Friday Open Thread
Kudos to Director Rick Burke who Skyped into the Work Session on Wednesday from London. By the time he got on, it must have been about 1 am his time.
SPS tweet this morning:
Oh look, Teach for America is laying off workers (oddly, sending 250 packing but hiring for 100 new positions.) From Diane Ravitch:
Nominate your school to participate in the 2016 National Fitness Champion campaign. Your school could win a $100,000 fitness center. This is sponsored by the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils.
What's on your mind ?
SPS tweet this morning:
Afternoon bus routes in Central District might be impacted by Sanders rally and Sakura-Con. Parents will be notified of major delays.Are you going to the Democratic caucuses? I am. It may be old school but it is one of the most truly democratic experiences you can ever have - talking to neighbors and others about who should sit in the White House. More on this in a separate thread as both Dems have pretty disappointing views on K-12 public education.
Oh look, Teach for America is laying off workers (oddly, sending 250 packing but hiring for 100 new positions.) From Diane Ravitch:
Despite the flashy celebration at TFA’s 25th Anniversary Summit held in Washington D.C. last month, TFA did not meet its recruiting target for the second year in a row.
2015 was the first time in its history that TFA laid off employees, and now it’s happening again.
In addition to the staff layoffs and job restructuring, Villanueva Beard told TFA employees that the Office of The Chief Diversity Officer (OCDO) will be eliminated in September. Despite TFA’s self-professed commitment to diversity (it’s one of the organization’s core values), the decision to eliminate the OCDO comes only months after the new chief diversity officer was announced on TeachForAmerica.org.Taking sides in a disrespectful tweet from a Tumwater high school student to his principal, this story from The Olympian. What is the correct punishment for a student who gets mad at a principal after being reprimanded for too many late arrivals to class/school and tweets, "Eat my (expletive) ,Broome.) Is this free speech (apparently not, according to several other high school cases?)
Nominate your school to participate in the 2016 National Fitness Champion campaign. Your school could win a $100,000 fitness center. This is sponsored by the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils.
What's on your mind ?
Comments
OK, that was the easy one. The 24-credit meeting last night at Ballard was profoundly depressing. Right now, ~20% of high school students don't get the 21 credits currently needed to graduate, out of the 24 credits possibly available in 4 years at 6 credits each. To solve the problem of these students being required to get 24 credits in, they are looking at expanding to between 26 and 30 credits, although with minimal increase (20 minutes) in actual time in school. The other assistive solutions proposed include online tools for plotting out high school careers starting in 8th grade, increased support from counselors, and a couple of other items. When asked about the digital divide, counselor workload, etc., staff said they knew they would need to beef up those areas. It also depends on PD for teachers to teach them to effectively use longer class periods. When a parent said that they liked all these things, but they sounded expensive, Tolley out and out said that they would come up with a price tag and the Board would have to figure out where to cut to fund these things.
So we have a solution that depends on increasing access to computer labs, decreasing counselor workload, and increasing effective teacher PD, with no dedicated source of funding. Has anyone seen this script before? Any idea how Act 2 goes?
HIMSmom
Cynthia, I perceive this is not CK doing this; that person is usually more dignified. I'll delete 'em, you ignore him.
Waiting, that's not the case here, c'mon.
The most egregious (IMHO) of the schemes was one that isn't really on the table anymore, where each semester would be 8 credits. 32 credits available in high school! Woohoo! They would do this by having 8 short class periods on Monday, then alternating A and B days to have 4 90-minute classes on each day. The total time in classrooms would be the same as the 26-27 credit system discussed above, but students would magically get 32 credits out of the same year.
I know I'm flippant and a little rude above, but I honestly do not understand how the math works and how this isn't just re-arranging deck chairs. If anyone can explain this, I would dearly love to hear it.
Even if you don't purchase a membership or go all day, you can go to the public areas of the Convention Center and see the attendees in their cosplay. It is a totally worthwhile way to spend an afternoon.
The teachers are insensitive, hence PD, and the counselors are lazy, hence refocusing.
Heaven forbid that they use all the data they have on kids to see that certain grade profiles map pretty tightly to issues of attendance and or lack of doing home work. No one wants to just state that teachers with 140 ++++++++++++ kids are getting ready for the next class, for the kids who show up AND who do something, and chasing the random attendees and random workers down the halls takes away from the first group, therefore, the kids of the certain grade profiles need EXTRA support with EXTRA adults with their math English music Spanish ... classwork.
Let's get real - we can't afford these adults in the schools to make the system work because then we'd have less money for the adults
MakingPowerpoints.
Here's how a student can get more credits in the same number of hours (it's not reducing passing periods):
From FAQ on the state board website:
3. When did SBE remove the 150 hour, time-based definition of a high school credit?
SBE adopted the new rule in November 2011. The change was part of SBE’s overall review of graduation requirements and move towards a career- and college-ready graduation requirements framework.
The recommendation to change the time-based definition of a credit emerged from the work of the Implementation Task Force (ITF), a group of education practitioners appointed by SBE to recommend policy changes needed to implement new graduation requirements. The ITF recommended that a non-time-based policy would:
Place the focus on student-centered learning.
Allow districts more flexibility to meet the increased credit requirements.
Allow districts to determine, and individualize, how much course time is needed for students to meet the state’s standards.
4. Is there a uniform state policy on how each district should define a credit?
Districts can base their definition on criteria they stipulate in policy, such as:
Earning a passing grade according to the district’s grading policy; and/or
Demonstrating competency/proficiency/mastery of content standards as determined by the district; and/or
Successfully completing an established number of hours of planned instructional activities defined by the district.
http://www.sbe.wa.gov/faq/highschoolcredits.php#.VvX9ofpHarU
Do you have evidence otherwise?
--- aka
thanks
It has been a while since I studied the issue and my understanding is that most of the state's investment was geared towards early learning and other expenditures (MSOC?), which did not include high school.
AKA, the state changed their funding model from 1000 hours in high school to 1080, or an 8% increase. So they are asking for a 20% increase in credits with a nominal 8% increase in funding. So no, they didn't actually fund the new requirement. Oh, and they were underfunding that 1000 hours anyway, hence McCleary which was well before the Core 24 requirement.
As LeVar Burton says, you don't have to take my word for it. Show us your own numbers! We'd love to see them.
Eric B, the question was as to whether or not the state funded the six period day. This increase to 1080 instructional hours with requisite allocation increase addresses this question. As for the 20% increase in credits required of students, comparing this to the funding increase as a percentage is not apples to apples. Finally, the vast majority of districts required, prior to the increase of the state minimum credits to 24, more than the minimum 20 credits. So, in other words, for most districts, this was not a 20% increase.
Melissa, it's highly likely that districts used these funds for purposes in which they were not intended. Nearly the entirety of the state funding model is an allocation model. Districts have a great deal of flexibility to expend the funds as they see fit, and they often do.
--- aka
@ Lynn, I was aware of the state requirements, but was asking more specifically about how SPS plans to deal with this situation. The state allows for a lot of flexibility in this (for better or worse), and we could go in a lot of different directions. Personally, I'd much rather see 7 periods than a modified 6-period schedule that simply assigns more credits to certain classes. Students applying to selective schools will still likely want to take a full 4 yrs worth of English, SS, math, and science, and likely a foreign language a well, but that doesn't work well with a 6-period day since it uses up 20 "classes" (regardless of whether they assign them 20 credits or something more). With 2 credits of health and fitness, 1 credit of CTE, and now 2 credits (instead of 1) of art required, that's probably 5 more "classes" to fit into those extra 4 periods. I suppose they could make one of those "non-core" classes a longer, blocked "extra" credit type course, but my hunch is that they'd use any longer or blocked course for the more core courses like LA or SS or science. That might be beneficial in terms of ability to deeply cover material in those classes, and in terms of ability to meet the (somewhat meaningless) new credit requirement, but it does NOT help at all when it comes to getting the variety/types of classes students may need. Then add in the overcrowding, and the increasingly complex master schedule if there are classes of varying lengths, and it's probably even less likely that kids will always be able to get a full schedule in the first place. I hope the task force is taking these other factors into consideration too.
HIMSmom
Can you blame them (at some level?) I think Seattle district hurts itself by not using money in clear and transparent ways all the time but I know those cuts were real.
I'm planning to read it over spring break, and have offered it to a few folks in my building as well. If it can reach the right folks it might go a long way to improving schools top to bottom.
LeftSeattle
They still have not fully funded teacher salaries and a host of other things, and so, no, they have not started to pay for the 6 period day. The actual per pupil investment the state made in the last few years in the "$1.3 billion more" they like to claim as a win only really brought us back to the same level of funding as in 2009, which was already unconstitutional. It was NOT really an increase. It was something, but it certainly is not covering the actual costs of the 6 period day and basic education as a whole, and not nearly enough. That "record level of increased investment" still leaves us with a huge gap in funding, and is why they are in contempt of court and being charge $100k a day.
Page 38 of their own report to the court shows a graph of how the per pupil spending dips after 2009 and only returned to that level in about 2015. http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/2015%20Report.pdf
You can find lots more interesting tidbits of information about how the state had repeatedly promised to fully fund basic education, and still hasn't, here on our newly revamped website:
http://paramountduty.org/how-we-got-into-this-mess/
Eden
They are in contempt for not submitting a plan to achieve these obligations. The court was very clear about this in levying the $100K-a-day fine. The court acknowledged in that same order the substantial progress the state was making toward its financial obligations.
The court acknowledged the pace of the phase-in of the state's obligations, which are noted on pg. 7 of this report you referenced. The asterisk specifically notes the completion of the full funding of the increased high school instructional hours and graduation requirements.
But your point, vis-a-vis the 6 period day, seems to be that, if they haven't provided the full cost of teacher compensation and completed the class size reductions, they've funded nothing. I don't share this view --- and neither did the court.
--- aka
PS The reason the Legislature doesn't have a plan to submit to the courts is that they can't figure out how they're going to pay for the rest of the shortfall.
As for the Supreme Court, they "commended" the legislature starting on page 5 of their sanction order: http://waschoolexcellence.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/August-2015-Court-Order.pdf. Other than the detailed plan for fully meeting its constitutional obligations, the court only called out the legislature's shortfalls in teacher compensation and class size reductions (including the capital outlay necessary to meet these obligations as well as full-day K obligations).
And are you suggesting that 6 periods a day aren't funded because the teachers' salaries aren't fully funded by the state? That seems odd. The teachers are there but their salaries aren't covered by state, so the prototypical school and its MSOC aren't funded? This makes no sense. But, let's look at it this way --- the teachers are fully paid to stand there but the locals are taking on too much of that burden. After 2017, I will suggest that teachers won't see a pay raise (other than possibly COLAs) --- the state will simply take on the full cost of their salaries. How does that affect the 6 period day?
Finally, I agree 100% with your PS. The legislature does not have a plan for how they're going to pay for the full cost of teacher compensation, the remainder of the class size reductions, and their capital cost shares of construction to meet these class size reductions and provide full-day kindergarten. That's why they're in contempt.
--- aka
It's my understanding that the per-pupil expenditures in SPS are north of $12K, which would make it near the top of the averages of per-pupil expenditures across the country. It's shameful that this utterly mismanaged district continues to place ALL of the blame for its mismanagement of its resources on the state.
--- aka
"It's my understanding that the per-pupil expenditures in SPS are north of $12K"
Per OSPI:
"1. Basic Education Allocation Per FTE Student Rate $ 6,279.60"
Any conversation about funding and education must include teacher compensation. The district is required to fund 25% of teacher salaries with levy dollars. Whenever we talk about increasing teachers i.e. reduction K-3 or 24 credit hours etc....we will see funding taken from other sources.