Durkan Names Transition Team
And there are a few familiar names on the K-12 education side.
One is almost-gone Board member, Stephan Blanford.
Another is Mary Jean Ryan (she ran for the Board once and lost) who is the head of the Road Map project, dedicated to better outcomes for low-income students in south King County schools.
The other is Trish Dziko who started the Technology Access Foundation, TAF Academy and sits on the Washington State Charter Commission.
I can almost hear what Blanford will tell Durkan and I'm sure he would support any overthrow of the Board.
But while Ryan and Dziko lean ed reformer, they are not hard-core. Both are thoughtful, smart people who just want to move the needle on the achievement gap.
I suspect in the the next couple of weeks/months - given the fast timeline for Durkan taking office - that we'll see more familiar names.
One is almost-gone Board member, Stephan Blanford.
Another is Mary Jean Ryan (she ran for the Board once and lost) who is the head of the Road Map project, dedicated to better outcomes for low-income students in south King County schools.
The other is Trish Dziko who started the Technology Access Foundation, TAF Academy and sits on the Washington State Charter Commission.
I can almost hear what Blanford will tell Durkan and I'm sure he would support any overthrow of the Board.
But while Ryan and Dziko lean ed reformer, they are not hard-core. Both are thoughtful, smart people who just want to move the needle on the achievement gap.
I suspect in the the next couple of weeks/months - given the fast timeline for Durkan taking office - that we'll see more familiar names.
Comments
It will be interesting to see the angle that will be used to raise outcomes in the south end. They tried money and that did not work, so that leaves perhaps new administrators and staff that are in sync. It also difficult for SPS to hand out funding disproportionately to schools without people calling foul.
Hard cuts in central administration are long over due perhaps it this board that will see the light and move the district into a schools first mode.
MJ
That said--I agree SPS has been flailing and failing our underserved students (including HC outliers) for far too long. Something has to give. Dziko is amazing, I welcome her ideas and would love to have TAF in each of our four regions. I wouldn't mind seeing the district just split, I think we are too large to be effective.
Titanic
We already have (I believe) the very highest private school attendance rate of any large city in the US, close to 30%. I think the rate would be even higher if there were more private school capacity in-city.
Charter schools offer a way around head-scratching staff actions and boards that just don't have enough power (or exert enough power). The level of exasperation with this district that I anecdotally note among many if not most parents will soon reach a head. I'm hopeful the new board represents some progress on this front, but the person whom they hire as superintendent will say much more about the future of things here.
I noticed that one of the reasons an Amazon spokesperson specifically mentioned about why they've gone looking for a secondary headquarters was the schools. We have this inflow of people from all over the country and the world who understand what college prep should be, and SPS is trying to close equity gaps by not closing them, shuttering successful programs left and right, failing to build up capacity, overrelying on Running Start, and not producing enough students prepared for Seattle's economy. Companies and research institutions here are sometimes having a hard time attracting certain talent to Seattle because of the public schools; I sincerely think this is an underappreciated problem.
Charter schools have tons of disadvantages, which is why I've always been against them. But they will become inevitable I think without immediate course (and personnel) corrections.
Since when? I think most parents understand there are at-risk/nhigh need kids who deserve supports.
Titanic, but split how? If you naturally go north/south, you'd never hear the end of it. I'll also note that Dziko DID want to come into SPS but Goodloe-Johnson had to do it her own way and Dziko went elsewhere. Big lost opportunity.
So Simon, what you say is true BUT the trade-off for charters is 1) the faster downhill slide of traditional districts, 2) more segregation and 3) if parents think they'll get more say or influence in a charter school, good luck with that.
I had not heard that about Amazon. It would be good if the City worked with the district on that kind of issue. I'm not sure internally where this is all coming from - this direction - but I suspect it's Michael Tolley.
This is getting ridiculous.
SPS has been a trainwreck for many years. People moving into Seattle, including from the south, are shocked by the uneven quality of schools, and lack of choices and equity.
Real Story
SPS is not a trainwreck. Nor is public education in general. Nice try,though.
Simon, could you please cite your source on that Amazon statement. It would be helpful.
-Pragmatic Xennial
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/as-amazons-deadline-for-hq2-bids-closes-speculation-on-winner-heats-up/
"Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business and a member of the committee that will decide where HQ2 will be located, added a bit of detail that goes beyond Amazon’s public request. In comments at a conference hosted by technology news site GeekWire last week, he said he hoped the company would choose a spot with public schools with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics."
@Melissa
You can write that with a straight face after hosting this blog?
Charlie regularly referred to the "culture of lawlessness" in SPS?
Just because you are anti-charter (and so am I) doesn't mean you can act
like SPS is suddenly functional as a rebuttal whenever charters are
brought up as antidote to SPS.
Not credible.
Real Story
It seems to me that an Amazon executive would want small class sizes for their children with state of the art equipment. It isn't going to happen. As well, there are plenty of students within SPS that receive good educations and move on to good colleges.
Real Story, there are many flaws in SPS and yes, Charlie and I have pointed them out. There are not near the issues here as in other mid-sized urban districts.
Class of 2017 stats for High School Students Graduating in 4 years or less:
Cleveland - 92%
Roosevelt - 91%
Ballard - 91%
Rainier Beach 89%
Garfield 88%
Ingraham - 84%
WestSeattle 83%
Nathan Hale - 82%
Chief Sealth 82%
Franklin 82%
Alternatives 31%
Those are not the stats of a "trainwreck" district that, as Tech City points out, many people across the board send their children to. The story on privates is not one of just one reason.
- Teach for America and support the fact that there is no requirement for TfA to disclose lack of teaching credentials to parents
- Taxation without representation.
- A system that further erodes public schools
- Rocketship style learning where 40-50 students are placed in front of a computer with someone walking around the room.
MJ
-NW Mom
NW Mom, that's a question for the Legislature. My late husband, who was a UW professor had hoped to end his career teaching science or math in high school but yes, did balk at the hoops to jump thru.
MJ
Anyway, a previous commenter provided the link to the Amazon exec's quote about schools.
I do not want to support charter schools, recognizing all the downsides that various people have pointed out, but I certainly don't agree with the notion that SPS is doing a great job. We simply do not have a world-class school system in this city. We could! We could. But we don't. We certainly have excellent teachers, and we have some excellent schools, but the range of quality in schools is undermining the entire system. Even in the so-called "rich" North End, there are several struggling schools amid several thriving ones. Graduation rates in city are too low - the numbers cited above are underwhelming arguments in favor of a thriving school system. We have an environment that could make charters more appealing.
As for, college preparedness, just ask UW math and science professors what they think of their freshmen arriving from SPS - on the whole, not impressive. By many rankings (OK, which are problematic, I admit, but they still can and should be be instructive), college preparedness of Seattle high school graduates is very low. US News has only two Seattle schools state-wide in the top 20 (Roosevelt and Garfield, not surprisingly): https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/search?state-urlname=washington&sort=readiness-descending
It's not that we're not educating kids adequately on the whole. It's that we're getting to be a big city that is a hub of global medical research, biotech, high tech, etc., to say nothing of major world research universities within our city limits. Yet, we don't have a primary and secondary school system to match, and there is little I have observed in the past ten years that inspires confidence in the direction of this school district in terms of leadership. For all the focus on closing the gap, I also do not see progress in this area!
If there were some major personnel and philosophical changes at the top, I think we could embark on something remarkable in this city education-wise. I'm hoping our very strong new board will start that journey. But until that happens, I tend to expect our wheels to keep spinning, and the resistance to charter schools to start chipping away.
My quick google search landed a couple of cites. A city lab cite from 2014 that listed cities by percentages of students in private schools. Seattle wasn't even in the top ten.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/08/where-private-school-enrollment-is-highest-and-lowest-across-the-us/375993/
Linda Shaw had an article in 2012 that cited the census as suggesting a private school percentage at 22%.
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/educationlab/2014/05/28/seattle-school-enrollment-keeps-on-rising/
But I think the census based its calculations on students enrolled in schools. Some of those students most definitely would have come from outside of Seattle.
Anyway, I'm not buying the 30% of Seattle kids are in private school.
-sleeper
As TFA teachers, we weren’t steeped in pedagogy, and we could have used more training, but almost all of the TFA teachers I know worked their tails off in some very tough districts & schools. And did some damn good teaching along the way. And, most/many teacher training programs at garbage, so I am not sure how much is lost by not attending one. We had a lot of mentoring from veteran teachers, classes throughout our two years, and weekly learning groups to attend, so to say he whole training was 5 1/2 weeks is not accurate.
As I said, I have a lot of criticism about TFA. But, based on my personal experience (both in TFA and three years more as a certified teacher) I think the criticism should be more nuanced. And I never drank the TFA cool-aid, but it put a lot of hard working people into tough classrooms, many/some of whom are still in education, and that’s not such a bad thing.
Greenwoody
I would argue that PhDs are very qualified to make sure students are college ready. Many have experience teaching intro classes at university and even community colleges and know exactly what is expected of these kids. The hardest class I had in high school was taught by a PhD in Physics. We complained so much at the time, but 1st year Physics at University was astonishingly easy afterwards. It is getting more and more difficult for graduates of doctoral programs to find research positions. I think we should be recruiting.
-NW Mom
I've noted here that over a decade ago as I was wrapping up my B.A., I, along with a couple of friends interested in teaching looked hard at TFA. One of the main reasons was Alex's statement above about the poor quality of teacher training programs available. To us, we felt it was a lot better use of our time and money to go the TFA route to become a teacher rather than pursue a Masters' degree at Ed School.
A couple of my friends applied but did not get in, I never applied because I pursued other opportunities.
I'm much less enamored today with TFA than I was then. The program got really big, really fast, and I'm not certain the quality or "hustle" is still there. MW has documented many issues here before. But for someone who really wants to teach, and does not want to spend the time in a poor quality ed school masters' program, it still provides a much needed alternative pathway to the classroom.
northwesterner
The available census data don't jibe anymore since it's too old now, but in 2012 the total number of students aged 5-17 in Seattle (https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk) was 61,128. That is likely low for 2012, since many high school seniors are 18 or older. In 2012, SPS had about 48,000 students enrolled, so we can extrapolate about 21% private school attendance in 2012 (i.e., 13,000 kids are not in public school).
Even at 22% in 2017, SPS would have a much-higher private school attendance rate than major cities such as Boston, Denver, Portland, etc., although lower than San Francisco.
-sleeper
https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/domain/238
-sleeper
Blanford promotes himself and aggressively trashes all the other directors on the board at every opportunity.
https://southseattleemerald.com/2016/12/05/school-budget-deficit-too-heavy-a-price-for-our-children/comment-page-1/
http://kuow.org/post/being-only-black-man-seattle-school-board
And he lies about his voting record and blames others for his own failure to be effective. As Melissa has pointed out, most board votes are unanimous and every member has lost a vote, not just Blanford.
Doesn't sound like a team player. Good luck with that.
-- Bewildered Parent
"Nationally, Seattle’s private-school attendance rate was lower than San Francisco’s, estimated at 28 percent in 2012,"
In the paragraph above they state Seattle's private school attendance rate, 22%, and this is supposed to be comparing with the other cities, SF being high at 28%. Very curious how they got the Boston number, which is HALF what Boston public schools thinks! You would think Boston public schools would know...
-sleeper
That gives 17,951 private school students for 2016-17 within Seattle Public School's district. Around 1,000 of them are in preschool. It would be easy to weed out the preschoolers if I had better Excel skills, but I just approximated. So that gives about 17,000 K-12 students in private school in Seattle last year. And it was something like 54,200 or something in public school.
So that's a total of about 71,200 K-12 students in Seattle. About:
23% in private school
76% in public school
And OSPI shows 362 homeschooled students, but they only count that from age 8 through 12th grade. And 17 doing part time home schooling.
http://www.k12.wa.us/PrivateEd/HomeBasedEd/AnnualReports.aspx
-sleeper
In addition to private schools, there are many students who live in Seattle but attend PUBLIC schools in a neighboring district. Historically the outmigration on this is far larger than the handful of students who come into the district. This information is captured by enrollment and OSPI but it is not included in any of the standard enrollment reports. It is pretty readily available if you call the neighboring districts, OSPI or do a public records request with SPS.
This would include Seattle Students who attend schools in Highline, Vashon, Shoreline, Edmonds, Bellevue, Mercer Island and Northshore as well as few enrolled in further districts. In the past this has totaled thousands of students. IIRC, at the time of the transition to the NSAP, the number was over 6,000 students.
Over the last few years, Shoreline, Bellevue and Mercer Island have started to close their doors to new students, so the numbers may be more modest. They are still honoring currently enrolled out of district students.
I would also not be so certain about private school enrollment in Seattle bringing more folks from the surrounding areas, than Seattle sends out. Based on the large number of families who go great distances for neighboring public schools, I would suspect there is also a large number of Seattle residents who travel to private school. The catholic schools in Seattle are very full. Families who do not have enough standing in their parish, regularly go to Eastside Catholic, Kennedy, Forrest Ridge, etc.
Finally, I have no idea is this should be a factor or not but ... There are lots of Running Start students who go out of district. Options like Digipen are quite attractive and I don't know if there is anything comparable in Seattle.
I am so glad she won. This town needs a corruption cleaning from the Police to City Light. If she keeps an eye on SPS corruption I'm all in.
As far as ramming charter schools through, that's really a state issue and now that we have a democratic trifecta in Olympia, I'm focusing my energies there.
We should work with the mayor to help the district work better. Give her a chance.
Jordan
As for "SPS corruption" - what are you speaking of?
I also think the city and the district need to work together in the management of the growth in Seattle. The "urban village" concept needs to be coordinated with the public schools.
I would also like to see more cooperation in the areas of disaster response, mainly for the inevitable earthquakes.
Jordan
I agree with your other suggestions but I see more pushback from the City than vice versa. It was HALA that said schools are “amenities” and that’s a terrible attitude for the City to take. Schools are infrastructure.
HP