Chaka Fattah from Pennsylvania, a introduction from Cynthia Brown, the Vice President for Education Policy at the center for American Progress, opening remarks from Christopher Edley Jr, Dean, UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law; Co-Chair, Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, a presentation by Dr. Kenneth Wong, a professor at Brown University, and a panelist discussion from Anna Cano-Morales, Director of Strategic Partnerships, RI-CAN and Jon Fullerton Executive Director, Center for Education Policy Research, Harvard University.

Overall, the discussion was very interesting. The theme of the discussion can be seen in Dr. Edley’s idea that financial reform must be combined with renewed efforts to achieve efficiency. He identified that we must stop spending money on policies that are popular with government, but bad for children. Instead, he idealized that we emphasize realities to those who do not want to spend more money, as we will not make progress with the people of the country if the talk is about the constricting of funds and the plumbing of policy; the American public is not interested in policy plumbing, but instead on values and results.

After Dr. Edley’s remarks, Dr. Wong presented the new design of the Rhode Island School Funding Formula, as it represents the state’s first attempt at school funding reform in 20 years. I enjoyed his presentation, as I could actually visualize the distinctive cities and towns he referred to in his examples. While others were puzzled as to the actual dynamic of the state, I was truly able to understand the presentation and frankly, I feel that the ideas the state recently put into place could work. My knowledge of the state also gave me an advantage when I addressed the Rhode Island natives of Wong and Morales with my questions after the presentation, and had some think-tank employees turning to me for answers in the elevator on my way out. For the first time, my home state made me cool for something other than my accent! All jokes aside, it was nice to see that D.C. affords me opportunities to see the political happenings of not only the nation as a whole, but also its smallest member.

-C.C.