An in-depth article about Rhode Island's AMAZING state ed superintendent, Deborah Gist:

When it comes to efforts to turn around failing schools, the nation's smallest state is making some of the biggest waves. In January, Rhode Island's new education commissioner, Deborah Gist, set in motion a review of local schools that led to the firing of the entire staff at Central Falls High School, a chronically low-performing school in the state's poorest community. The move made news across the country, not least because President Barack Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, both waded into the controversy, endorsing the action as the sort of dramatic step we must be willing to take to ensure quality schools for all students. But the Central Falls dismissals are by no means the only big move made already under Gist's aggressive agenda for school reform.

In October, she instructed all 36 of Rhode Island's school districts to end the use of seniority as the driving factor in teacher hiring and placement decisions, expanding an order issued by her predecessor that applied only to the state's two lowest-performing districts, Central Falls and Providence. The Providence teachers' union is challenging the new policy in court.

Gist has ordered a complete overhaul of teacher evaluation systems, requiring that all Rhode Island teachers be reviewed annually — and that at least half of their evaluation be based on evidence of student achievement in their classrooms, a measure that unions have voiced strong reservations about. Gist, recruited from Washington, DC, where she served as superintendent of schools, is also dramatically raising the bar for entering teachers, boosting the passing score on Rhode Island's teacher exam from one of the lowest levels in the country to one of the highest.

The one-time elementary school teacher arrived in Rhode Island last summer vowing to bring urgency and energy to the job, and no one can accuse of her of not living up to her word, even if it's too early to judge the impact of her reforms on student achievement.

In the Central Falls case, Gist became one of the first education commissioners in the country to identify her state's lowest performing schools, something the federal education department has required for states seeking a share of $4 billion in school improvement grants. Flagged districts must adopt one of four strategies to try to bring about significant improvement at the underperforming schools.

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