Advanced Learning Survey: What the Heck is This?
To preface,
I don't know who writes the surveys for SPS; do they have actual people who do it for all departments? I suspect it's whoever in whatever department. It is not SPS' strong suit and most surveys are not written to survey standards out in the world.
Here's the preamble:
Greetings from the Advanced Learning Department,
This year we are identifying students for Advanced Learning and Highly Capable services in a different way. The goal is to get the full picture of a student. Historically, students in Advanced Learning have been identified by tests that have favored privileged and white families. Students furthest from educational justice have not been supported across the system and we are committed to changing this. If your student is currently receiving Advanced Learning services, they will not be affected by any changes and will continue in their programs.
As a part of this process, we invite you to share your student’s gifts and strengths. Your responses will be included in the identification and eligibility process to receive Advanced Learning and/or Highly Capable services in the 2022-23 academic year.
Once you have completed the survey, there are no further steps. If you need interpretation services, please call us, and schedule a 15–20 minute phone call. One of our Program Analysts will support you in answering those questions. We can be reached at 206-518-1495 or advlearn@seattleschools.org.
We appreciate you taking the time to complete this survey.
In partnership,
The Advanced Learning Department
Gifts and strengths? That's not new because they always asked in the application what you have seen about this student that makes you believe that child should be in the program.
I'll also note that most of the survey is open-ended questions. That can lead to a lot of misunderstanding of either the question and/or the answer and won't give really good data.
First section is demographics.
Second section is relationship to student.
Third section is: "The following questions are related to the hopes and dreams you have for your student. "
1. How do you envision the person your student will become in 10 years?
2. What activities does your student find most confident in doing? Least confident?
3. Where does your student do this most or why do you believe the student loves it?
What activities? Any activities? And number three is a mess of a sentence.
Fourth section is: "The following questions are related to the support you and your student are receiving or have received in the past. Example : Support from an uncle, teacher, instructional assistant, grandparents, godparents, etc."
1. What or who has been the most influential in supporting you with your student, within or outside of school?
2. Who does your student refer to as a mentor/trusted individual in the school, if any?
I wonder what AL will think if there is no one who supports that child. People don't always live near relatives and/or could have just moved to the district. What will it mean if they see several schools repeatedly mentioned or some are not mentioned at all for question 2?
Fifth section: "The following question refers specifically to storytelling and sharing families stories and/or traditions?"
1. Do you and your student enjoy storytelling? if yes, please share one example.
I think they may be trying to get at oral traditions but again, it's not clear.
Sixth Section: "Please read the following statements and rate them by selecting 1-5 stars (1=never, 2=sometimes, 3=usually, 4=very often, 5=always). For the question #2 in this section, please specify the holiday(s) and traditions that your family observes and celebrates that you are passing to your student as a legacy."
1. What cultural and social skills does your student demonstrate?
Manners, politeness
Mentoring younger or supporting elder community members
Speak home language (if any)
Activism/Advocacy for self and others/community involvement
Active family involvement and support
Following spiritual or faith-based traditions
Healing or caring for self and others
Responsibility for self and others
Organizational skills, time management
Recognition of emotions, willingness to share them with others, and seek support
Teamwork and social skills (building relationships/friendships)
Again, kinda confusing. Would any parent check (1)never for their child's "manners, politeness." And I can tell you many 2E kids would not do well in many social skills but that doesn't mean they are not bright.
Third section is: "The following questions are related to the hopes and dreams you have for your student. "
1. How do you envision the person your student will become in 10 years?
2. What activities does your student find most confident in doing? Least confident?
3. Where does your student do this most or why do you believe the student loves it?
What activities? Any activities? And number three is a mess of a sentence.
Fourth section is: "The following questions are related to the support you and your student are receiving or have received in the past. Example : Support from an uncle, teacher, instructional assistant, grandparents, godparents, etc."
1. What or who has been the most influential in supporting you with your student, within or outside of school?
2. Who does your student refer to as a mentor/trusted individual in the school, if any?
I wonder what AL will think if there is no one who supports that child. People don't always live near relatives and/or could have just moved to the district. What will it mean if they see several schools repeatedly mentioned or some are not mentioned at all for question 2?
Fifth section: "The following question refers specifically to storytelling and sharing families stories and/or traditions?"
1. Do you and your student enjoy storytelling? if yes, please share one example.
I think they may be trying to get at oral traditions but again, it's not clear.
Sixth Section: "Please read the following statements and rate them by selecting 1-5 stars (1=never, 2=sometimes, 3=usually, 4=very often, 5=always). For the question #2 in this section, please specify the holiday(s) and traditions that your family observes and celebrates that you are passing to your student as a legacy."
1. What cultural and social skills does your student demonstrate?
Manners, politeness
Mentoring younger or supporting elder community members
Speak home language (if any)
Activism/Advocacy for self and others/community involvement
Active family involvement and support
Following spiritual or faith-based traditions
Healing or caring for self and others
Responsibility for self and others
Organizational skills, time management
Recognition of emotions, willingness to share them with others, and seek support
Teamwork and social skills (building relationships/friendships)
Again, kinda confusing. Would any parent check (1)never for their child's "manners, politeness." And I can tell you many 2E kids would not do well in many social skills but that doesn't mean they are not bright.
And "mentoring younger or supporting elder community members" - what are they looking for? A student could say, "I go to church with grandma every Sunday." Is that "supporting" or just "traditions?"
Why would "following spiritual or faith-based traditions" have anything to do with being an Advanced Learner? Because what if your child has none?
2. Can you share one or two holidays and/or traditions that your family celebrate that represent your culture and legacy?
What if a parent or guardian left this blank? Would that count as "didn't want to share" or "doesn't have any?"
Seventh Section: Additional and relevant information to share with the Advanced Learning Department
1. Is there anything else that you would like to share with us about your student?
This is a fine open-ended question.
I agree with someone who said that these questions don't seem to have purpose that would be easy to discern. I have no problem with trying to figure out if students have other gifts than academic ones but where does that fit with Advanced Learning?
And then there's this from the preamble:
If your student is currently receiving Advanced Learning services, they will not be affected by any changes and will continue in their programs.
What? Do they mean for this year or for the child's entire K-12 career? A statement that is vague is of no use.
2. Can you share one or two holidays and/or traditions that your family celebrate that represent your culture and legacy?
What if a parent or guardian left this blank? Would that count as "didn't want to share" or "doesn't have any?"
Seventh Section: Additional and relevant information to share with the Advanced Learning Department
1. Is there anything else that you would like to share with us about your student?
This is a fine open-ended question.
I agree with someone who said that these questions don't seem to have purpose that would be easy to discern. I have no problem with trying to figure out if students have other gifts than academic ones but where does that fit with Advanced Learning?
And then there's this from the preamble:
If your student is currently receiving Advanced Learning services, they will not be affected by any changes and will continue in their programs.
What? Do they mean for this year or for the child's entire K-12 career? A statement that is vague is of no use.
Comments
That said, I'm not understanding what this survey has to do with "advanced cognitive abilities". I doubt I could fill out this survey if I had to. It's like a survey about how colorful your child's life is or possibly their emotional intelligence, not evidence of their cognitive function. Those seem like two very different things (just like a "gifted" student is not necessarily the same as a "good" student). Once again, we are in weird, mushy territory that I'd venture to guess is not based on sound educational research or data. I would have expected to see questions about what books your child reads on their own time or how quickly/deeply they absorb subject matter in ways that surprise you. I'm not saying a 7-year old can't be an activist, but like so much of this survey, the language comes across as a vision of what an advanced learner looks like to SPS rather than the reality.
However, this is SPS; it's all about appearances and marketing language. I have little doubt that they will not provide adequate support to beleaguered teachers to carry out this plan they have about delivering HC services to kids in their neighborhood schools. I also see no information on how the district plans to objectively measure success of their changes to the program. They can declare it a victory without ever having to prove it. If I'm mistaken, someone please point me to the districts detailed plan they have for demonstrating how well this all works out.
A Non-o-mouse
Very upsetting that a public school is asking students about their spiritual or faith based traditions. Wow.
Seattle has ended the accelerated classes in Middle school. Their intent is to end the accelerated classes in elementary school as well.
The district now calls testing somebody for their math skills to determine their math placement racist. It's very nice if a student follows a faith-based tradition. But how is that relevant to math placement.
This is one reason why kids that come from college educated parents do better in school. It's because the parents realize when the administrators have gone loony. The teachers are still some of the best in the world.
If you feel your student would benefit from a pat on the back, apply to advanced learning and perhaps if they fit the right demographic, they will be appropriately labeled. If your student is not currently in the program, and you believe they need advanced math. Ela, and science, move out of seattle. I feel an ethical obligation to state this. I've known multiple teachers and multiple principles with advanced students, and they've moved their kids to private school or out of the district.
Having parents apply for services when the district has no intent of providing those services is unethical.
To me this just continues to show that getting access to advanced learning is a popularity contest. If your teacher thinks you should be in, you're in - cognitive ability doesn't actually matter.
Getting them back will take decades.
Do we have the time?
Socrates, I will do a separate thread on Hampson and Option Schools.
It's an odd time and place for SPS to be in. On the one hand, while the rest of the country seems to be getting silencing about teaching the totality of our history, the Seattle School Board wants to silence any views but their own on teaching history. There is something distinctly bullying and mean-spirited about how the Board speaks of it, almost like shaming.
Shaming is not teaching.
And I still stand by my statement that you can teach about bad history without making any kid feel bad about themselves.
The questions seemed incredibly leading. "Do you and your student enjoy storytelling?" Well, what if we don't? I'm pretty sure that's the "wrong" answer.
"What activities does your student find most confident in doing? Least confident? Where does your student do this most or why do you believe the student loves it?"
#3 is two different questions, and "where does your student do this?" is ambiguous at best. Where does my student do activities they are most confident in? Or, where do they do activities they're least confident in? By "where" do you mean in school vs. at home? Or, more abstractly, in what area of life? Or, I could answer the other, totally different question "why do you believe the student loves it?" -- which is not the same as feeling confident and AAARGH THIS WHOLE THING IS SO POORLY WRITTEN! I have NO IDEA what meaningful data they could possibly be getting from these terrible opaque questions!
I came away from this survey feeling like it was written by people who don't know what they want and don't know what they're doing. Which, I suppose, is consistent with a lot of what I'm seeing from SPS these day.
Chandra Hampson is responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for investigating herself, filing lawsuits against the district and being the cause of lawsuits related to Broadview Thompson.
The board majority is simply creating additional opportunities for lawsuits.
And I am downright upset that their was no "Mixed Race" category choice under the ethnicity section. Was the purpose to ignore this population, or to get me to choose which ethnicity my 10 year old prefers to be identified by? Why would anyone force a 10 year old to choose when it takes 10 seconds to add "Mixed Race" to the possible answers. Last census identified that 7% of Seattle identified as mixed races, similar in size to a couple of the other targeted demographics. What was the purpose of excluding them from this HCC survey?
And because our kids come from two different ethnic and religious backgrounds, rather than choose one religion and one church, we raised our kids to decide for themselves. As a result, we don't go to church, and I can't help but feel this is being held against us in the HCC questionnaire.
Signed, Arg
Bad Service
There are also few staff members per the HR reports classified as mixed race.
Jim Crow
One big problem with the old system was that parents had to opt in for the test, and some parents were more likely to do that. But now it's a long list of confusing questions? It requires so much time, energy, literacy, etc. to fill out this survey, it feels even more strongly tied to the parents' investment.
Many of the questions are confusing or mystifying, and I fully agree that a screening question about religious traditions has no place at a public school.
I'll be generous and say that the district likely has good intentions (though it certainly seems like they care more about optics than about helping students). But the end result of what they are doing is most likely to be just plain unfortunate.
If I had a child who would be affected by this, I would be gutted. (My kids are in high school so this is not a process that involves them.)
GREY