Work out of sequence will create problems
The attendance area boundary work is scheduled out and will end in a motion before the Board introduced in October and approved in November.
There is also work scheduled out for discussion and decision about the re-vision of Advanced Learning and Special Education. The timetable for that work should have it finish up some time around January of 2014.
There is no current timetable set for the Equitable Access Framework. It was supposed to be done by April, but it has hardly been started.
This represents work getting done out of sequence.
In September of 2011 the Board directed the superintendent and staff to deliver the program placement procedure so it would be available for BEX IV planning. That deadline was missed and the BEX IV planning had to be done without the benefit of that valuable information.In September of 2012 the Board re-set the deadline for the work, now re-named Equitable Access Framework, for April 2013. That deadline was also missed. The staff made a presentation in April, but it was a long way from an end product. They described it as "starting the conversation". No new deadline has been set, and the conversation has not advanced from that starting point. It appears that the Board has given up on the priority in the face of staff refusal. The Board evaluated the superintendent as “exceeds expectations” in the category that included the delivery of this work despite his failure/refusal to do the work.
Now we move forward with re-drawing attendance area boundaries without the Equitable Access Framework or any legitimate program placement procedure. There is talk about radical changes to Special Education and Advanced Learning programs - including program placement decisions - but the decisions for those changes will come AFTER the attendance area boundaries have been drawn.
Any reasonable person can see that the program placement work should come before the re-drawing of the boundaries. That’s the proper sequence. But the superintendent and the staff will be over a year late with this work (work that really should have been done back in 2010 when Dr. Enfield promised it) and the work will have be done out of sequence.
So what will happen? Will the boundaries be drawn without consideration of program placements? This will cause schools selected as sites for Special Education and Advanced Learning programs to be overcrowded. A school with a capacity of 1,000 will get an attendance area that captures 950 students, but when a program placement takes 180 seats in the building the school will become overcrowded.
Will the boundaries be drawn based on presumptions about what program placements are likely be? Wouldn't that pre-determine the placements and cause the placement decisions to be made based on the wrong set of criteria? Wouldn't it limit the options when the program placement decisions are finally made? Let's face it, if we were to put Elementary APP where the students live, the program would be sited at Sand Point and Stevens.
How, exactly, can the boundary work move forward in advance of the program placement work without guaranteeing the creation of program placement problems down the road?
How, exactly, can we talk about accountability as the superintendent and the staff continue to fail (or refuse) to deliver a cogent program placement procedure?
Comments
It'll be important to get to the sessions to try to bring this up. But how can SPS account for these enrollment needs. I agree it is unwise to rush ahead out of sequence, without putting programs together before creating boundaries & designing buildings
-sixwrens
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?sessionid=ae68540353ec7fec34de70e2cedd32f2&pageid=296812&sessionid=ae68540353ec7fec34de70e2cedd32f2
The unduly paranoid may think that is the solution they are reaching for, but the thinking for this effort does include four or five elementary and middle school APP sites and a number of Special Education sites, so there don't really seem to be reaching for NO programs, but they are reaching for no BIG programs and programs with only very few students from outside the attendance area.
Other data (taken from numbers on linked maps): District wide, 71% of APP eligible 1-5 students enroll in APP and 11% of APP eligible 1-5 students enroll in Spectrum. For middle school, 89% of APP eligible students enroll in APP and 9% of them choose Spectrum. Only around 2% of APP eligible 6-8 students choose not to enroll in either APP or Spectrum.
It indicates that wherever APP gets placed for middle school, families are still likely to choose APP. They are kind of at the mercy of the district.
-numbers
To manage that, the District will entirely eliminate programs that move students out of their attendance area. Spectrum will be replaced with a Tier II MTSS intervention done in the school. There is some of this in the Special Education restructuring as well.
The programs that cannot be eliminated entirely will be made smaller and more local to reduce the amount of flow across attendance area boundaries. APP will go from two elementary, two middle school and two high school sites to four or five elementary and middle school sites and a Tier III MTSS intervention at every comprehensive high school. Special Education programs will also be made smaller and more local to reduce the impact of program placement on capacity management.
No more situations like we saw at Lowell a few years ago with all city draw elementary APP and a big low incidence medically fragile program. No more situations like we saw at Washington and Garfield with 400 students coming in for APP. No more situations like we see at Hamilton now in which hundreds of APP students come in from outside the area.
Instead, the elementary APP programs will be less than half their current size and the middle school programs less than a third of their current size with very little flow across boundaries so they don't completely blow the capacity management model.
-sixwrens
If APP students were assigned to their neighborhood school this year, there would be 53 at West Seattle. What kind of Tier III interventions could the district provide to them?
Lynn
I suppose families like mine are often a more silent minority. But I would personally appreciate a district expansion of APP services and support to West Seattle so that kids like mine could have the opportunity to have their academic needs met in, or at least closer to, our local neighborhood. For me, having my kids in our neighborhood school for the aspect of local community, social happiness, diversity, and my availability to readily volunteer is very important. In my family's situation, I'd love to have access to APP level curriculum and support assurances from the district in our neighborhood school.
-Elligble But Not Enrolled
I wouldn't expect anything very dramatic. All they are likely to do is allow APP students early access to AP classes or allow them to take the class usually reserved for the next year ahead in core subjects. For years the District has claimed that the program at Garfield isn't about the classes or the instruction but about the cohort. That gave them an excuse to offer little in the way of classes. You can now expect them to switch and say it's about the classes and not the cohort so they can offer little in the way of a cohort.
APitteschand
AP - that's about 13 per grade. They would all have to have the same schedule every year to have a hope of getting instruction at the correct pace. Honestly, unless you live in a small one-high school town, you shouldn't have to deal with this. There may be other APP-eligible high school students in the neighborhood now, but I don't believe many of them are attending West Seattle High School. So to get any kind of a good fit in high school, you'd have to go private. It's not just West Seattle HS either, Rainier Beach has only 18 and Denny has 25.
Lynn
Probably why a colleague who does these private cognitive testings told me once, her one big advice to parents is don't tell your kids they have high IQ, are geniuses or super smart,etc. Better to work on their motivation and foster strong work ethics and curiosity to learn. That's the stuff that carry you through life beyond HS ranking and acceptance to a good university.
AP
I was not suggesting that students who are not tested for APP can't do high quality work or do well in college. Honestly, in that environment I'd assume the kids you're discussing would be both happier and more successful than mine. My kids were tested because they were not happy, motivated hard-working kids. I agree that focusing on motivation, work ethic and the joy of learning is important - and I hope the school district continues to provide opportunities for them where this is possible.
There are gifted kids who still need the cohort for social reasons in high school. They need to be around people who appreciate their sense of humor, share some of their less-common interests and help them to feel normal. Sometimes they have ADHD and find it difficult to learn in a class that moves at the wrong pace. If my middle child is put in this situation, we will either look at private schools (which we can't afford without compromising college funds) or do some kind of homeschooling.
Lynn
AP
It has been both my observation and my experience - yes, this means I have no data to support the hypothesis - that when children reach high school they don't need to be friends with everyone in their class, but prefer to be close friends with one to four other young adults.
Even within a small cohort of intellectual peers (a group which is not limited to APP-eligible students), kids can find that one best friend who shares their sense of humor and some of their less-common interests. I'm not sure that they have any interest in feeling normal at that age. "Normal" is not a compliment.
OSPI Highly Capable Program Requirements
2012 Highly Capable Grant Application
parent
Bellevue Gifted Advisory Committee
parent
People talk about cohort in AL in academics term, but also bridge that into social term. This is where I get confused. I don't know how many ways to say it to reassure parents that you will find similar social angst among parents transcending learning abilities, class, race about their kids. Parents want their kids to have good friends, one that won't lead them astray, ones that understand their shyness, OCD, ADD, depression, goofy or supremely annoying bathroom humor, perfectionist tendency, writing codes and apps, Bieber mania at 17 vs. Macklemore, etc.
The best I can offer is that I make my klutzy self go outside my introvert space and encourage my kids to be open to people and situation. There's always a risk to step beyond the familiar, but taking risk, lerning your limits, trusting your decision making, gaining self confidence, self advocacy are such key parts of growing up and by HS, that's an important coming of age point.
AP
I'll take a look at the book. (I have teens already.) I agree with its premise that shielding kids from every challenge and hardship does them no favors. I try to keep that in mind as we make our way through these years.
Charlie,
I'm not at all saying there should be self-contained APP classes in high school - just that we should avoid stranding kids in a place where they stand out too much as not like everyone else. This is a sensitive subject for me both from my childhood and early experiences one of my kids had in school.
I think a couple more APP options in high school would be good, but there are high schools that are not (currently at least) good fits for these kids. More options should make testing in for high school possible - and I think that would definitely be an improvement.
Lynn