Friday Open Thread
Love those Seattle sunsets - stunning.
From the West Seattle Blog, it's not Apocalypse Now or M*A*S*H - it's the Museum of Flight taking delivery of 23 (!) helicopters today and tomorrow for their show, American Heroes Airshow, “Courage at the Speed of Flight." It's a free show at the Museum tomorrow between 10 am and 3 p.m.
From Ed Week, a summer reading list around family engagement in schools.
Fun fact that I learned from doing some research on SPS, the late John Stanford, beloved superintendent? He modeled some of his reforms on charter legislation that was in the Legislature. But charters themselves? Not so much. He said, "We've prepared ourselves to be competitive." Interesting.
Hearing rumblings of a couple of parent/community driven campaigns against I-1240. Gee, I thought it was only the union against it. Guess not. One early "no" out the gate? Those solid citizens at the Washington State League for Women Voters. One interesting reasoning:
* The Washington Supreme Court has stated that a common school is open “to all
children . . . free, and subject to, and under the control of, the qualified voters of the
school district.” (School Dist. No. 20 v. Bryan, 51 Wash. 498)
From the West Seattle Blog, it's not Apocalypse Now or M*A*S*H - it's the Museum of Flight taking delivery of 23 (!) helicopters today and tomorrow for their show, American Heroes Airshow, “Courage at the Speed of Flight." It's a free show at the Museum tomorrow between 10 am and 3 p.m.
From Ed Week, a summer reading list around family engagement in schools.
Fun fact that I learned from doing some research on SPS, the late John Stanford, beloved superintendent? He modeled some of his reforms on charter legislation that was in the Legislature. But charters themselves? Not so much. He said, "We've prepared ourselves to be competitive." Interesting.
Hearing rumblings of a couple of parent/community driven campaigns against I-1240. Gee, I thought it was only the union against it. Guess not. One early "no" out the gate? Those solid citizens at the Washington State League for Women Voters. One interesting reasoning:
* The Washington Supreme Court has stated that a common school is open “to all
children . . . free, and subject to, and under the control of, the qualified voters of the
school district.” (School Dist. No. 20 v. Bryan, 51 Wash. 498)
Comments
This has not been our experience at two different schools. Teachers are happy to show them to you when you ask, but they don't come home.
I find I can often see a gap in understanding that is easily corrected either with explanation or a little practice. But you can't do that if the assessments don't come home.
I'm also tutoring some kids whose assessments make the gaps and thus areas for focus very clear.
Just wondering what others' experience is with this, and if there is a reason from a teacher's perspective to hold on to the assessments rather than send them home.
Mathy Mom
I guess they want to be able to defend their grades if they are challenged. Or they're afraid that they'll never make it home for the parents to see anyway.
I teach elementary and use EDM. I keep the assessments until the end of the grading period, as it is much easier to complete progress reports if I can refer to the assessments. I send home the assessments in the report card envelope along with the progress report each trimester. I have never had a parent ask for their child's math tests earlier, but I would be glad to send home a copy if someone did ask. I do send home the daily EDM homework which covers the skills during that day in class. They EDM homework pages are a good indicator of which skills have been mastered and which skills a student may be struggling with.
RSD backs off TFA, for now
Make the Renton Reporter take it back!
RSD's constituent form letter justifying TFA
They could say "Take our deal or we will take the schools."
I suppose the same questions apply to a parent trigger.
signed, wish-SPS-policies-were-spelled-out-clearly-for-parents.
Look, unless the teachers signing have struck some outside deal with the charter group, the charter group runs the school and the teachers may or may not get whatever they were promised in order to sign.
There is NOTHING in the initiative that gives teachers or parents who sign any kind of say or power over the charter entity who comes in.
SPS Leaks, I note that the Renton superintendent says TFA teachers would not get a "bonus" but I wonder if that's the same think as the TFA fee. I think TFA is so desperate at this point they are probably waiving fees.
I mean, we don't know who is paying for next year's fees for SPS TFAers, do we?
Oompah
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/netflix-founder-microsoft-director-reed-hastings-joins-board-facebook/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/netflix-founder-acquires-online-education-start-up/
Tangled web.
Public School Parent
You are right;interesting times. I think the pro-charter people just might not realize how un-tightly written this thing is.
There is one area that is problematic on approval at the final stage (all approved charter proposals to the Board of Ed); I'll post that soon and you tell me what you think.
another mom
It has bugged me from day one that the math tests don't come home automatically. Parents completely rely on the report card, which comes months after the train may have left the tracks, and which is marginally useful IMHO.
So my kid is meeting expectations in math. Maybe if I saw his test, I'd see that he was missing something basic. The teacher has 28 kids' tests to grade and sometimes has a volunteer doing the grading. Can we really expect the teacher to hone in on a problem a kid is having, more than "he just doesn't seem to get fractions yet". When a focussed parent could look and see exactly the same mistake being made over and over, and help the child?
This is a problem I have with spiraling curriculum, too. The idea is don't worry if your kid doesn't get it; we'll get back to the topic again. But when do you start to worry?
So the kid is having trouble in fractions, you don't worry, you don't know exactly what it is (b/c you don't see the test) and next year you don't worry again, and by the 5th grade, your kid is "just not that great at math. Never has been."
When it all could have been avoided by an observant parent who took a careful look at what the child is doing in math.
What am I missing?
mathy mom
go to where's the math, and supplement. edm is garbage.
it would be ideal to hand back assessments asap. except kids miss the quiz test for 100 legitimate (?) reasons, which teachers have no control or influence over, and certain students seem to always be able to be around when the quizzes tests are handed back, and then ... they end up with an extra week to study the material, and then their B- or C+ is the same as the student show shows up on time and rarely misses school ... as teachers, all of us really struggle with this problem.
since my quizzes are based on homework, and tests are based on quizzes, I don't feel as bad about the lag which can occur - but - it isn't ideal.
whichever solutions you pick to solve 1 set of problems seems to cause problems in another area - and, when it comes to quiz / test make up policies & rules, I'd love to see someone detail some scam proof system without all kinds of holes.
EDMStinksSupplement
So in addition to buying charter signatures and paying Mr. Eide to sell the idea to voters, Gates is also paying some teachers in Los Angeles to sell the idea of using high-stakes tests to measure teacher performance.
Who died and left the Gates Foundation thinking it was in charge of public education?
"After graduating with a degree in Political Science, Sydney joined Teach For America"
Just as Christopher Eide was a Corps Member Advisor at Teach For America.
Gates must be bff with TFA and vice versa.
Helen Schinske
This week, there will be an opportunity to join a community discussion about local education. Two groups, the Excellent Schools Now Coalition and Stand for Children are posing the question, “If you could change one thing about your school, what would it be?” in a forum at the Ballard Library on Thursday, July 19 from 6 to 7 p.m. They say children are welcome and food will be provided.
From Anne Martens with Stand for Children:
The Excellent Schools Now Coalition and Stand for Children invite you to join parents, teachers, students, and community members like you for a discussion about our schools, our kids, and our future.
This is an intimate discussion about local and statewide education issues, such as access to high-quality early learning programs, teachers and leadership, innovation, and college and career readiness. We are especially excited that Stacy Gillett from the governor’s Office of the Education Ombudsman will be joining us.
RSVP to Brittany Gibson at bgibson@stand.org. Learn more about the event here.
-Ballardite
I meant the assessments in EDM.
I guess the homework would work, if parents look at corrected homework or take the time to compare their child's homework responses with the answer sheets that come home at the beginning of each unit. I guess I am saying that all the clues to what is going on with a specific child are easy to read if you can get your hands on what they are doing. Then you can fix it. But teachers have too many kids to do one-on-one shoring up with each kid, I guess.
I've got a few of kids I'm tutoring and if I can get copies of their EDM mid-year or end-of-year assessments (not always available---parents don't have them or it's the summer and teachers aren't there to get copies from) I can usually see where the gaps are pretty easily. Or I give them some other assessment that matches OSPI grade level expectations. Then I can go to work on the gaps and things get better pretty fast.
It got me to thinking about what is available for parents to assess their kids' progress. My kids are in a school that doesn't give homework, and the assessments don't always come home (depends on teacher, and usually with a significant lag if they do come home). But it's not a big deal for me b/c I'm doing Singapore at home with my kids so I can see right away if they are getting hung up on something.
So I'm just musing b/c I see that there are obvious signals and when they don't get caught they compound into big skill and confidence problems, and as I mentioned before, the spiraling curriculum doesn't help, b/c when do you worry if it's not clear when to expect mastery?
Mathy mom