Candidate Scorecard
I'm thinking of putting together a candidate scorecard of sorts. The people running for school board, particularly in District 7, have not been very clear about their positions on the issues that they will face and decide. How can we begin to make a thoughtful choice among the candidates without knowing their positions on the issues?
What issues do you all think should be part of the scorecard?
Here's what I have so far:
Sibling preference. It is universally agreed that siblings of students enrolled at a school should have preferred access to enrollment at that school. That's not the issue. The question is: should that sibling preference come before students in the school's attendance area or after it? Currently it comes before, and the Board, in their Framework for the new Student Assignment Plan committed to maintaining that preference. The New Student Assignment Policy, however, demotes it to behind attendance area students.
Curricular Alignment and Standardization. Curricular Alignment is already the District's Policy, if not the District's practice. Standardization of materials, pedagogy, and pacing, however, is neither the District's current Policy or practice. The Superintendent, however, wants to institute this sort of Standardization, and has already instituted it for math K-12. Do you support Standardization of materials, of pedagogy, of lessons, and of pacing? Will you take Board action in opposition to it?
Speaking of Board Policies, there is a Board Policy against social promotion yet we know that it happens all the time. You signalled your opposition to social promotion at the South Seattle Candidate's Forum. What will you do to enforce the policy against social promotion?
Since there are so many students working below grade level and since we are instituting curricular alignment which will require teachers to deliver the grade level curriculum, how will you demand appropriate and adequate support for students working below grade level?
There's a lot of loose talk about accountability, but no action on it to be seen anywhere. What will you do to hold the superintendent accountable for meeting the targets in the Strategic Plan, meeting the deadlines in the Strategic Plan, conducting the community engagement promised in the Strategic Plan, and for following District Policy?
The Alternative School audit is coming. Do you support alternative education and what form, besides kind words, will that support take? Our alternative schools are among those with the longest waitlists. Will you help foster the creation of new alternative programs to meet the currently unmet demand for them? These waitlists represent failures in capacity management. Capacity management includes non-geographic communities as well as geographic ones.
The District is moving towards a more inclusive model for serving Special Education students. How will you support this shift from the Board? Will you support school choice for students with IEPs?
The New Student Assignment plan was supposed to provide more equitable access to high quality schools and programs. How do you think it does this? Which school will offer more equitable access with the new plan? Should language immersion schools and Montessori schools continue to be attendance area schools or should they be option schools? If they are attendance area schools, how does that provide more equitable access?
The APP audit is over two years old. What has been the District's response? About 80% of the neighborhood elementary schools north of downtown have advanced learning programs while fewer than 30% of the neighborhood elementary schools south of downtown have one. Does this represent equitable access? What will you do from the Board to improve equity in access to advanced learning programs?
The District's Facilities suffer from inadequate maintenance. What will you do to improve the maintenance of our buildings?
The District's capital spending has been out of control. Projects typically come in over budget - some wildly over budget. There is waste when work done in one project gets demolished soon thereafter in another project. There is no clear, rational method for determining capital projects. Buildings in greater need of renovation are passed over while other buildings in better condition are rebuilt. What will you do from the Board to address the inefficiencies in our capital projects? No project budget increase has been denied by the Board in memory. Could you vote against additional funding for a capital project gone over budget? What does accountability look like in this area?
In every election the candidates for school board acknowledge the poor communication between the community and the Board and every candidate promises better communication. What will you do to create the opportunity for conversation between the community members and the Board? Do you think there can be any authentic engagement without conversation?
The Performance Measurement System promises autonomy for the schools that demonstrate achievement, but the nature and extent of that autonomy has not been defined - at all. All schools will be required to deliver the curriculum - the set of knowledge and skills that students are expected to learn for each grade and in each subject - so the autonomy must come in the areas of materials, pedagogy, and staffing. How will you protect schools' earned autonomy from the Board?
I have yet to hear the candidates address these issues forthrightly and I would really love to hear it.
What issues do you all think should be part of the scorecard?
Here's what I have so far:
Sibling preference. It is universally agreed that siblings of students enrolled at a school should have preferred access to enrollment at that school. That's not the issue. The question is: should that sibling preference come before students in the school's attendance area or after it? Currently it comes before, and the Board, in their Framework for the new Student Assignment Plan committed to maintaining that preference. The New Student Assignment Policy, however, demotes it to behind attendance area students.
Curricular Alignment and Standardization. Curricular Alignment is already the District's Policy, if not the District's practice. Standardization of materials, pedagogy, and pacing, however, is neither the District's current Policy or practice. The Superintendent, however, wants to institute this sort of Standardization, and has already instituted it for math K-12. Do you support Standardization of materials, of pedagogy, of lessons, and of pacing? Will you take Board action in opposition to it?
Speaking of Board Policies, there is a Board Policy against social promotion yet we know that it happens all the time. You signalled your opposition to social promotion at the South Seattle Candidate's Forum. What will you do to enforce the policy against social promotion?
Since there are so many students working below grade level and since we are instituting curricular alignment which will require teachers to deliver the grade level curriculum, how will you demand appropriate and adequate support for students working below grade level?
There's a lot of loose talk about accountability, but no action on it to be seen anywhere. What will you do to hold the superintendent accountable for meeting the targets in the Strategic Plan, meeting the deadlines in the Strategic Plan, conducting the community engagement promised in the Strategic Plan, and for following District Policy?
The Alternative School audit is coming. Do you support alternative education and what form, besides kind words, will that support take? Our alternative schools are among those with the longest waitlists. Will you help foster the creation of new alternative programs to meet the currently unmet demand for them? These waitlists represent failures in capacity management. Capacity management includes non-geographic communities as well as geographic ones.
The District is moving towards a more inclusive model for serving Special Education students. How will you support this shift from the Board? Will you support school choice for students with IEPs?
The New Student Assignment plan was supposed to provide more equitable access to high quality schools and programs. How do you think it does this? Which school will offer more equitable access with the new plan? Should language immersion schools and Montessori schools continue to be attendance area schools or should they be option schools? If they are attendance area schools, how does that provide more equitable access?
The APP audit is over two years old. What has been the District's response? About 80% of the neighborhood elementary schools north of downtown have advanced learning programs while fewer than 30% of the neighborhood elementary schools south of downtown have one. Does this represent equitable access? What will you do from the Board to improve equity in access to advanced learning programs?
The District's Facilities suffer from inadequate maintenance. What will you do to improve the maintenance of our buildings?
The District's capital spending has been out of control. Projects typically come in over budget - some wildly over budget. There is waste when work done in one project gets demolished soon thereafter in another project. There is no clear, rational method for determining capital projects. Buildings in greater need of renovation are passed over while other buildings in better condition are rebuilt. What will you do from the Board to address the inefficiencies in our capital projects? No project budget increase has been denied by the Board in memory. Could you vote against additional funding for a capital project gone over budget? What does accountability look like in this area?
In every election the candidates for school board acknowledge the poor communication between the community and the Board and every candidate promises better communication. What will you do to create the opportunity for conversation between the community members and the Board? Do you think there can be any authentic engagement without conversation?
The Performance Measurement System promises autonomy for the schools that demonstrate achievement, but the nature and extent of that autonomy has not been defined - at all. All schools will be required to deliver the curriculum - the set of knowledge and skills that students are expected to learn for each grade and in each subject - so the autonomy must come in the areas of materials, pedagogy, and staffing. How will you protect schools' earned autonomy from the Board?
I have yet to hear the candidates address these issues forthrightly and I would really love to hear it.
Comments
Speaking of actions and accountability, how about adding this to the list:
How will you prevent the Superintendent from spending large amounts of time, effort and money for audits (which sound like a good idea), only to cherry pick through the advice and implement whatever the hell they want, regardless of the advice?
The APP audit and the subsequent splits comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure there are others.
Would she still have won if we had known her positions on the issues?
Which reminds me of another issue: the perception of the Board job. Do they think that it is the Board's job to facilitate the superintendent's plans or to review the superintendent's plans for compliance with District Policy?
A good idea, on the face of it, but it seems like it might result in "failing" schools being force-fed more pablum that, to me, doesn't address key areas of improvement. I guess what I'm asking is what strategies and support will be offered to schools to help them earn autonomy? Is autonomy the driving force, is it the end goal, is it what the district will help each school achieve? I think it should be, and I would like to know HOW the district, if it reigns in the autonomy of a school because of perceived dailure, will move to free that school again.
I also have another question about "earned autonomy": Do ALL schools start out in some sort of lock-step, little autonomyk, until they "earn" it, or are some sort of metrics used to determine who can start out autonomous in the first place. If so, what metrics?
Are the schools with "categories" indicating poor students, or students of color, doomed to start in lock-down, never to be freed?
Also in regards to
"What will you do to create the opportunity for conversation between the community members and the Board?"
I sent a question to Mary's emails two weeks ago (her candidate and district addresses) aside from a auto response from the district (which is new!) I have yet to get any response.
What would it take for you to choose your neighborhood school? What would the school have to offer that it doesn't now?
Your vision, of a diverse (demographically and academically) school is wonderful. Particularly if it could in one's neighborhood, no matter what part of town.
I think this vision is attainable.
Two caveats: Some parts of the city (not many) are not all that diverse, socio-economically, racially or culturally. Every part of town has pockets of this and that, but for the most part there is still little variance in some areas. Until the wealthy are more evenly mixed with the middle class and the poor; until there is greater cultural, racial and ethic mixing, we will still end up with some schools that are relatively homogenous.
Regarding academics, it strikes me as a chicken and egg quandry: Which came first, funding for a variety of teachers and classes or the student-driven dollars to support them? Take a school like Rainier Beach: very small student numbers, so they get little money, so they offer fewer classes, so they have less to offer, so they get fewer students...Or take Ballard: fills up every year, so there is a steady stream of dollars to fund lots of teachers, allowing some to teach non-core classes, some to teach music, etc.
Of course, the band-aide money (Title One, South-East Initiative) is SUPPOSED to alleviate some of this funding disparity, and each building also gets a base funding (or they used to...do they still?) but either the money is directed at remedial classes, because using merely a WASL lens the entire population of some schools is seen as "failing" and thus in need of WASL prep; or the money is spent on other peripherals...or merely mis-spent.
So how do we build a "big" school, fully staffed, if only 1/3 teh capacity of students come the first year? It seems impossible, given funding constraints, to fully staff a building, with a variety of at-level, below AND above offerings, with electives, with music etc, without a guaranteed student body to justify the wages of its staff.
So: the district redesigns the assignment plan, hoping to keep students more evenly distributed around the district, perhaps ensuring that a school like Beach, or Cleveland, has enough students to justify offering more (and more diverse) classes. I think that's the plan, and in a way it might be the ONLY way to do this. Otherwise, people just choose the schools that they think are "better" (and they might well be, because more students typically choose those schools, so they can offer more classes, so more people choose those schools...)
I'm all for small schools: There is a lot you can do with a little. But when schools are small because no one wants to go there, that's a problem.
Perhaps the new assignment plan will work...IF each school offers a range of quality classes, and if the community buys into the idea that this change could be good. We aren't in the sixties anymore: People DO value diversity. But they also want quality. The district will have to provide it, and people might have to wait a year or two for the change to become mature.
Two years is half a high school tenure. If the quality and spectrum of course offerings aren't there, or if the teachers haven't figured out how to bring rigor to those who need it while still assisting those who might be struggling, those "guinea pig" kids could end up with a less than stellar education.
It takes small class sizes and exceptional teachers to reach a broad spectrum of students—a luxury we can barely afford at this point in time.
Personally, I'm not willing to sacrifice two years of my child's high school education to see if an experiment posed by THIS DIstrict and THIS Administration will work.
Even if there was no "wait for maturity," I have my suspicions that many parents wouldn't trust that the bright new school would work. I don't blame them, but then we're stuck with the problem, how do we improve a school to attract more students? How do reinvigor a neighborhood school and convince people to buy in?
I'm stumped.
What should be done about Madrona? Should it be
1) An option school with the current program and no attendance area
2) An attendance-area school with a new principal and a more mainstream program, including recess, art, music and PTA supported after-school classes, and without 'silent passing' or uniforms.
3) An attendance-area school with the current principal and program
4) An attendance-area school with the current principal, but under direction from the district to implement a more mainstream program as described in #2
5) Something else
Why?
What impact will this choice have on Madrona and on the other schools in the Central cluster?
How will this choice ensure that there are enough seats for the growing student population in Central, and that those seats match the needs and wants of families in Central?