This is What I'm Talking About
At the Board meeting of 11/3/2010 there was a discussion, prompted by Director Smith-Blum, that arose during the talk about fairly innocuous motion about cleaning up some obsolete enrollment policies. Her concern was that the District should do assessments of incoming students to determine their academic needs. The superintendent quickly jumped up to twist that by saying that it sounded to her like tracking and discrimination, but Director Smith-Blum made it clear that was not what she meant.
Here's the critical part. Both the superintendent and Dr. Enfield spoke of assessing students' abilities and providing interventions where necessary as a core function of schools. But then Dr. Enfield said that the District's effort along those lines was Response to Intervention and that they were actively seeking outside funding to "take that to scale".
Stop right there. This work is core to the district's mission, but we don't do it and we don't budget for it, and we're seeking outside funding for it.
Right now, when the district perceives a struggling student they send support to the student's teacher - not to the student, to the teacher.
Want to know what's wrong with Seattle Public Schools? Look no further.
Here's the critical part. Both the superintendent and Dr. Enfield spoke of assessing students' abilities and providing interventions where necessary as a core function of schools. But then Dr. Enfield said that the District's effort along those lines was Response to Intervention and that they were actively seeking outside funding to "take that to scale".
Stop right there. This work is core to the district's mission, but we don't do it and we don't budget for it, and we're seeking outside funding for it.
Right now, when the district perceives a struggling student they send support to the student's teacher - not to the student, to the teacher.
Want to know what's wrong with Seattle Public Schools? Look no further.
Comments
Helen Schinske
It can be done but not when the Super and the CAO are more focused on other things.
Kay Smith Blum is a light in the darkness.
Pushback for assessing incoming students and immediately providing them with necessary supports? Puh-lease. You can take funding away from every single one of those teacher coaches and half the data coaches and BAM there's your funding.
Anyone with two minutes of volunteer experience, parenting experience or teaching experience can tell you whether consistent, adequate funding of student assessment married to student intervention (focus on individual student) would be a better funding priority than consistent, adequate funding of teacher coaches and data assessment minions.
Apparently only our district administrators don't understand this.
This blog is not the right place but I really wish someone would start a digital clock, something like the Olympic Countdown Clock idea, counting the minutes toward moving our superintendent out of here. I used to be be mad but I am becoming outraged by the eduspeak nonsense, the begrudging - at best - willingness to include parent and teacher opinions, and worst by far...evidence from the very same tests that our Administration looooooooveesss that our students are NOT faring better in academic learnings than they were when she came in.
It is terrible to say this because we know there are people in the district who really cares (but often are afraid to do much), but the way this district treats our kids, it feels like they are guinea pigs in this giant educational experiment of the latest "it" idea. When we look for help for a specific kid, we get passed from one department/ program personnel, (and we are told to refer to a website which of course does not answer our specific question) to another.
For those of us with children left in this system, we hope the movers and shakers listen and pay attention to what is going on at Rainier Beach high school. Those parents are working hard to be heard and have their concerns and proposals listened to. They are not whining or hand wringing, but are making real effort to engage the district.
We hope our Board members will listen, learn about their issues, and speak up for these parents and their students. Otherwise, you will loose more students and no MAP, SE Intiative, TFAs, and the latest education gimmick will fix it.
Moving On.
To me, feels like student intervention is needed.
Doesn't feel like Rocket Science.
What would be the District's response?
Right on!!! KS-B
This is a prime example of the chaotic approach to so many things in the Goodloe-Johnson administration.
The core work of education is an after thought for these administrators.
Find out more here:
Lessons in Chaos by MGJ
"Assessing every student and placing them according to ability sounds like tracking and discrimination…and we’ve moved light years away from that."
Mike wrote:
She’s unwittingly put her finger on one of the major dysfunctions in public education today.
There exists such a pervasive, intractable, myopic allegiance to a Utopian vision of social justice that the players, and the system as a whole, willingly ignore data that is pertinent to the academic progress and ultimately social welfare of the children. Such narrow-minded zealotry actually perpetuates the very social inequities it purports to alleviate.
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Dr. Goodloe-Johnson is the classic example of a person who is committed to making things work the way she philosophically believes they should work. She is completely detached from reality. Her plans do not work, but she refuses to make any adjustments because of reality. Reality is not going to get in the way of her ideology ... ever. Valid Data reports are never used.
"Assessing every student and placing them according to ability sounds like tracking and discrimination…and we’ve moved light years away from that."
Light years away from positive results for many students despite greatly increased spending on a Strategic Plan that does not work.
When will reality ever bite through this edu-speak crap.
KSB gets it
but the "Fab-Four" are just pathetic.
Much of what was the Support, Prevention, and Intervention department has been placed under the direction of Pegi McEvoy (Safety and Security).
I could not find any updated info about these changes on the district's website, though.
-- NBS
Curious
So why does MGJ say teachers don't track students? It's her policy designed by the head data wonk downtown.
Is tracking just for affluent neighborhoods?
Concerned West Seattle Parent
The Supt clearly was using the word as a pejorative, with all of the associated baggage. I was glad to see Charlie's post because I had watched this part of the meeting on TV and found the entire exchange very odd. Director KSB was clearly not talking about tracking students into immutable pathways that would affect their future job prospects. It seemed to me like KSB was making a good and valid point, and the Supt tried to take away some of her credibility by pretending to hear a request to return to the days of racially discriminatory tracking. It seemed quite a leap to me, unless of course one is trying to discredit someone by conflating their ideas with something more sinister.
And I agree with Charlie that the whole thing was troubling because there was an admission that providing what each student needs when they need it is a core function of the district, yet seconds later, was the admission that we aren't doing it and have no real plan for how to do it. It seemed a little surreal.
Deeply troubling. Really.
Case in point. The RHS 10th graders used to be able to choose for themselves whether to take a challenging AP Euro class, a year long history class or a semester long history class (both of which were called world history, but unlike 9th grade world history, included Europe.) In order to force all kids to take a different social science class (that isn't even history) they called that self selection tracking and therefore evil. Their new plan, of everyone taking the same thing (AP Human Geography) was considered equity.
Consider that tracking is putting someone in a classroom based on external decisions and not offering ability to move to a more suitable classroom. Tracking has multi-year consequences. Making everyone take the same course therefore IS tracking. Heck, we track students by their birthday all the time.
Deeply troubling. Really."
This is how I felt, deeply troubled, when I wrote "down the rabbit hole" after considering the district's argument that it can allow conditional certs in Phase III hiring because a conditional cert is a cert.
Of course, WAC and common sense understand the conditions for a conditional cert: Shortage or unusual skill. Conditional certs can utilized, if called for, AFTER attempts have been made to hire a real cert, which would be Phase III, when positions are opened to all certificed applicants. So after no applicants are hired after Phase III, one would go looking for a conditional cert, right? Wrong. Conditional certs can apply alongside real certs during Phase III because conditional certs are certs.
Down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, hop up onto the mushroom, we're not in Kansas anymore, it's a Catch-22: The conditional certs are not conditional because they are certificates of equal merit with certificates which are more than conditional certificates because they are not conditional.