Board Agenda November 17, 2010

There are some interesting items the Board agenda this week, as there always are.

First comes public testimony. You should expect an even back-and-forth about the Teach for America contract. If it runs true to style then those speaking for the contract will be Teach for America alums and representatives of the local Education Reform organizations. They will speak in vague generalities about how wonderful Teach for America is and how wonderful the Teach for America corps members are. They will tell inspiring personal anecdotes. They will probably also be well-dressed and well-spoken. They will alternate with more shabbily attired and casual speaking members of the public and the teachers' union who will cite data that shows that Teach for America isn't needed in Seattle, doesn't deliver very good results, doesn't reflect the direction we have said we want to follow for staffing challenging schools, may not be legal for Seattle to use, totally neglected any kind of community engagement, and just generally doesn't make any kind of sense at all.

That will be followed by the Superintendent's update. We don't yet know all of the topics that will be presented, but the chief academic officer's update will be on high school alignment. This should be interesting. Dr. Enfield has gotten rather prickly about the characterization of alignment as standardization. She really hates it. So you can expect her to take a moment early in her presentation to categorically state that alignment is not standardization. Then, as she describes the alignment effort, you can expect her to describe what is clearly standardization instead of alignment. Here's the difference. Stadardization is all about all of the classes using the same texts, the same assessments, and, essentially, the same lessons. Alignment would be completely agnostic with regard to materials and assessments and would focus instead entirely on bringing the students to acquire the knowledge and skills described in the Standards and Grade Level Expectations. Here's a handy guide: any mention of materials is a discussion of standardization instead of alignment.

Next comes Board comments, which are typically inane, and the consent agenda. The consent agenda is usually really boring - even the Board wants to skip over this stuff - but this meeting's consent agenda has one interesting item that should be teased out: the annual approval of schools.

This is a strictly administrative procedure needed to comply with state law to qualify for the basic education funding. Each school needs to have on file a "school improvement plan". Here in Seattle that plan is the CSIP. The Board Action report provides a link to the web page on the District site that has links to all of the CSIPS for all of the schools. No big deal, right? Wrong. First, go the to web page and look for yourself. See anything interesting? There are dead links for Summit K-12, the AAA, TT Minor, Cooper, and Meany. NOVA is listed as a 6-12 located at the Mann building, Sealth is listed as being at Boren, Hamilton at Lincoln, and The New School (Now called South Shore) is shown to be at Columbia. MLK appears under its old name, Brighton. There are no links for Jane Addams, Sand Point, McDonald, or Queen Anne Elementary. Wait, it gets worse. There is a link for Arbor Heights, but the CSIP for that school is blank. All of the fields are filled in with only the defaults. I haven't checked them all, but there may be others that are blank as well. Finally, and I know this is something of a minor note, almost none of the schools with advanced learning programs make any reference whatsoever to the program - or even a plan for serving advanced learners - anywhere in their CSIP. In case you're wondering, yes, they are supposed to. If the Board does not pull this off the consent agenda and ask about these irregularities, then we have further evidence that they are not yet taking their duty to oversee very seriously. If they approve this as it is, it will be a perfect opportunity for someone (Dan, you out there?) to appeal the Board decision and crush them. Losing on this will cost the District millions since they will lose their basic education funding from the State. You would think they would be more careful with it.

Then comes the action items, starting right off with the climactic moment of the meeting, the Teach for America contract approval. Don't get excited; the Board will approve it. Interesting items here include the changes in the contract that clearly state that the $4,000 annual fee will be paid with private funds - not any money from the District budget. The contract no longer allows Teach for America to share student data - although it does grant Teach for America access to the data. The new language says "that student educational records received from the District will not be disclosed to any other person, agency, or entity, unless required to make such a disclosure under an applicable law or court order." Now, I can't help but wonder if "applicable law" could include contract law if TfA has contractually agreed to share the data.

Here's another interesting feature from the contract. In appendix B it says"In order to be considered 'eligible' for employment under this agreement, each Teacher candidate presented must meet the hiring criteria set forth in the district's hiring process." If you review the hiring criteria set forth in the district's hiring process, you will see that all teacher candidates must be certificated. In other words, under the current hiring process, none of the Teach for America corps members meet the criteria. If the District changes that requirement, then I should be able to apply for a teaching job also. I just might do it, just to see if I'm stopped because I don't have a certificate.

The community engagement remains horrible and the referenced research remains horribly one-sided. Nevertheless, the Board will approve it. Move on.

Oh! I almost forgot Director Maier's amendment to the TfA contract. That's probably because it is so forgetable.

This item is followed by two other action items, a non-controversial policy update and the introduction/action of a levy certification.

The items for introduction aren't very exciting either. There's a decision, rather early in the game, to set the reserve at 3.25% of the annual budget. It's arbitrary and meaningless. There are a couple of grants that will be approved. The District's Legislative Action priorities represents how feeble the district is in Olympia. Guess what they want? Money. The community engagement on this was pretty darn bad. They consulted only with the usual suspects. Everything else for introduction are BEX or BTA contracts all destined for the consent agenda at the next meeeting.

The meeting will wrap up with the upcoming calendar items, and then adjournment.

Now, go back to each and every one of the action items and items for introduction and review the community engagement done on them. There is essentially no community engagement done on anything. Isn't that charming? What would it be like if the Board routinely voted to table any motion that was without meaningful authentic community engagement? Weird to think, isn't it?