CPPS Survey Results In
Stephanie Jones, the head of Communities and Parents for Public Schools (CPPS), released the results of the recent survey on the performance of our superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. From their results:
What did people say? If I had to sum it up, it would be two things. One, there is almost zero feeling that Dr. Goodloe-Johnson listens to parents. There were several comments that applauded her strong stance (which many others thought autocratic) or the changes she has made in the district . I didn't see one comment saying she was approachable or was someone who collaborates well with the community.
Two, is the overwhelming sense that she is hurting the district, either through her lack of ability to engage/motivate/inspire and/or the amount of churn that she has caused in the district with not a lot to show for it in terms of results.
It is clear, at least to me, that the ability to communicate and engage with others matters to Seattle parents and community. That Dr. Goodloe-Johnson either doesn't have this ability or is tone-deaf to this important aspect of her job is deeply disappointing. And, I certain hope the Board understands that this is part of her job and this lack of buy-in from parents and the community undermines almost every move she makes.
I hope the Board reads every page and, as well, that every City leader sees these results.
Thank you to each and every person who took the time to take the survey. And a big Thank You to the folks at CPPS especially Stephanie Jones and Andrew Kwatinetz (a SSS occasional blogger) for their hard work on this effort.
- In just over a week, they received 662 responses.
- More than half included optional written comments
- 273 (41%) included an email address (this is a great sign of standing up and being counted)
- Submissions came from 37 different zip codes, covering all regions of the city
- As you would expect, the anonymous responses were more negative but the non-anonymous ones were still "solidly" negative.
What did people say? If I had to sum it up, it would be two things. One, there is almost zero feeling that Dr. Goodloe-Johnson listens to parents. There were several comments that applauded her strong stance (which many others thought autocratic) or the changes she has made in the district . I didn't see one comment saying she was approachable or was someone who collaborates well with the community.
Two, is the overwhelming sense that she is hurting the district, either through her lack of ability to engage/motivate/inspire and/or the amount of churn that she has caused in the district with not a lot to show for it in terms of results.
It is clear, at least to me, that the ability to communicate and engage with others matters to Seattle parents and community. That Dr. Goodloe-Johnson either doesn't have this ability or is tone-deaf to this important aspect of her job is deeply disappointing. And, I certain hope the Board understands that this is part of her job and this lack of buy-in from parents and the community undermines almost every move she makes.
I hope the Board reads every page and, as well, that every City leader sees these results.
Thank you to each and every person who took the time to take the survey. And a big Thank You to the folks at CPPS especially Stephanie Jones and Andrew Kwatinetz (a SSS occasional blogger) for their hard work on this effort.
Comments
I'll be impressed when they say that their respondents have a high number of free/reduced lunch, or are immigrant families, or are families of color.
Saying there are a diverse number of zip codes represented doesn't give us any sense of what the income or racial make up is. (Did they ask? I couldn't be bothered to do the survey.)
Think anyone in this city thinks that the fearless leader of the SPS listens to parents?
Dan
I applaud your efforts and truly enjoyed the comments. The number of people who responded is a fraction of the SPS family population and as Limes stated, does not encompass close to the diversity that is Seattle but it is interesting.
If it wasn't important enough for you to take a few minutes- why do you think you should be able to judge the people who did take time to contribute?
What about this Superintendent? Here's 651 people who mostly think she's doing a TERRIBLE job.
The comments are withering. And, in the opinion of this teacher, just about spot on.
Please, let's ask her to move on - she'll be more than OK, she's got a job waiting for her at her testing company - and get someone who is not beholden to the Broad Foundation.
I DO NOT believe the state of public education in Seattle will improve as long as MGJ is at the helm. If anything, I believe even the best schools will become shadows of their former selves as class sizes increase, electives decrease and standardization to a lower common denominator becomes the norm.
Seattle has one of the lowest public school participation rates of any major city in the country. Only about 68% of Seattle children attend public school compared to 80-90% for a typical American city.
Parents that do not have their kids in Seattle Public Schools are less likely to support public schools. The low participation rate reduces community support for public education, makes it more difficult to raise local property taxes for the schools, reduces volunteering in the schools, and lowers state and federal funding (many of which are directly tied to enrollment).
As WSNorth said, many middle class parents of Seattle think it would be "insane" to send their children to our public schools. Many who can afford to opt out of Seattle Public Schools do. And that is a big part of the problem.
Cities that mostly have low income families dependent on public services and the wealthy who can pay whatever the market will bear are not great places to live.
Pushing the middle class out,with the decreased affordable single family housing by the glut of condos that Seattle finds desirable & by the limited community space ( closing community centers and limited parks), only exacerbates the problems in the public schools.
Seattle not only has a lower % of students attending public schools, but fewer families with children, than other cities ( except San Francisco ) so it is a double whammy to livability.
MGJ, will find another district that doesn't know how to Google and which will be " impressed" by her focus .
Seattle will be stuck knowing that they will be paying out even more for another superintendent search by Ray & assc, who are upfront about their connections with Broad & co.
Many who can afford to opt out of Seattle Public Schools do. And that is a big part of the problem.
This did not come first.
SPS has not been responsive to students/parents for years. Parents do not prefer to pay extra for tuition when neighborhood schools are a center of the community. However our children are public school students for 12 or 13 years. Not long.
Many families in Seattle either homeschool or private school ( if they stay in the area), for at least part of the time their children are school age.
Does SPS ever ask why they do so? Does anyone care?
No one will care about your kids, more than you do.
SPS makes that vibrantly clear.
Neither my husband or I have ever attended a university. I didn't graduate from high school. We are blue collar and low middle income. But we sent one child to private school through graduation and while another child eventually switched to public schools- if I had to do it over again, I would either have bought a home in a better district or kept both in private schools.
You cannot fault parents for doing the best they can for their children.
I think we should fault the district for doing so little to attract Seattle parents and making so many pick private school.
What might help is if the board targeted the participation rate as one of the major long-term measures of success. Right now, the district has little incentive to care why people opt out of Seattle Public Schools. But they should.
MGJ, will find another district that doesn't know how to Google and which will be " impressed" by her focus .
First, she ain't movin' on. The majority of the board members support everything she's done, completely accept the way she interacts with families, think it's fine that she's Broad and on the board of everything else, and believe we're moving in the right direction. They don't listen to the public either and so the results of this survey, which were predictable, will not affect them in any way.
Second, when she leaves, voluntarily 'cause here work here is "done," can we all promise to send letters to potential employers warning them of what she's capable of doing? I don't mean private sector folks, where she should be anyway, but if she applies to another school district let's make sure they're well aware of her "record."
stu
People in Charleston tried to tell us about MGJ- lots of online news stories about her
from an interview in the Post and Courier
When I talk about equitable, I'm not just talking about per-pupil allocation because that's not how you look at equity. When I think about equity coming in and now, equitable resources coming in were about 60-40. And equity for me is schools throughout the system. ... If I think about where equitable funding now is for schools, I would say maybe 50-50, from the standpoint of providing more resources to what we call our capital schools — the schools that are in the worst conditions — and unsatisfactory schools compared to our excellent schools. ... But where we really need to be is at a much higher level, which is 100 percent equitable funding across the district, which would mean that schools get the services they need to serve the kids that they have. And that really plays out into a weighted student funding formula.
I think that all parents should have choice, but one thing that's clear is that I don't think that parents should have to 1) Wait in line on a waiting list to get into a good school to have a quality education for their child and 2) I don't think parents should have to transfer for them to feel like they're getting a quality education. To me, that translates to there's not equitable kinds of programs, activities, rigor of classes, after-school programs, whatever it might be. It's about all of those things at all of our schools. So that means schools are not equitable. Two years ago, we devised a schoolhouse model where we asked the question, 'What does every elementary, middle and high school need to provide quality education for their students?' We devised that, but we couldn't fund it. And to me, that's equitable resources. ...
Interesting.
I didn't realize that she had equitable resources as a priority- or did she mean to put the money into a couple schools and tell voters/PTA & the state that we now had to make up the difference for the rest?
& from comments on a Charleston education blog from 2007.
just catching up on the amazing number of posts on this blog. I have to say about Dr. G-J, as a person who lived in Corpus Christi, Texas AND Charleston, SC during her tenures in BOTH cities...
Seattle: My heart weeps for thee.
No Reader, you are not correct...and many have gone round with you on this before.
What is really damaging is a system that does not provide for the community as a whole. That means those with little, those with much eager to participate, and the great middle class which is supposedly the backbone of our democracy. Those three levels of income. And a variety of ethnicities. And a variety of students...Stong, middle and struggling-to-learn students. Those with special needs. ALL of them, with a focus on what each segment needs, and an ongoing discussion of how to balance the resources to address each segment. EACH segment. Not one or two segments to the detriment of the others.
It is a TOUGH job for those in academia and for the taxpayers and parents who participate. There will always be room for improvement. But if trumpeted "fixes" end up alienating more of the segments of what makes a community than those fixes help, then that's Clue #1 that maybe they aren't fixes at all. And that is happening in far too many instances, in far too many socio, economic and student learner segments with the present Superintendent.
Not everyone shares your view that public school is only for those who can't afford something better. That's the Ronald Reagan 'truely needy' argument.
I believe that the role of public school is to provide a universal service, like social security and medicare, that is for all citizens. I want public schools that provide a high-quality education to all citizens, including those who might have other options, as part a civilized country. If the public schools aren't high enough quality for those with other choices, then they aren't high enough quality for any citizen.
"Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s Evaluation, The People Have Spoken"
"Can Seattle’s Schools Afford Many More Years of Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson?"
It honestly is hard to come up with examples of what she is doing right. She has been a destructive, incompetent presence in our district and has alienated the community. If we ask ourselves the simple question: "Is SPS better off now than it was four years ago?," I think the answer is clearly "No."
The board, by the way, could opt not to renew her contract. They've already extended it to 2012. Surely that's long enough.
She could also opt to leave before her contract is up. I believe we'd be stuck with paying her out, as happened to her fellow Broad supe colleague, Arlene Ackerman who was basically run out of San Francisco. But maybe it would be worth it. (How's that for a fine example of "merit pay.")
When she does leave SPS, her dubious record will live on in the blogosphere and beyond, all of it easily Google-able.
--sp.
Not to mention the young families that move out of the city when their kids reach school age.
Who wants to deal with the SPS when other options are available?
She can move on to the next state or district, likely aided by her true employer, the Broad Foundation, or maybe she already has something lined up at Northwest Evaluation Association that sold SPS the $4.3 million+ MAP test and on whose board she also sits.
But our school board directors are members of our local community who will be stuck with whatever mess the superintendent leaves behind, and will still have to answer to all of us, especially if any of them plan to seek higher office.
--sp.
Sundquist, Maier, Martin-Morris, Carr
Two of these are ripe for replacement, from the "did they EVER go against staff to advocate for parents in general and for their Director District in specific."
Those names are Sundquist with two exclamation points and Maier with one. For any thinking parent they NEED TO GO.
Carr and Martin-Morris are harder because they both spend a lot of time talking to parents. Sometimes it appears those conversations shape policies before they come to a vote. But unfortunately at the time of controversial-to-parents votes, their votes rarely also reflect the voices of their parent constituents.
I do see their voices reflecting staff recommendations, the Alliance's business interests and the other big grant makers in town. A vote record starting now that also sometimes reflected parent concerns might allow for second terms. Otherwise, NO.
This long comment is more reasoned than my usual rants. That is because I have been speaking to a smart parent or two who have proved to me that staff communications and implementation are way, way, way worse than the directors publicly admit, let alone show in their votes. I am a converted believer. And activist.
Its easy to blame the rank and file workers at the bottom they are the ones easiest to get to but frankly after years of being abused in this district from parents, to administrators and the "executive suite" it is no surprise they rely on the Union to help them.
I know few who have managed to walk through this district unscathed. It has been this way for many many years and that is the real problem. Whoever is in the Supe office they will never succeed in a city so pressed to define itself and stand up for the schools. Its just too easy to head to a private school.
Really?
Usually when people say "Every Child" they really mean "Every minority child, every child from a low-income home, every under-performing child, and every child judged to be 'at risk'".
Among the children left out of the "Every child" language are disabled children, academically gifted children, children from affluent homes, high performing children, and children who don't speak English as a first language.
District staff love to suppress complaints by saying that they need to consider the needs of every child in the District - as opposed to families who are (supposedly - selfishly) only concerned with their own children. Don't back down. Instead, remind them that your child - or whatever children you are speaking for at the time - are among that set of all children and that it is time for the staff person to show some concern for those children.
By the way, if you ever speak for a child that isn't yours, they will suggest that you butt out. That's when you remind them that you are concerned with every child in the District.
"Most of the people using private school are doing so because they don't like people in public schools (...)"
On what do you base that? That is not true of anyone I know with kids in private school. They chose private for the stability, predictability, perceived quality and features like smaller class sizes.
As for this comment:
(...) The aging tax-base is already being asked to pay for somebody else's kids.
Arguably our generation is paying for that 'aging tax base's' Social Security.
Quid pro quo.
I'm just commenting on TechyMom's position that people are usually willing to fund themselves (their children), but not others. And therefore, we should have lavish education to fund public schools at the same rate as private school. People with children are the shrinking minority... so that argument doesn't really hold up.
One thing I always like to tell high school kids, I say, kids go out there and study hard and find your dreams. I need you to do well because you're going to support my Social Security someday.
That's my Libertarian argument (although I'm not one). Don't do it for the kids, do it for yourself.
The requirement to get a recall petition through the elections office is at least one incidence of misfeasance. That is an easy one with each member of this group. ..... Then again it is the legal system .... thus a bit of a crap shoot.
32,000 valid signatures will be needed for each director subject to recall and then there is a recall election.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
html/jerrylarge/2011907086_
jdl20.html
A new study finds that the wealth gap between white and black American families grew fourfold between 1984 and 2007.
One of the authors, Thomas Shapiro, said in a statement about the work: "Our study shows a broken chain of achievement. Even when African Americans do everything right — get an education and work hard at well-paying jobs — they cannot achieve the wealth of their white peers in the work force, and that translates into very different life chances."
The study (iasp.brandeis.edu) followed white and black families over the 23 years from 1984 to 2007 and found that for families with similar incomes, white wealth went up and black wealth went down.
In fact, middle-class white families surpassed the wealth of high-income black families.
Melissa, sadly not a joke.
Dan: recall yes!
Eleuterio: what a shame that paper has become.
seattle citizen: even a bigger shame, but education is still the best way.
Education CAN educate about these inequalities and thus help alleviate them. But if education is turned (particularly for low income and minority children) into a baser, less rich, regimented, quantified "teach to the test" it will merely worsen the problem.
If education is turned over to the free market, it becomes worse AND opens the door to the profiteers, such as the hedge fund folks and real estate management companies who salivate over the chance to take public tax dollars and convert them into private profit.
I would be so happy of Gates, Broad, Walton, Boeing et al kept their uneducated opinions and agendas out of the schools and instead put their money into the communities surrounding them. I understand that they do this in some ways, but there is no need for Gates et al to be running our schools.
But maybe it's for the best for corporations to direct educational policy: We ARE a capitalist economy, survival of the fittest etc, and perhaps its better to foster another "separate but equal" education system by debasing the schools that poor people attend so that a) there is always an available workforce who will not question economic inequality, and b) there are fewer people ready to compete creatively and with innovation in the higher paying jobs.
According to Large, we have seen 26 years of the rich (and white) getting richer; turning schools into test-prep factories will certainly cause this disparity to continue to grow (while also allowing test-prep, data, tutoring, ed-management and other companies to divert scarce public tax dollars into private coffers.)
Two more things to consider:
First, the Post and Courier reports that the superintendent who replaced Maria Goodloe-Johnson has much higher favorable approval ratings among a group of teachers, 73% compared to 48%, a spread of 25 points.
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/may/22/mcginley_praised_teacher_survey83219/
Second, if you recall, Seattle hired Maria Goodloe-Johnson in part because of her super star status in Charleston, granted to her by what appeared to be exceptional performance there raising test scores. A few months after she moved to Seattle, the New York Times and Post and Courier reported that the test scores in Charleston were falsified.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/education/31charleston.html
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2008/sep/10/school_under_scrutiny53611/
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2008/jun/12/accomplished_principal_leave_charleston_44279/
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/jul/15/test_score_investigation_ended89264/
Maria Goodloe-Johnson was a disaster for Charleston and is a disaster for Seattle. Her contract should not be renewed.
Native American students district claims 1100 students while it has only 385 thus the district had over counted by 715 for the 2009-2010 grant application.
The deadline for transmittal of part I of the Indian education grant program application was 2-12-2010 @ 2 PM PST
The district did not submit a valid application by this deadline.
Part II was due by 5-5-2010 district submitted by US Mail and email meting the deadline but since part 1 was not submitted part II is refused.
If there is money left after those districts that submitted timely applications receive their funding, then Seattle will be invited to send an application.
At this time there is NO guarantee that Seattle will receive any funding from Title VII Indian Education Grants for SY 2010 - 2011.
MGJ is just one disaster after another. Were there not enough employees at the bloated central office.... to get the job done?
Her contract should not be renewed.
Fired with cause seems to be the merited accountability due Maria G.
She came in under fraudulent circumstance on Bogus Charleston SC test scores.
Time for Bye-Bye now.
Call Eli B. tell him to find her a new position and that we will no longer require his services.
Take Back Seattle Schools Now.
EVERYONE pays for the schools in this state. Since there's no income tax, and we rely primarily on real estate taxes for all our initiatives, all property owners pay for the schools.
When the time comes that we head for private school, and that time WILL come, it doesn't mean we aren't going to be paying our taxes, and levy fees . . . we're still going to be paying for PUBLIC school and we'll still be fighting to fix everything that's being broken.
stu
Plus would you really want to sit down and talk with MGJ? She is so arrogant and dismissive you'd probably leave more frustrated than you came.
Right Stu. And you'll still be paying for PUBLIC medicaid, medicare, unemployement insurance, bank-bailouts, welfare, pot-hole fix-it programs, viaduct rebuilding, monorail planning meeting recoupment.... and you're not going to be using ALL that. So what? There's nothing so special about "education" that means it is above the plight of every other publicly funded institution. Don't like it? Don't use it. And save us all the bucks. Oh yeah. I forgot, lots of people think their kids are sooo specially good, that it's a benefit to someone else when they attend public schools. And people believe that they somehow save everyone else money... by spending public money using public schools. Let's not kid ourselves. So far, we aren't to the point of means testing for access to public education. This definitely could happen at some point.