I'm Going to Sleep Better Knowing These Positions Got Filled
(Update at bottom.)
From the SPS communications department, we found ourselves a Chief Talent Officer. No, don't get all excited that there is someone combing the schools for the next Justin Bieber. It's just the new-fangled way of saying the new head of Human Services. (I'm sorry but that is just a ridiculous name that doesn't fool anyone hired at SPS into thinking, "gee I'm talented AND people like me!")
We also have a new Director of Labor and Employee Relations AND a new Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Partnerships.
Ann Chan is from Chicago Public Schools (hey, maybe she knows Arne Duncan) and our Talent Officer.
Howard Pripas is the Employee and Labor guy who hails from the University of California system but was previously at UW from 2001-2004.
Mark Teoh is the new Executive Director of Strategic Planning et al. He comes from the Boston school system. (Now he follows a woman who had her salary paid for one year by the Alliance and one year by Broad. Wonder who...well, I'm sure the district found the spare $145k plus benefits that she was paid somewhere.) Maybe Mr. Teoh can get on the ball and find some partnerships for STEM at Cleveland. You know, like with UW's Computer Science and Engineering department or some biotech company or Fred Hutchinson. Checking in again with the STEM page, there is nothing but some community mentoring groups which is great but nothing you can't get at any other high school. Where is the linkage that will support this program and make it strong?
They all start by December 1.
Update: Heard back from Communications about salaries.
Chief Talent Officer - $140,754
Director of Employee and Labor Relations - $135,595
Executive Director Strategic Planning and Partnerships - $128,315 (interesting that this one is so much lower than the previous director who made $145k but again, that wasn't on our dime). This Director is paid out of the General Fund so yes, it is a new expense to SPS.
From the SPS communications department, we found ourselves a Chief Talent Officer. No, don't get all excited that there is someone combing the schools for the next Justin Bieber. It's just the new-fangled way of saying the new head of Human Services. (I'm sorry but that is just a ridiculous name that doesn't fool anyone hired at SPS into thinking, "gee I'm talented AND people like me!")
We also have a new Director of Labor and Employee Relations AND a new Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Partnerships.
Ann Chan is from Chicago Public Schools (hey, maybe she knows Arne Duncan) and our Talent Officer.
Howard Pripas is the Employee and Labor guy who hails from the University of California system but was previously at UW from 2001-2004.
Mark Teoh is the new Executive Director of Strategic Planning et al. He comes from the Boston school system. (Now he follows a woman who had her salary paid for one year by the Alliance and one year by Broad. Wonder who...well, I'm sure the district found the spare $145k plus benefits that she was paid somewhere.) Maybe Mr. Teoh can get on the ball and find some partnerships for STEM at Cleveland. You know, like with UW's Computer Science and Engineering department or some biotech company or Fred Hutchinson. Checking in again with the STEM page, there is nothing but some community mentoring groups which is great but nothing you can't get at any other high school. Where is the linkage that will support this program and make it strong?
They all start by December 1.
Update: Heard back from Communications about salaries.
Chief Talent Officer - $140,754
Director of Employee and Labor Relations - $135,595
Executive Director Strategic Planning and Partnerships - $128,315 (interesting that this one is so much lower than the previous director who made $145k but again, that wasn't on our dime). This Director is paid out of the General Fund so yes, it is a new expense to SPS.
Comments
*Seattle Bio-Medical Research Institute (SBRI) provides professional development, curricula, and field trip opportunities.
*Manufacturing Industrial Council of Seattle provides shadowing and internship opportunities, field trip opportunities, and serves on STEM advisory board.
*South Seattle Community College provides students with advanced math options on the Cleveland campus.
*IGNITE provides outreach events and shadowing experiences to young women interested in technology careers.
--Pseudonymous
and I want to know the background of this new person. the philosophy he is bringing to the job. because it's going to impact us all. again.
An executive director for strategic planning and partnerships? Isn't this the Superintendent's job? In these austere times should we be paying for both an HR director and an Employee and Labor relations director. Given the budget, why didn't the district consolidate HR and Employee and Labor relations? There is so much overlap in those positions,do we really need two highly paid admins here?
Let's understand the underpinnings of any new strategies.
•Special Assistant to the Chief Academic Officer at Boston Public Schools
•Manager of Program Evaluation at Boston Public Schools
•Research Consultant at Boston Public Schools
•Research Associate at Philadelphia Education Fund
•Teacher at Friends Central School
•Teacher at St. John's School
•Teacher at Stephen F. Austin High School
•Harvard University Graduate School of Education
•Harvard University Graduate School of Education
•University of Pennsylvania
I can provide some insight on that one. The VP of HR/Talent/Name-du-jour is very different than a Director of Labor Relations. Labor Relations deals specifically with the myriad issues that arise in a unionized workplace. From negotiating and interpreting contracts, to handing questions and grievances, to focusing on maintaining/improving the overall relations with the unions. In large organizations with significant numbers of unionized staff [like SPS], there's virtually always a full time person devoted to this, often with a team reporting to them. And I'll bet there are many more contracts than just teachers and principals. Various types of support staff have their own contracts that must be created, renegotiated, monitored and enforced. And each one comes with its own Union which has its own agenda that it believes should be the most important thing on the Director of LR's plate.
The Dir of LR usually reports to the VP HR, who, in addition to having bottom line authority of Lab. Rel, has responsibility for compensation, benefits, hiring, promoting, keeping track of, motivating, retaining, etc. all employees, responding to EEO claims, setting policy and strategic direction in HR, etc. Compliance and Privacy are often within HR, though they can also logically be part of other departments. In an organization the size of SPS there's likely to be a fair number of additional staff reporting to the VP, perhaps a director of Compensation and Benefits, perhaps an EEO director of some sort, etc.
There are certainly "norms" around how many HR positions are typically found in organizations of various sizes which I suspect you could find on the internet. I've never looked at how big the SPS HR team was on such matrices, though my instinct tells me they are probably relatively thinly staffed on the HR side.
WV says putsive. Maybe I am just being too much of a putz, therefore could be described as putsive.
The "TE" part of STEM appears to have gone through a couple of changes of focus, or at least name changes, before classes actually started this fall.
For a while the district's documents called the TE academy the "Engineering and Technology Academy." At some point earlier this year, SPS revised that to the "Engineering and Computer Science Academy." But within months of this fall's STEM opening, they changed it to the "Engineering and Design Academy."
Maybe the district did attempt to mount a serious comp sci program. If so, I can only imagine that they realized late in the process of putting the coursework together that it would take a tremendous effort to do it well from a standing start. Serious comp sci programs are still uncommon in high schools.
See for example the ACM's recommendations at http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/ACMK12CSModel.html
A quick glance at the Technology and Design Academy's web pages doesn't show any of the ACM's grade 9-12 recommendations among the coursework, although the descriptions there are only an overview. There's an 11th grade course listed as "Principles of Engineering: Computer Int. Mfg." and a mention that "This academy will feature a computer game design program..." There could well be more, that I don't see in the course descriptions there.
But "Design" is a far lower bar to clear, both for the students and for the available faculty. To me, this portends a low-ish level of teaching and accomplishment in comp sci. But if there was in fact an attempt made at a real comp sci program, before settling on Design, then maybe it will reappear at STEM in future years.
Robert A.
That the district hasn't reached out to the CS&E Dept. is a mystery.
On Cleveland working with UW's Computer Science department: Melissa, a UW CS&E student named Peter worked in Cleveland's Computer Science class much of last year. I believe he's graduated, though. This year, IT specialists from Microsoft are collaborating with the teacher, so she may not be feeling the need to pull more people in. I'll check with her, though, to see if she'd like to continue the collaboration with CS&E. It's good to be reminded how open that department is to working with high schools.
In response to Robert's post: I would agree that the School of Engineering and Design (final name) decided to move toward a more general engineering focus that would include some elements of computer science, but not necessarily advance students through 3 or 4 years of cumulative computer science electives. It does boil down to resources--providing the FTE for a full complement of computer science courses AND providing the generalist engineering courses is pretty tough to sustain, so we decided to go with the classes that we felt gave the most students the most options--the engineering courses.
I don't know that we've ruled out more advanced computer science coursework, if we can make it work, but for now I think one or two CS electives is the most we can do.
Also, if I understand Robert correctly, he's worried about diminished rigor by not doing advanced computer science. Though they are less specialized, I would argue that the engineering courses, part of the national Project Lead The Way curriculum, are rigorous, engaging, and preparatory for college and career success, particularly in STEM fields. Here's an address for more information about Project Lead The Way's engineering program (scroll down for the high school courses):
http://www.pltw.org/node/17
BTW, STEM's other academy, the School of Life Sciences, is using Project Lead The Way's Biomedical Sciences program as a corollary set of required, progressive courses.
On our partnerships generally: the partnerships mentioned on Cleveland's web site are real, living partnerships. I've sat in classrooms recently where students were presenting their work to panelists including parents, UW students and faculty, and people working in STEM fields. The SBRI program is going strong (here's an address for more info about SBRI: http://www.seattlebioquest.org/content/programs),
as is the SSSC math connection, and our IGNITE partnership. Several classes from Cleveland just finished visiting the Green Expo put on by the Manufacturing Industrial Council.
Lastly: I try to avoid being overly defensive of Cleveland when I post here (I've not always been successful, I'm sure), but I can't help but feel as though the tendency of many on this blog is to judge our efforts negatively without a lot of investigation. Despite predictions to the contrary, the STEM program filled 9th and 10th grades very nearly to capacity. Despite predictions that neighborhood students would flee STEM, most of our incoming 9th graders came to us from Mercer and Aki Kurose. We are forever conscious at Cleveland of the distance we have yet to travel, and of the urgent need to serve our students better. But we have worked hard to get STEM off the ground this year, and have had some modest early successes (enrollment, mainly). I would love to see this mentioned along with the critiques. I also appreciate the critiques (such as Robert A.s) that appear to have been investigated carefully, or at least acknowledge what the commenter may not know. Many readers assume that bloggers here are well-informed, and with good reason. But that gives you a special power and responsibility when writing things that affect the reputation of a school--please wield it with care.
Best regards,
Catherine Brown
Academic Dean, Cleveland HS
On Cleveland working with UW's Computer Science department: Melissa, a UW CS&E student named Peter worked in Cleveland's Computer Science class much of last year. I believe he's graduated, though. This year, IT specialists from Microsoft are collaborating with the teacher, so she may not be feeling the need to pull more people in. I'll check with her, though, to see if she'd like to continue the collaboration with CS&E. It's good to be reminded how open that department is to working with high schools.
In response to Robert's post: I would agree that the School of Engineering and Design (final name) decided to move toward a more general engineering focus that would include some elements of computer science, but not necessarily advance students through 3 or 4 years of cumulative computer science electives. It does boil down to resources--providing the FTE for a full complement of computer science courses AND providing the generalist engineering courses is pretty tough to sustain, so we decided to go with the classes that we felt gave the most students the most options--the engineering courses.
I don't know that we've ruled out more advanced computer science coursework, if we can make it work, but for now I think one or two CS electives is the most we can do.
Also, if I understand Robert correctly, he's worried about diminished rigor by not doing advanced computer science. Though they are less specialized, I would argue that the engineering courses, part of the national Project Lead The Way curriculum, are rigorous, engaging, and preparatory for college and career success, particularly in STEM fields. Here's an address for more information about Project Lead The Way's engineering program (scroll down for the high school courses):
http://www.pltw.org/node/17
BTW, STEM's other academy, the School of Life Sciences, is using Project Lead The Way's Biomedical Sciences program as a corollary set of required, progressive courses.
(continued)
On our partnerships generally: the partnerships mentioned on Cleveland's web site are real, living partnerships. I've sat in classrooms recently where students were presenting their work to panelists including parents, UW students and faculty, and people working in STEM fields. The SBRI program is going strong (here's an address for more info about SBRI: http://www.seattlebioquest.org/content/programs),
as is the SSSC math connection, and our IGNITE partnership. Several classes from Cleveland just finished visiting the Green Expo put on by the Manufacturing Industrial Council.
Lastly: I try to avoid being overly defensive of Cleveland when I post here (I've not always been successful, I'm sure), but I can't help but feel as though the tendency of many on this blog is to judge our efforts negatively without a lot of investigation. Despite predictions to the contrary, the STEM program filled 9th and 10th grades very nearly to capacity. Despite predictions that neighborhood students would flee STEM, most of our incoming 9th graders came to us from Mercer and Aki Kurose. We are forever conscious at Cleveland of the distance we have yet to travel, and of the urgent need to serve our students better. But we have worked hard to get STEM off the ground this year, and have had some modest early successes (enrollment, mainly). I would love to see this mentioned along with the critiques. I also appreciate the critiques (such as Robert A.s) that appear to have been investigated carefully, or at least acknowledge what the commenter may not know. Many readers assume that bloggers here are well-informed, and with good reason. But that gives you a special power and responsibility when writing things that affect the reputation of a school--please wield it with care.
Best regards,
Catherine Brown
Academic Dean, Cleveland HS
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Garfield has had some limited experience so far with Project Lead the Way, and PLTW may be coming to Garfield in a larger way.
The CS teacher there, Helene Martin, wrote about PLTW in the Garfield Messenger in January.
http://www.garfieldmessenger.com/news/2010/01/15/project-lead-the-way/
She seems to echo some of your comments, but her perspective on the PLTW curriculum is interesting:
“There’s a lot in computer science that you would get from a pre-engineering program,” says Martin. “You have critical thinking, you have hands-on applied knowledge, and you have a lot of tie-in from math and science.”
“PLTW programs try to cater to people that are more vocational as well as to people that are more academic,” says Martin. “But trying to be somewhere in the middle generally means it ends up catering to nobody.”
...
“The district really wants us to do [PLTW],” says Howard. “We’ll just have to see what happens with the budget.”
Unlike Melissa I don't know the teacher personally, and haven't read the PLTW texts, so I don't entirely know what to think of PLTW.
But I hope the district, as apparently it needed to do at Garfield, is also open to working beyond PLTW's supplied materials at Cleveland to create a viable and attractive CS program, even if it takes some iterations in coming years.
Robert A.
Here are a few (admittedly, a very few) first-person assessments of Roosevelt's and Garfield's experiences with Project Lead the Way. One caution is that these comments all come from people looking at PLTW as a college prep curriculum rather than the voc-tech aspects of it.
http://blog.makerbot.com/2010/02/06/project-lead-the-way/
Helene Martin commented thusly on PLTW's suitability for more academically inclined students:
"Do you know much about the Project Lead the Way curriculum? The implementations I’ve seen were disappointing. Lots of students following step-by-step tutorials and playing flash games to kill time. With one machine for ~30 students per class, there’s very little time for actually making stuff!"
A comment from a Roosevelt High School student who studied PLTW at RHS the preceding year is interesting. As is this comment from a student who didn't say which school he or she attended:
"I was a student of PLTW last year and am more than a little disappointed in the curriculum. The class is very structured, and it seemed the the grade I got was based on how well I followed the bureaucracy that the class required, not on how much I’d learned. The best parts of the class were the projects, but these were interspersed by long periods of rote note-taking and button pushing on the computer."
"Secondly, the curriculum needs a way to interest students at all levels. Some students needed more time to learn the material, or needed a different presentation of it, while others would finish everything in 5 minutes without thinking about it, and spent the rest of the class counting down the minutes. In general, I feel that PLTW needs to spend more time improving their curriculum (even quickly spellchecking the handouts would help), and less time marketing it and the expensive toys it requires."
Is there a published syllabus or description of the CS electives that you're offering? It looks like you have your work cut out for you to adapt or supplement PLTW for students headed to college, and it would be great to find out that STEM's CS electives effectively do that.
Robert A.
Didn't Meg Diaz point out how overbudgeted the JSCEE is compared to other districts? This is just the sort of position she was probably talking about.
The comment that Teoh's resume is impressive makes me frustrated. It seems to me a very odd list. Has he stayed in any one place very long? We just don't know, so we can't say it is impressive in any knowledgeable way. For me, Harvard doesn't automatically mean we're in good hands. A former president I know graduated from Yale, too.
But the quality of this person's resume isn't even the point, really -- it's a bigger issue: I, for one, am certainly not "sleeping better knowing these positions got filled" -- in fact, I have nightmares because I know REAL positions in the schools are getting cut to create and fill positions like this and to pay salaries like this!!
And the school district has the gall to ask for more money? a supplemental levy? Where does it end? When is the public going to say to our district, "You know what, you can't afford a $128,000 strategic planner right now. Use the money you already have to open those College/Career Centers so kids can get the services they need instead of feathering the JSCEE nest."
You say:
"I'll check with her, though, to see if she'd like to continue the collaboration with CS&E. It's good to be reminded how open that department is to working with high schools."
I'm a little surprised here. I'm not talking about getting a grad student here or there; I'm talking about a professional working relationship with one of the top computer science and engineering departments in the country. And you want to see if she's interested? How could she not be?
Our intent for PLTW in the STEM program is that it is college preparatory. PLTW provides some data related to this on their site. Here's their description of the methodology for gathering this data: "Since 2004, PLTW has used an independent service to conduct follow-up student testing and measure the programs’ impact. Student assessments are gathered at the end of each PLTW course, rating student interest and engagement. Participating schools also conduct surveys on a local and state level, while our other partners contribute wider education assessments."
Here's some of the data generated by these various assessments:
"*PLTW alumni are 5 to 10 times more likely to pursue engineering and technology classes than other first-year college students.
*On average, PLTW alumni have a GPA 0.21 points higher than the average GPA of all first-year college students.
*PLTW students surveyed in Wisconsin middle schools and high schools reported being more engaged in schoolwork than did non-PLTW students.
*PLTW students outscored a random sample of other career/technical students by 10 points in reading, 11 points in mathematics, and 10 points in science.
*79 percent of PLTW graduates completed four years of college-preparatory mathematics and 63 percent completed four years of college-preparatory science.
*97 percent of PLTW alumni said they planned to pursue a four-year degree as opposed to 67 percent of non-PLTW students."
I'm sure that a lot of these results depend on the context of how PLTW is implemented in a school, and of course on individual teachers and their approaches.
As far as the long-term opportunities for in-depth computer science at Cleveland STEM, I would also love to see it, but want to be clear that as of now we are only offering two sections of an introductory course, and that though we have a technology-rich program, students looking for a progressive sequence of computer science courses would probably be better served elsewhere. Again, thanks for the thoughtful consideration of our program. If you would be interested in talking further about it, you could email stem@seattleschools.org and request that they forward it to me.
Best,
Catherine Brown
Our intent for PLTW in the STEM program is that it is college preparatory. PLTW provides some data related to this on their site. Here's their description of the methodology for gathering this data: "Since 2004, PLTW has used an independent service to conduct follow-up student testing and measure the programs’ impact. Student assessments are gathered at the end of each PLTW course, rating student interest and engagement. Participating schools also conduct surveys on a local and state level, while our other partners contribute wider education assessments."
Here's some of the data generated by these assessments:
"*PLTW alumni are 5 to 10 times more likely to pursue engineering and technology classes than other first-year college students.
*On average, PLTW alumni have a GPA 0.21 points higher than the average GPA of all first-year college students.
*79 percent of PLTW graduates completed four years of college-preparatory mathematics and 63 percent completed four years of college-preparatory science.
*97 percent of PLTW alumni said they planned to pursue a four-year degree as opposed to 67 percent of non-PLTW students."
So, yes, it's PLTW's own data, but still, it's data. That said, I'm sure it's possible to implement PLTW badly, and we have to make sure we don't, so again, I appreciate hearing critiques from other settings so we can try to avoid the red flags you described.
As far as the outlook for in-depth computer science at Cleveland STEM, I would also love to see it, but want to be clear that as of now we are only offering two sections of an introductory course, and that though we have a technology-rich program, students looking for a progressive sequence of computer science courses would probably be better served elsewhere. Again, thanks for the thoughtful consideration of our program. If you would be interested in talking further about it, you could email stem@seattleschools.org and request that they forward it to me--I'd be happy to continue the conversation.
Best,
Catherine Brown
My last post is just to Helene--First, I have great respect for your work building the Computer Science program at Garfield (your website is amazing, and though I've no CS background, your assignments and curricular organization look marvelous). I'm sure you've been a source of help to many teachers and schools trying to develop a CS program.
I'm a bit flummoxed by how to respond to some parts of your posts, though, because it seems like you've put out some of the private thoughts and business of our mutual colleagues in a way I don't normally see done on this blog. Whether I agreed with or disputed any of your statements specific to Cleveland, I'd be sharing details of some pretty identifiable people without their permission. My initial response was on the issue of partnership: Melissa had stated that we had never worked with anyone from UW's Computer Science program, and I wanted her to know we had worked with a student from the program (and certainly this does not represent the fullest possible partnership, but it is different than not having worked with the department at all). On reflection, I was wrong for mentioning the student by first name, but I never dreamed that it would result in the level of disclosure that your post of 10/22 at 9:57 details. Similarly, I never imagined that one of our teachers would be characterized and paraphrased (sometimes in a way that could make her uncomfortable). I was dismayed to see two individuals put in the limelight of a conversation that I thought was at a programmatic level, without (as far as I know) their consent. This is an experience that will probably keep me from posting here in the future--not trying to be melodramatic, but forthright.
Lastly, I am a bit thunderstruck by the closing lines of your last reply: "Anyway, Cleveland students aren't in an academic position to take advantage of a partnership with UW CSE from what I understand." This statement sums up so much of what the barriers have been and continue to be for our school and our students. And I hope I don't need to explain why.
Sincerely,
Catherine Brown
I have removed offending posts and will refrain from being so direct in the future. That said, I would appreciate it if you could contact me to continue this conversation because I care deeply about computer science being offered more broadly in the district.