On Feb. 28, Cranston’s Dan Wall – a Providence Public Schools teacher and history department chair at Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex – has announced that after two years as secretary for the Providence Teachers’ Union (PTU) and a year prior to that spent on the executive board, he is throwing his hat in the ring for the newly vacated position of union president.

“For a long time people have felt that I was vocal, knowledgeable and active in the union, and that I should run,” he said. “I worked closely with [former union president] Steve Smith for a long time, and last month he retired abruptly, so it’s time to put my money where my mouth is and step up to the plate.”

Wall, a husband and the father of two school-aged daughters, is well-known around town for his passion for education, having spoken at many Cranston School Committee meetings as a parent.

“I really think it’s time for a change, and this is the opportunity for me to help make that change,” he said. “Providence is the largest school district in the state and probably the poorest, or at least one of the poorest. Many of our schools are involved in reform and intervention, and yet a lot of the blame and intervention strategies are placed at the feet of the teachers. We need a strong union and a strong voice to contest unfounded claims with facts. We need a stronger union with an active membership to get the facts out there, both to our members and to the public.”

Wall explained the difference between the role of unions in the past versus what he sees as the role of the union today.

“In the past, unions really focused on working conditions, salaries, pensions and benefits. Now, however, there’s a switch. Now our union focuses on educational policies, test scores, teacher evaluations and the mandates, which are often impossible for us to enforce, being brought down to us by the commissioner [of education],” he said.

Wall considers his campaign to be truly a grassroots effort, as he’s been spending portions of his days visiting with teachers in all of the schools, both elementary and secondary, throughout the city to speak to them about their concerns and to let them know the things he feels so strongly about.

One issue he’s firm on is the issue of the over-testing of students, as well as the blame placed upon teachers when the students don’t test well.

“The NECAP [New England Common Assessment Program] measures certain academic domains and makes inferences about those specific domains, but it’s truly just a sampling – a limited scope of what a student knows. It should not be used to judge the quality of a teacher, of a program, of a school or a student’s readiness for graduation,” he said. “The way it’s being used now, the NECAP [New England Common Assessment Program] scores are actually being invalidated because the intense test preparation which is taking place is inflating student scores.”

Having been in education for more than a decade, Wall has seen the pendulum swing in different directions through the years but feels that it has to swing back again.

“We need to go back to looking at multiple measures, looking at the whole student and then see if they’re ready to graduate. We need to be able to differentiate instruction, to look at a student and their individual strengths and weaknesses, not just one formula for all. We are asking one test to do far more than it was ever designed to do.”

Wall said he has seen the impact of the focus on assessments on many levels.

“I’ve seen parents starting to stand up to protest, but I’ve seen a lot of the blame placed on the teachers. Our teachers are looked at as making excuses when they talk about the barriers they face when educating our students,” he said. “Any number of factors are at play here, including things like nutrition [or lack thereof], instability at home, constant movement from place to place, language barriers and poverty. For so many of our students, there is no written word present in their homes. They’ve never been read to. They don’t know where or when their next meal will come, or where they’ll be living next. We need to take those students where they are as individuals and move them. We’re not making excuses; that’s our reality. We need to stop designing our classroom assessments so that they look like the NECAP, we need to stop focusing on multiple choice tests and go back to using more of our professional judgment when educating our students.”

Wall has also seen the impact of the assessment focus on the students he teaches.

“I’ve heard real stories of the effects that all this testing is having on students. I’ve heard of students, upon being asked during their advisory classes what their biggest goals in life are, answering ‘passing the NECAP.’ In a class of seniors, two-thirds of them named that as their biggest goal in life. The NECAP has become the sole focus for these students. The stresses placed on them to take the test again and again, two and three times, with no actual number given for what amount of measurable improvement needs to be seen is causing an unnecessary amount of pressure. I know of students who have stopped applying to colleges. The new waiver system in place doesn’t apply to those students planning to attend the Community College of Rhode Island. For many of our students, that’s all they can afford; it’s the only place they can apply, but with the pressures on them to pass the NECAP, they just stop applying.”

As a parent, Wall sees the stress that all of the testing puts on his own children.

“At home, I can see the effects of the stress on my own daughters,” he said. “If you’ve got kids hating education from the third grade on, when the NECAP tests are first administered at the elementary level, you don’t have much of a chance for creating lifelong learners.”

Wall hopes to help change all of that if elected president.

“We have to have input, and as a union leader I believe we have to educate the public that we are a union of professionals and we need to advocate for things that are good for students, beyond high test scores. We need to advocate for things like class sizes and proper supplies. We need to give up the bad teacher mantra and focus on our students,” he said.

Wall gave an analogy, drawing on the medical profession.

“Our work is very difficult work. Any teacher in a low-achieving school is considered a bad teacher. However, if we took that same theory and applied it to doctors, specifically a doctor who specializes in an area with a high mortality rate, a doctor who deals with some of the most difficult patients, patients who are at the greatest risk, would we blame the doctor for his or her high death rates? Our urban core schools, those with students who are at the greatest risk, those teachers are criticized and blamed,” he said.

If chosen to lead the union, Wall hopes to help foster a sense of value around the education profession, both for colleagues in Providence and those all over the state.

“Nowadays, people who want to go into education are looked upon as selling themselves short, and they’re encouraged to stay away from the profession,” he said. “We have to go back to valuing our educators and our education system. It’s life changing. It’s essential to our future, and if we keep on the path we’re on, people who have a spark for it are not going to go into it. I stand up for what I believe in and these are my principles. I’m not afraid to stand up for them.”