Seattle Schools Odds and Ends

I plan on writing a thread this weekend that is an overview of how I see the Seattle School Board today.  There are certainly some interesting things being said by directors and frankly, I'm not sure I see them working as a unified body (but not the same people who usually get called out for having special interests).   I listened to the Board comments and more and more, I find them quite telling.

- Update: forgot this one piece of info.  You may have heard that some school districts around the country have accepted various "items" from the Armed Forces.  One in San Diego accepted a tank.  Seriously.  I had a chance to ask Ass't Superintendent Pegi McEvoy this question yesterday.  She said the only things that SPS accepted from the military were blankets, cots and MREs.  Sounds good to me.

- the district appears to have solved its website problems.  However, apparently the 46th Dems were to have an Endorsement meeting last night at some school site.  The 46th had reserved a room and confirmed the reservation verbally but got a call - after 5 pm - telling them the district's software had not been able to accept the reservation so it was cancelled.

- Director Peters has the only community meeting tomorrow, Sat. the 20th, from 11am to 1 pm at Magnolia library.

- Flu Shot clinics will be provided for all SPS families with medical insurance.  Patient consent forms are available at the link or at each clinic.  This will be at different high school locations from September 30th-October 20th.

- it appears that Africatown is operating some kind of family connections class for SPS.  The district has a "Family Connectors University" with three sites and Africatown is operating out of Columbia Annex.  I have some questions into the district on this subject.  

From the Board Comments and Board Testimony on Wednesday, Sept. 17th

- it appears there safety issues at Washington Middle School.  One speaker  - it was unclear to me what school he is actually from but he's a teacher - said that he was afraid for his students and himself because of those safety issues.  He said there had been shots fired but that Washington Middle School said it was only one shot.  His query?  How many shots does it take to be important?  (Director Blanford noted in his comments that he had sent an e-mail to Ass't Superintendent Pegi McEvoy, she replied and Blanford hoped that that teacher's concern's could be allayed.) 

- the high school students who came to speak - every Board testimony period starts with high school speakers - were from Franklin.  Very impressive, mature and well-spoken.  They seem very proud of their school and its diversity, noting they have the most ELL high school students in the district.  (Apparently Franklin students also sang the national anthem and Director Carr, in her Board comments, expressed the wish that they could sing it at any Mariners playoff game that may materialize.)

- Director Blanford mentioned being invited to speak at Nova High School about his role as a school board director.

- Director Carr reviewed what she called "the Preschool for All" Work Session.  She said that she

"...came away with clearer sense of what is being proposed, clear to me that the funding in this, from an SPS perspective, that we have the opp to engage to the extent we choose and when we are ready and I think that was some important key takeaways. "

I am happy to hear that "when and extent" that SPS will "choose" to be part of any preschool initiative.

Not so happy to hear her say that she will be writing a resolution to ask the Board to support the ballot initiative.

Did the Board have a work session for the other preschool initiative?  Don't think so.

Is her resolution going to support preschool in general in SPS or just the City's plan?

Because maybe I don't understand the parameters of the law but it would seem to me that the Board can't support one over the other without it being campaigning.

She also talked about the quarterly Audit& Finance committee meeting.  She said that one area the district had audited was "testing controls" to make sure our standardized testing is safe from cheating and other compliance issues.  Here's that audit.  Some of what is in it:

- The primary objective of this audit was to determine if the District has implemented adequate controls to prevent cheating on state standardized tests.

- We cannot audit the Smarter Balanced online system because the District has yet to implement the internal controls associated with that system. However, District management expressed a high degree of value on this audit and requested that we proceed with the audit to assess the current control structure. District management conveyed a strong desire to understand the current control structure so that they can ensure that there is a strong control environment in place to improve student learning. -

Conclusion: Based on the results of our audit procedures, the District has control weaknesses that put it at risk for cheating scandals. 

Further updates:
The District follows the guidelines released by the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), but there is a greater need to restrict access to test booklets in order to ensure their security and to prevent tampering. We were not aware of any actual or suspected cheating incidents at Seattle Public Schools when we began this audit, but subsequent to completing the fieldwork portion of our audit the District identified anomalies with the test results of one school. The District referred these anomalies to OSPI and an investigation is being conducted. This school was not part of the sample of schools we visited during our audit, and we are not involved in that investigation. The results of this audit should be analyzed independently of the OSPI investigation. 

Recommendations (partial) 

Include a strong tone-at-the top message emphasizing integrity and the value the District places on accurate and reliable test data designed to improve student learning. 

Restrict access to unreleased test questions in advance of an exam so that teachers, principals, and other District staff are prevented from pre-teaching students the exam content, as well as providing test answers to students prior to or during an exam. 

Contain internal controls designed to limit the ability of school staff to coach students during an exam. For example the District could consider prohibiting secondary teachers from proctoring their own students. 

Include a review of student transfers and expulsions to ensure that they are being made for valid disciplinary reasons, and that students are not being removed from a school’s headcount in an attempt to elevate the school’s test results.

Lastly, although this report focuses primarily on the controls associated with cheating schemes that could potentially be committed by District staff, we also recommend that the District’s new online testing system include controls designed to prevent student cheating. 

The district's reply:

Research, Evaluation & Assessment (REA) concurs with the audit report findings and recommendations. REA is committed to ensuring the integrity of student achievement data collected each year using state assessments. To this end, we will carefully review all our procedures and processes for administering both existing paper-based state assessments (e.g., MSP, EOCs) and new computer based state assessments (e.g., Smarter Balanced). We will develop a corrective action plan for instituting enhanced controls and oversight. 

However, they said that while they would like to restrict access to test materials:

It is worth keeping in mind however that REA has only one full time staff member to coordinate multiple state tests administered during the year. We do not currently have funding (for example) to hire seasonal part-time workers during heavy testing periods. As a consequence we rely on training existing school staff to help process materials both before and after testing. Centralization of these efforts would likely require additional resources to implement. 

I'm baffled.  I thought that this business of assessing was hugely important: to students, to parents, to teachers, to the public and to elected officials.  The district just transferred $2.6M from rental/lease revenue to the General Fund and yet REA does not have the money for some seasonal workers to make sure the testing integrity is solid? 

What does the all this money go?

Director Carr also talked about the Title IX compliance work and just like Boards of yesteryear, decided to thank staff for doing work that it appears should have be done previously to avoid these problems.  

Director Peters talked about the Board retreat and the issue of priorities.  She said that "everything, in a way, is a priority."  She said the Board was just trying to find areas of focus, sometimes because of legal mandates (like Sped) and some times because of "reality" (capacity management) and it helped to have them in some order. 

She mentioned that the Advanced Learning taskforces had finished their work and that staff had made a draft AL policy.  She said she was grateful for staff to have done that work and given the C&I committee time to review it before bringing it to the full Board.  

Director Martin-Morris, as usual, had just gotten back from a trip.  He is the vice-chair of the Council of Urban Boards of Education and had gone to D.C. for a meeting.  He said the group was in the "process" of releasing new white papers...

"...and some research that is coming out, some is around, ironically enough, mayoral control of school districts., and it will be interesting to see what the results of that white paper is."

He said he would "share with community and with colleagues as soon as I have it available." 

He did not say what was particularly "ironic" about mayoral control of school districts but I suspect he was referencing the Seattle Times editorial around the Mayor taking over the School Board.  

Director Peaslee said that she felt that, along with preschool, that another area the City might help the district with is safety, both for walk routes and other public safety issues at schools.

She said speaking of safety, "I had to cancel community meeting last Saturday because of safety concerns that were brought to my attention by a few people. I apologize to those who showed up (or wanted to) I am working on a better situation so that people feel comfortable and safe coming to my community meetings with children. "

Now, of course, if you were at home watching, you might have no idea what she was talking about so it might all seem quite mysterious to you.

She also said (because there were two speakers testifying about the deaf and hard of hearing program):

As far as the deaf and hard of hearing and other SEACC issues, the good news is we did make Sped one of our top 4 priorities and we hope to be able to address all of the issues around Sped, effectively and completely this year. I want to hear about status of deaf and hard of hearing program and I'd like an update in the Friday memo.