Catalpa News

School Inspection and Accountability
When the Presidential election was in full swing, Teachers College Press published Grading American Education: Getting Accountability Right by Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen and Tamara Wilder. They made an amazing proposal: establish a national cadre of expert inspectors to observe actual teaching and learning in... read more »

Catalpa No Longer Endorsing SALT Visits
By the fall of 2009, The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) had used its options to extend its contract with Catalpa for services in support of the SALT school visit. Due to severe budget limitations and changes underway in RIDE’s programs associated with... read more »

Practice-Based Inquiry (PBI): An Introduction
This web-site is about Practice-Based Inquiry®, (PBI) a new tool of inquiry that works in providing rigorous assessments of how well schools are performing. PBI supports a new way of thinking about school and teacher accountability for the learning our schools provide our children... read more »

Warwick Beacon Reports on SALT Changes
(Note the following etc. permission) WARWICK BEACON SALT school visits budget cuts by Matt Bower 03.26.09 - 11:21 am As the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) and school departments across the state wrestle with their budgets, one educational ingredient could be changing – SALT. Although the... read more »

The Taste of SALT in RI
Two thousand years ago, if SALT lost its taste, it was thrown out on the public walkways. If it kept its taste, it was prized as essential to life. While the findings of a recent survey show that the SALT visit has retained—and most... read more »