Advanced Learning Survey Out
Here's a link to the Advanced Learning Survey that was taken earlier this year. I would like to hear comments and feedback. Thanks.
Tuesday Open Thread
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Comments
For example, in the written comments in my survey, I said the biggest changes we need in advanced learning are to stop forcing APP to move schools, to switch to Singapore Math for advanced learning, to favor and support teachers certified in gifted education for APP, and to strengthen the Spectrum option (or new alternative school options) for children who nearly qualify for APP (ideally, placing those in the same school as APP). Those four changes would be hugely beneficial.
I'd be surprised if there was not widespread support for all four of those. But I did not see those four things emphasized in the summary of the survey, perhaps not because parents did not say it in the survey, but because the summary of the survey did not fully convey what parents said.
--frustrated
Recently, I heard a very well-spoken woman make this case to a district official at an AL-related public meeting. She had a great suggestion: why not allow enrollment (especially in MS and HS) based on effort as well as ether grades or cognitive ability? Thus, a student who missed a cutoff could sign a pledge that they will maintain a certain GPA during a probationary period, or some other type of effort indicator. Remember in college how you couldn't progress to Bio 205 unless you had received a B+ in 105? How about the same for Middle School APP? The goal being to SERVE EVERY CHILD who wants rigor, and to encourage kids from underserved communities to sign up to it as well-- no testing (which is costly), no fuss, just several options: 1) learn at grade level 2) learn 1 yr beyond, 3) learn 2 yrs beyond. The racial disproportionality of our current AL system has got to be dealt with in a way that is positive for kids, all kids, and this is the best way I can see.
Signed,
Access to AL is a Civil Rights Issue
One of the ideas continually suggested is to make spectrum exactly what you say - an opt in program. They need to admit spectrum is broken, and then fix it, before anything will improve there. I think it might then be appropriate to allow a kid to opt in as long as there is an understanding that if it doesn't work there is a strategy to move the child. One kid can slow an entire classroom down. I don't think allowing kids to opt in to APP would be appropriate.
I think seeing the survey comments is mandatory to really understand where parents think the program is. I don't believe that so many AL families are happy with the math curriculum. The parents of kids in my kids' APP classes certainly aren't. The district should post the comments. I know comments have been posted from other surveys.
-parent
I also agree that the survey comments should be released. It would be more helpful to get a sense of what recommendations respondents came up with and it would be useful in the future to have surveys that query support or lack of of real options for improvement.
--another frustrated ALO parent
One more dissatisfied ALO parent
I wish the AL survey results were broken down by geography, in addition to showing more detail.
Done
The City of Seattle says the city is 70% white, 8% black, 14% asian, 1% native american, 2% latino, and 5% two or more races.
APP says it is 69% white, 17% asian, 4% latino, 3% black, and 6% multiracial. That is almost the same.
It is actually Seattle Public Schools that does not reflect the racial mix of Seattle. Maybe the question should be why Seattle Public Schools does not have the same racial diversity as the children of Seattle? Why is APP equally likely to attract students regardless of their race but other programs in Seattle Public Schools are not?
No, sorry, it is not. AL is not mandated by the state nor is AL any sort of protected class. Nor should it be.
Yes, AL must be improved in SPS. It is a mess. But it is not a civil rights issue. To claim it so cheapens both your claim, and those who do qualify for civil rights complaints.
Southie
But let's remember that in the recent survey conducted by the Board families in the District expressed a satisfaction rate of about 83%. That's the benchmark. That's the satisfaction average in Seattle.
So even the satisfaction with Spectrum is about 10% lower than for schools in general.
New to ALO
For example, page 23.
I’m guessing the actual question was if a child was excelling in only one subject – say, Math vs. both Math and Reading – if they should be able to receive AL opportunities in that one topic.
I am guessing as I did not take the survey and the actual question is not presented as a part of the survey results...
Yes response to the survey was: APP – 60%, Spectrum – 72%, and ALO – 79%. Very obviously a majority from all three categories of YES.
Yet, the survey results were presented as “The majority of families surveyed feel that AL programs should serve students who are advanced in only one subject.”
“APP and Spectrum families have higher proportion of ‘No’ responses.”
If these survey summation sentences are presented on a PowerPoint to the Board or to the AL Committee without the question/actual results -- then a very skewed/spun idea will be introduced vs. the actual.
As an example: If a kid is doing great at math why not let them fully exceed and excel to the best of their ability? The majority of respondents in all categories said -- yes!
Yet, the summation of the results presented made it seem like ONLY AL families said yes -- when that was not the actual survey result.
Crummy, spin, crap, which our kids don't deserve.
A telling quotation: "If a test negatively affects opportunities for a group to participate in, for example, gifted education, then it has a disparate impact and should not be used. Out of Griggs v. Duke Power came the fundamental question: 'If a group consistently performs poorly on a test, why do we continue to use it?'"
Finally, Parent, our district contains 43% caucasian kids-- 19% black, etc., check the district report card. Using city numbers is not related. Reghardless of the number of Seattle residents (most of whom are not children), the apposite numbers are our own district percentages.
Lastly, although I may not respond to other comments because I have a client proposal due at work, I hope the topic encourages some thinking, and some advocacy for all rather than gatekeeping. Best of luck to all,
Access, etc.
a different disappointed ALO Mom
I always thought that was one of the reasons Ms Fox was originally assigned there. She has a masters in gifted ed, worked as gifted facilitator and a gifted ed director, and the school was charged with developing a formal ALO program the year she was assigned there.
If someone with this background can't create a great program that parents rave about, what hope is there for ALOs at other schools?
signed, former Bryant
North End Mom
ALO, by design, should provide any & all rigor and challenge at appropriate levels for any kid who doesn't qualify, or can't get into a self-contained program (which shouldn't happen if they actually knew how to manage capacity in SPS, but that's another issue).
This is what Bob Vaughan and the last board endorsed as the solution to meet any kids who otherwise fall through the cracks, or want acceleration without leaving their neighborhood or preferred school.
So, why isn't it working? Is differentiation actually more difficult than it's proponents, like HMM, believed? Is the chronic lack of support for advanced learners in general by principals who don't believe in separating kids by ability rearing its head? Or is it something, like Singapore math supplementation promised 4+ years ago, that they just "haven't gotten to yet," as Carla Santorno once answered to Michael DeBell.
Bottom Line: Talk is Cheap. All schools have ALO in theory only, not in practice. Epic fail. And who's responsibility is it to see this problem remedied, if not the administrators in charge of the school, and the highly paid Ed Directors at SPS? Or shall we continue to lay it all on Bob Vaughan's shoulders, as if he has any power outside JSCEE anyways?
Sure as hell, you can count on teachers being the scapegoats once again, while meanwhile, yet another list of promises go unfulfilled. And so it goes.
WSDWG
In general I think the district really has to get Spectrum sorted out. They should guarantee access to everyone who qualifies and if they're moving to non self-contained clusters then it seems fairly easy to startup such clusters everywhere in the district rather than having isolated ALO learners. If 6 extra kids popup at school X, then group them into a cluster. You could be really dynamic shifting the cluster sizes and location to give all kids a cohort. Of course then you'd also have to make the classes appropriate as well. So it makes sense to not shift around as much as possible.
But it seems like there is a consistent large number of AL learners and we should be able to develop a curriculum and teacher base able to support them.
What I don't think is particularly effective is to leave single kids in general classes and expect enrichment to uniformly occur without much guidance or incentives.
Ben
Watch closely as ALO is floated as the silver bullet alternative, "just as good if not better" than self-containment, thereby eliminating the need for self-containment altogether. It's already happening in Spectrum schools. And how's it working out? The almighty "data" says, not so good. Yet, now watch how the district will spin the negative feedback into something positive about ALO to serve the agenda of those who want to remove choice from the system, eliminating self-contained Spectrum, etc.
So, what we have here is ALO being dangled as a carrot to reduce demand and support for Spectrum and APP self-containment, and it all sounds good, except that in practice, it resoundingly fails. But watch and listen in the coming months as the "data" is twisted, misinterpreted, and spun to serve the philosophical ideals of agenda-driven people, at the expense of parents and children in the district.
ALO is supposed to be the perfect solution, but it's instead little more than a political club to beat down those who support self-containment models, and little more.
WSDWG
Curious
-Happy soon-to-be ALO parent
WW parent
What do I think? ALO's can only be successful if there's money! Class sizes need to be smaller and the things the McGilvra parent mentions that are contributing to successful differentiation need to be funded by the district. I'm not an educator, but I can think of a bunch of things to cut in order to make this work.
The one thing missing from the McGilvra comment that would make it a perfect situation for us would be pull-out for the highest achievers as well as pull-out for the struggling.
I appreciate hearing the positive comments from parents who are happy since it could help guide all our schools in the right direction. I really hope people don't bash McGilvra for having the funds to be able to do this. Instead, look at it as they are finding out what is needed for ALOs to succeed.
ALO parent
frustrated
One thing I have noticed at McGilvra is that the whole staff seems very interested in making school work for each individual kid, even when that means private tutors or home math supplementation.
--Happy soon-to-be ALO parent
-drop the name
Well, for those that don't have them, it could be that you have a principal who believes they already have rigor so who needs a program or you have a principal who thinks it's too much time/effort and doesn't want to do the work.
For those who do have them, I don't know why they would say they have an ALO and then have something lame.
But I think the day of reckoning is coming for Advanced Learning programs and I hope, really hope, that parents who want rigor for their child - no matter how they test or don't test - can find it at their own school. And have no doubt about it all.
Emile
So much for the theory, let's get back to reality.
-back to reality
Honestly, I think your venom is misdirected. Why are you angry at a successful alternative program? Shouldn't we be creating more of these popular and successful alternative programs rather than trying to destroy them? Isn't it great that programs like this attract people to our public schools and engage them in our public schools?
Rather than be angry at advanced learning, shouldn't you be angry at the (unusually high) 20% of Seattle parents who refuse to engage in or help Seattle Public Schools and go private instead? Shouldn't you be angry at the people trying to vote in charters and suck money out of the public schools? Don't you think your anger is misdirected?
SPS parent
- reality bites!
-drop the name
Annie
Some of our adjacent low-income schools have ALO programs with no or very few children participating in them. Our school has about 15 eligible across all grade levels, and maybe just us APP eligible. After advocating for the solution that I believe in--high quality neighborhood access for everyone--I see how painfully out of synch it is with the realities of Seattle's resource distribution. Absolutely, the no-cost/easy/effective solutions should be standard issue, but I'm not sure that would be sufficient to meet the needs of these learners in the absence of critical mass and more deliberate attention. I had to come to terms with the fact that maybe we're more trouble than we're worth in this context. I agree that the ALO label is pointless--some schools without the label do this work well, and some with it clearly just have the label. Effective differentiation should be standard practice at every school, but systemwide changes would need to happen for that to be a viable reality. I'm genuinely heartbroken that we have to choose between the rich diversity and integration of our school and the credible assurance that our child will get the rigor she needs. Wanting those realities to be different won't help (I've tried that)--the only things that would help would be real money and real resources in the right places.
--from the periphery
Also I don't know if it's due to an increase in standardized testing, we've noticed much more teaching to content on the MSP and MAP which doesn't always connects to the curriculum (the LA's workshop, NSF kits, and EDM).
DIfferentiation is tough to implement because as so many here have described, you may have some differentiation happening, but differentiation of resources and priority and quality of instruction is not equal.
SPS parent
I've often wondered if some combination of grade-skipping and clustering could help to meet the needs of isolated/sparse advanced learners. For example, and these are only examples as there are lots of ways this could be strucutred, what if AL qualified kids were given the option of walk-to-reading and/or math in the next class up, grade skipping, or both for 2-year advancement? What if there were some sort of multi-age pull-out that allowed guided self-study? Maybe with a coach who serves multiple schools? What about some sort of scholarship arrangement with the after-school and saturday classes at the UW Robinson Center? How could the AL office set these programs up centrally, so it's easy for principals to adopt them and get back to the task of helping at-risk kids?
Kregory King, and I feel Rina G, did not support teachers who had an understanding of what gifted education was. Note the number of APP teachers that left last year. Our school was gutted. They now have a school full of teachers who know next to nothing about gifted education. Standing up for "gifted education" and the actual needs of gifted students, is what put teacher's on the chopping block. The pressure to let go of creativity, follow only the SPS curriculum guidlines that go out to all schools, culminated in the loss of most of what was "gifted" about our curriculum.
Rina and Gregory would come in and be interested as to if our "teaching point was posted." If we had more than one point in a lesson, we were written up. I can say for sure that gifted children can handle more than one point per lesson. Even testbook lessons are written with a number of teaching points per lesson. Rina and Gregory completely missed the essence of the good teaching that was going on, and attacked excellent teaching. You wonder why teachers left? Believe me, they didn't leave lightly. They were not given a chance to teach "gifted" curriculum any more.
I also want to say that the SPS legal audit on the Lowell situation from last year is months late in coming out. I'm sure that it was damning, or it would have been out long ago.
Former Lowell Teacher
Emile
dk
6+ years and still at it
The fact is - we have many, many, many private schools catering to gifted students - mostly white. Or - they count very nominal measures of diversity. (Been to Lakeside lately? They say they're 40% minority, but you sure don't see it when you're there.) The white students remaining in Seattle public schools is around 50% of the total living in Seattle - and significantly "less gifted" than those represented in the city since so many are attending the private schools catering to giftedness. Therefore, true "giftedness" of that community should be under-represented in the SPS programs. Instead, we find the opposite. At the very least, if you consider "access", you must use the percentages actually present is SPS - not those who happen to live in the whole city. SO - access really is an issue. The fact that Lowell at Lincoln has not a single black student speaks volumes to the issue.
Converserly, those same private schools accept very students with disabilities. Some accept students with minor disabilities. Therefore, we should see our disability programs OVER represented with white students with disabilities. Here too, we find the opposite. Our disabilities programs are over-represented with students of color, which is a nation-wide civil rights issue.
-observer
--periphery
Why would anybody "hate" people using private school? People who go private should be thanked. They leave the limited resources of the state's education funding for the benefit of others. The idea that we will somehow get more money by having more students doesn't pass the "Everyday Math" sniff test. If there were a lot more students enrolled in SPS, the state would not magically come up with more money. It would simply cut K-12 PER STUDENT funding again. Same money for more students amounts to that basic fact. And a few more cakes sold at the PTA isn't going to make up that difference.
Thank you for going private and spending your own money!
Do we hate people who use private medical insurance instead of medicare/caid?
Another parent
The obvious solution is to reduce class sizes and put some real emphasis on differentiation through training, resources, and management focus. Unfortunately that cannot happen. We lack the funds and the classrooms for the smaller class sizes that would make a difference. We lack the resources or the funding to acquire them. We lack the management talent and authority for a management focus of any kind. Worse, our management focus is currently in exactly the opposite direction: standardization.
Another approach, short-cutting the need for those strategies, would be to use technology to introduce a ton of individualized instruction in the areas of skills and skill-building while devoting class time and teacher time to projects that engage higher level cognitive skills as well as collaborative skills. This style of hybrid education, now in use at Queen Anne Elementary and some charter schools, requires an investment in technology that is currently beyond our budget, the development of creative, engaging, challenging lesson plans for class time that we have yet to build, and a revolutionary change in the perception of the teacher's role which is no where near discussion, let alone adoption.
The other way to short-cut it would be to group students by skill level and teach the separate skill groupings separately. That's what APP and Spectrum are supposed to do. That's where we are. That's the reality.
Don't like that? Then find another path that will get us where we need to be that is within our budget and the abilities of our staff.
-reality bites
reality bites
That mistake would be just a mistake if it didn't lead to such tragic conclusions. It makes you think Seattle Public Schools is a zero sum game where, if you can only drive enough people out, you who remain will have everything that is left.
That isn't how it works. There isn't a fixed pot of money. You can't win by getting rid of people.
The fact is that, unless our public schools attract and educate all the children of Seattle, levies and taxes will fail, charters will pass, and public schools will see their funding deeply cut. And, if that happens, the kids who can't get out will be the ones who get the most hurt.