Providence Journal

Commissioner's column 'a sarcastic taunt'

Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green’s recent school attendance exhortation ( "From one parent to another: school attendance matters," Commentary, June 8 ) would ordinarily be unobjectionable, but coming from her, the person most responsible for poor school climates that induce poor attendance, her piece sounded like a sarcastic taunt.

The commissioner's favorite flimsy fallback of pandemic blame is thin cover for an era of miserably excessive testing that crowds out of a school day nearly anything that brings students or teachers joy. Add in capricious school closures and ineffective measures to address major teacher shortages (newsflash: few people like being teachers in Infante-Green’s Rhode Island), and one ha

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