Watch Out for Talking with the Times on HCC
HCC or probably any other topic.
The last several years have seen the Times skew their writing on public education. Whether it's because part of their writing is funded by the Gates Foundation (and the Times clutches its pearls if you even suggest that the Foundation gives them guidance on what to write and how to write) and/or input from the Editorial Board, I don't know.
What I do see is a steady decline of balanced reporting and it's troubling.
Now I see there is a call out from the Times asking parents with HCC experience to contact a reporter. But let's see how it's phrased:
I find the survey kind of odd.
What options does your district offer for advanced learning? How are they delivered, and how do they differ from what you think is normally offered?
I'm not sure I understand what this means? Are asking about "normally offered" for an advanced program or Gen Ed?
And how would a parent know for certain exactly what curriculum is in the Gen Ed and what is in HCC (the answer is supposed to be exactly the same curriculum).
I would tell parents to be very careful what you say to the Times because 9 times out of 10, they take comments out of context or twist the meaning.
The Times allowed the Superintendent to have an op-ed that was factually inaccurate in several ways right before Election day.
Enough said.
The last several years have seen the Times skew their writing on public education. Whether it's because part of their writing is funded by the Gates Foundation (and the Times clutches its pearls if you even suggest that the Foundation gives them guidance on what to write and how to write) and/or input from the Editorial Board, I don't know.
What I do see is a steady decline of balanced reporting and it's troubling.
Now I see there is a call out from the Times asking parents with HCC experience to contact a reporter. But let's see how it's phrased:
As we continue to explore this topic, we want to hear from you and we want your perspective and questions to improve our coverage: What are the hoops students must jump through to be admitted to gifted programs in your school district? What does gifted learning look like in your school’s classrooms? What stories do you have of racial segregation in these programs?Hoops and segregation? Where is the "what do you like and what don't you like" in seeking out parents and their experience?
I find the survey kind of odd.
What options does your district offer for advanced learning? How are they delivered, and how do they differ from what you think is normally offered?
I'm not sure I understand what this means? Are asking about "normally offered" for an advanced program or Gen Ed?
If
your school provides separate spaces for advanced learners, what are
the differences between those classrooms and regular classrooms?
Is the curriculum the same? What about the physical space? Be as detailed as you can, please.
Why is the physical space important? Probably to keep driving a wedge by implying that HCC students get better rooms.
And how would a parent know for certain exactly what curriculum is in the Gen Ed and what is in HCC (the answer is supposed to be exactly the same curriculum).
I would tell parents to be very careful what you say to the Times because 9 times out of 10, they take comments out of context or twist the meaning.
The Times allowed the Superintendent to have an op-ed that was factually inaccurate in several ways right before Election day.
Enough said.
Comments
Juneau’s next campaign Ad: the angel who ended the slave ship.
Keeps people divided, distracted and fighting each other
Easier to stick with polarizing topics than doing the actual messy grunt work in dealing with SPS bureaucracy and inertia.
Covers up a lot of bad executives’ decision making.
CYA after making a mess
Advance personal ambition
There’s a lot of reasons to adopt Trump’s modus operandi. They work.
Voter
"Highly Capable that serves 4,896 of our students, 9% of our student body, while the national average is 2%?"
Correction: 9% of Seattle's population perform in the top 2 %.
"Did you know this advanced learning service is highly segregated? Of all participating students, 67% are white, 1.6% are African American, and less than 1% are Native American."
Correction: Juneau needs to start claiming Asian and multiracial students HCC students.
Most egregious: " So, we are trying a new approach. For 17 months, an Advanced Learning Taskforce has been meeting to explore possible solutions to increase diverse representation. Three weeks ago, initial policy recommendations were presented to the School Board. Since then, there’s been confusion about the implications and misinformation about the recommended changes."
Correction: Te ALTF has NOT recommendation.
"The requested policy changes won’t decrease academic rigor or eliminate advanced learning or Highly Capable services."
Correction: We haven't even begun to evaluate cost structure and we are running out of funding.
Seattle's superintendent is distributing factually incorrect information to the public. The Seattle School Board must hold their one employee responsible for not distributing misinformation.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/seattle-schools-can-undo-legacies-of-racism-by-boosting-all-advanced-learners/?fbclid=IwAR0bpqNYbPK-u4q1RsDDu8pOMma4cvqnB84_cNQ5VfiJe10WzTR6Pc_HQMY
Juneau is awful.
Maybe they think they have more power than they actually do.
If you have been in a taskforce, you know your work can either be considered or filed away. Not happy about this.
Fed Up
Does the ALTF have the power to "authorize staff" to do anything? That doesn't make sense to me.
unclear
This makes no sense. Tackling a polarizing issue is harder because you must be willing to deal with the unhappiness of a large group of people.
It's even harder when it's the privileged and powerful that you are confronting.
Juneau is clearly genuinely appalled by the demographics of SPS HC. According to the school board results, the majority of the public has had enough, too.
Huh
Hampson did not broadcast her support for charter schools. Rankin called herself a champion of HCC. Jargon did not inform voters that championing HCC....meant dismantling advanced learning opportunities. Campaign results are meaningless.
The superintendent is tone deaf.
More Noise Please
More Noise Please
Sour grapes
Voters don't know jack about HCC; they voted for many reasons.
Bazzaz's twitter feed does not include a single quote from those that support HCC- even those from educational justice.
More Noise Please
Yes I agree that demographics are skewed, as they are in many of these type programs. But I also have not seen a proposal to fix it. Did you know Juneau is also proposing keeping a cohort of the top 1%? That demographic will likely be even less representative of our district demographics. People need to pay closer attention to details.
Details
"That demographic will likely be even less representative …"
Right. But hopefully it will be a much smaller, and it's negative impact will be negligible rather than damaging as it is now. Truthfully, I have seen very little coverage of HCC, and it has been pretty evenhanded. One opinion by a self serving parent supporter and ST regular, Danny Westneat. And Juneau's missive. Doesn't seem like much, and only interesting to the self interested.
reader
fair and balanced
reader
2% is the testing level to achieve to be in the program. 9% is the number of students in the program. They are not the same thing.
reader
Try again
Fair and balanced
A large portion of Seattle students are performing at very high levels. Only Seattle Public Schools would consider high achieving students to be shameful.
Fed Up,
The only reason I know about Emijah Smith is because of Sebrina Burr's testimony at the board meeting. I am new to all of this. I had no idea what she was talking about. So I looked it up.
Melissa,
Thank you for your blog.
Thank you for the reminder about the Times reporter. I started filling out the survey then thought 'what's the point?'. She's just going to write some anti-HCC drivel. The more meetings I attend, the more I get involved, the more I understand that there is a core bunch of social justice people (on the board, in SPS, in the community and in SEA) who are hell bent on burning down the house. The reporter is also part of this bunch.
I don't need anyone to lecture me, Salut.
We want to have discussions, not fights. If you have nothing valid to contribute to the fight, say nothing.
1. Have you consulted with or actually read what experts have to say in gifted Ed? Or are you an expert? Suddenly in the age of Trump and social media lay people think they know it all. They think their opinion makes them an expert.
Here is some information a gifted ed researcher recently shared, as well as information about state law:
1. The program with a 99% threshold is that cognitive tests have a +/-2 percentage point range of error when you get into the higher ranges. Some kids could test at 97% on once grade, then at 99%.
Note: That actually happened with my own kid when we tested them through school testing at teacher recommendation in 1st grade, then again in 5th grade. They more than qualified in 5th grade, scoring 99% in 4 categories.
2. Also, changing the cut-off to 1% also does not result in more diversity, period. It does nothing but serve less students.
3. The WA state law does not allow local norms to be more strict than national norms.
data
data
Deleted comments already addressed your other concerns but Melissa didn't like the responses.
Problem Solved
I heard 7% were testing in the top 2% (not 9%) recently in the media as the HCC cohort percentage in Seattle.
The most recent WA state average testing into highly capable programs, posted in 2014-2015 is 5.17% according to OSPI & gifted researcher Austina DeBonte.
It is also 6% nationwide.
It makes sense that the Seattle metro area has more educated people with kids who test high on cognitive and achievement tests. We are a highly educated city as compared to other places.
Here is older information from 2006-2013, but people can compare how identification percentages vary from state to state and also amongst ethnicities. I wish there was also information about income because that relates to parental education level which usually translate into kids with higher achievement scores.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_204.90.asp?fbclid=IwAR1G9ez-cqjNJ77hU9HyGGeJo1NZcMIrb1gs09Y1KuNXfnEGfrS7Iq2UAN4
data
1% local norms might also mean less than top 1/2 percent (99.6%) nationwide is in a program. That does nothing for equity and nothing for so many students.
data
Data2
One who knows
Another who knows
Personal or professional? A bit of a swipe at those who work at JSCEE.
Also to note, the district has rarely ever used the term "gifted" and most of us don't even believe HCC to be a gifted program.
And if you don't think there are a lot of machinations to get into private schools, let me introduce you to Felicity Huffman.
One who knows
Also @ another who knows, stop accusing licensed psychologists in private practice of bribery and lying about test scores when you really know nothing. How conspiracy minded.
One who knows (#1)
Or are you stating that people who work for SPS in advanced learning are loose in allowing kids to access a program to offering more challenging curriculum? First of all challenging curriculum should not be a barrier to any kids who want it. If any family feels their kid needs it, it should be available. A one size fits all education in the largest most diverse district in the state with 53,000 kids is not equitable.
Second of all you are making assumptions about SPS people in a blanket statement you don't know. Neighboring districts and other districts across the country have even more kids than Seattle who qualify for highly capable services. You are in a bubble. Seattle needs to be expanding AL opportunities for all kids by offering all sorts of opt in honors classes, flexible grouping etc. but instead they are eliminating them!
One who knows (#1)
For example, if you norm by school, so that you take the top-scoring 1% from each school, it might mean some of those who qualify score at more like the 90th percentile nationally (e.g., at a lower-performing school with few AL- or HCC-qualified students), whereas at high-performing schools (e.g., those with 10% of neighborhood students HC-identified), some of those who score in the 99th percentile based on national norms would be denied HCC access because more than 1% of their school met that threshold. That would be illegal by WA state law, since local norms cannot be more restrictive than national norms. In other words, if you're going to say that scoring in the top 1% of your school on a nationally normed test qualifies you as HC, then scoring in the top 1% nationally (AKA 99th percentile nationally normed test) also qualifies you as HC-- regardless of of how many others at your school also score in the 99th percentile. At some schools, that will mean more than 1% qualify.
Using "Seattle norms" instead of school-specific norms would be another option, but that probably wouldn't change much about the make-up of the program/eligibility.
For those who keep saying how local norms are going to solve everything, can you please--for once--explain how exactly local norms could be used legally to do so? Nobody ever seems willing to address that issue.
asking again
They talked about it before.
Reading glasses
And please give our local pyschologists some credit for having some professional standards and ethics.
varsity for all
“But in the top 2%, are the 75% who go to Lakeside, Evergreen, SCDS... so really, the top 2% nationally, should result in way fewer than the 2% few remaining in local schools”
The 75% who go to Lakeside, etc.??? Most can’t afford those private schools, and most of the private schools are not gifted programs anyway. The idea that 75% of Seattle’s HC population is in elite private schools is absurd.
Given Seattle’s, and even WA’s, demographics, we would expect MORE than 2% of our students to test in the 98th-99th percentile. Which is what we see.
“If you look at NMSF numbers you indeed see that lower than expected rates for “such a super educated population”, well, because it isn’t actually lower than expected.”
Wrong. You can’t predict NMSF rates based on eligibility, since (a) NMSF eligibility is more restrictive than HCC eligibility, and (b) it is presumably somewhat dependent upon the quality of HC services. If our HC services are even a little inferior to those in other districts—and most evidence suggests they are— SPS HC students are at a disadvantage when it comes to measures such as NMSFs.
“Meanwhile we see the private schools, where the top 2% actually go (or 75% of them) totally acing those exams.”
Private schools tend to support students in taking those exams (e.g., via test prep), and they have an interest in high scores (e.g., school marketing and prestige). “Acong” those exams is more a function of test prep—which also includes strong academics overall. But again, 75% of the top 2% don’t go private anyway—that’s just a made up number to support you argument.
“Introducing, the private testing industry... now available to half the kids who can’t otherwise pass entrance exams. And so we get the “bigger than expected” local numbers, especially for white people.”
More nonsense. You don’t “pass” entrance exams. Assuming you mean a kid scores, say, 97th percentile (not HC eligible) instead of 98th percentile (eligible), how accurate do you think that test resiult is? There is error associated with those results. A 97th may actually be 97th +/- 1 percentile so 96-98. A 98th percentile score also has error—the kid could “really” be 97th. Statistically there may be NO significant difference between the two scores. Academically, and cognitively, there may also be no meaningfully difference between them when it comes to their educational needs. Privately administered testing of the 97th percentile kid may show them to be at the 98th or 99 th percentile, and THAT testing should be considered more accurate—and that kid is more likely gifted than the kid who scored 98th percentile on the district’s tests.
With our testing methodology (test error rate, annual retesting, etc.), our uneven school quality, and our local demographics, our numbers aren’t higher than should be expected if you understand how national norms work.
Our program may be larger than some want, but your case for why doesn’t hold water. If you want to argue for a size reduction on other grounds, maybe try making that case instead.
Uncle Norm
It would be interesting to know what the percentage of commended scholars are HCC qualified. But remember, this data point would not be a mirror of giftedness, at its best, it is a measure of academic knowledge. Lakeside is well known for being a school that supports its students and fosters a strong academic environment. While there are amazing teachers in SPS the overall climate (particularly now) is definitely NOT of encouraging strong academic achievement (I still can't believe the "lab" for HS freshman: students rubbing balloons to learn about static... yep, wasn't this an experiment in elementary school? But now I'm digressing.)
-TyRed