The Seattle Times Editorial Board Smacks Seattle Schools (Again)
Ouch.
That’s a flawed interpretation of the concept.
It should mean giving a boost to students who start out with less in order to even their access, not diminishing opportunities for all. But Seattle Public Schools, rather than making individual classes dedicated to accelerated learning more available, is simply taking them off the table.
Equity shouldn’t require shrinking the playing field. Done right, it could mean opening advanced-learning opportunities to every child and doing the hard work to set them up for success.
And what may be happening because of this decision? The district and the Board won't say it but the Editorial Board does:
The results of this shortsighted decision are already showing up, with some families of Highly Capable students pulling their children — and the state dollars that come with them — out of SPS. In the face of a $131 million budget deficit, that’s hardly something the district can afford.
The editorial notes this report that I hadn't seen (bold mine):
But what if Seattle began by front-loading enriched lessons to all kids in grades K-2, and offered rigorous after-school, weekend or summer programs to reinforce that preparation — before screening kids for academic promise?
A call for this approach is at the heart of a report released in June by a diverse group of education experts. They point out that high-achieving low-income students are frequently overlooked because their teachers are more focused on helping struggling classmates with basic skills, lifting the bottom quartile, rather than pushing more kids into the top.
This report from the Fordham Institute National Working Group on Advanced Education is long and dense with MANY suggestions put forth. I need more time to examine all of it. (I am aware that Fordham is a right-leaning group but this report seems fairly balanced.)
The Times did ask:
The district has offered few details about its plans for accelerated students and did not make anyone available to answer questions from the editorial board.
If you squint, the approach sketched so far sounds reasonable: Teachers are supposed to augment their general-education classes with advanced exercises for students who need more challenge. The pedagogical term is “differentiation.” It’s difficult under the best circumstances — utterly unrealistic in a class of 28 kids, some of whom may still be sounding out words while others can read at a fourth-grade level.
At its core, this puzzle is about making every child’s education as individual as possible. That means allowing kids to skip a grade if necessary, or permitting fourth graders who can do sixth grade math to join older students for that period. It means aiming for nimbleness. Providing more options, not fewer.
I made a comment about a few items that the Times either doesn't know or didn't include:
1) They want to return all the HCC students - who generally only go to several schools - to their neighborhood schools. This means serving them in a General Education classroom. That's fine and I see many comments here that would support that. Except that class sizes are getting bigger so that mean differentiating across larger classes.
2) AND, not only are the Advanced Learners going into General Education classes, the district, in order to be more inclusionary, is returning Special Education students to the General Education classroom. That means even more pressure on teachers to deliver across an incredibly wide spectrum of students and student challenges.
Are the resources there? Will there be Instructional Aides for Special Education students? Hard to know but that leads me to number 3.
3) Every single school will be given an outline of what Advanced Learners need and probably a menu of ways to get there. But every single school gets to decided how IT will deliver those services. So, from school to school, every principal and some committee of teachers will decide. You might like what is happening over at School A but your School B is doing it differently. Or your principal changes and voila! so does how the school delivers services to Advanced Learners. Kind of a crapshoot about what your student might get.
The district will have NO real way of knowing what works when every school has its own unique population AND delivery of services.
4) Lastly, returning the Advanced Learners to their neighborhood schools will definitely mean boundary adjustments and most likely in the north end. Parents there should know this is coming.
There were several comments about kids needing to be with all kinds of kids in the same classroom. I hear this and I get it except that I have no faith in the district giving the supports that teachers will need to support ALL kids in their learning.
Notable Comments:
"If SPS administration chooses to delete a slice of educational options, parents will take their children where they can get what they need, whether it’s a private school, a different district, or home schooling. The District should not be driving residential students away, but this approach will for all the reasons stated in the editorial and more. That’s bad policy by SPS and a poor use of resources."
"Three years ago, the Seattle Public Schools put the full weight of their Strategic Plan toward Black male youth. This isn’t hyperbole, look it up on their homepage.
It’s not going well; SPS has already acknowledged they will not meet the goals of reading proficiency they had set.
Meanwhile, opportunities for high performing kids of all identity groups including Black youth are being torn down. And SPS wonders why families are unenrolling. "
"State law requires that schools must provide an appropriate level of instruction to Highly Capable students. Two school board members voted NOT to approve the district's Highly Capable plan that would be sent to OSPI because they understand the district's plan is bogus."
"SPS's Highly Capable Committee recommended that cohorts not be destroyed until there was a replacement to meet the needs of HC students. The superintendent and board ignored committee recommendations. Former superintendent Denise Juneau and two board members worked to destroy an advanced learning pathway in the poorest section of town- first. Parents of AA boys showed up to board meetings and asked the district not to destroy the district's south end HC program."
"180+ years ago, de Tocqueville commented that our education system was designed to decapitate the higher blades of grass; pretty hard to change that habit. "
"Teachers' self-interest (and probably the union) are part of the problem. Kids in the HCC (or whatever the term of the day is for it) also tend to be less of a behavioral problem. If you take the more well-behaved kids and concentrate them in one classroom, the other teachers end up having to deal with a higher percentage of kids with behavioral issues. Not saying no kids in accelerated programs have behavioral issues (or that kids with behavioral issues shouldn't be in accelerated programs if they can do the work), it's just a lower percentage of the kids or the issues manifest themselves differently. Since the non-HCC teachers outnumber the HCC teachers, they complain more and add to the pressure to dismantle accelerated programs.
This dynamic was explained to me by a teacher of the then-Spectrum program as it was being dismantled in one of the elementary schools in Seattle, and who had been in on the discussions. Makes sense from the viewpoint of the teachers who are being asked to do more, and it is hard for the HCC teachers to assert that other teachers should deal with more behavioral issues, but it is not in the best interests of the students who needed more of a challenge."
Comments
BLUE SKY
People need to be very careful in how this is managed because we have seen in practice that SPS
uses the resource room model in special ed to provide the bare minimum support to most SPED students. SPS then keeps the remaining money for other expenditures. The remaining money is estimated to be 80% of the allocated SPED funding.
You would think that Rankin being the SPED expert that she claims would have put a stop to the resource room con job. My guess is SPS will replicate the SPED resource room model for HCC.
Trouble ahead
Kill it
And, yes, you will find 40 students in HC classrooms. HC was a cost effective way of delivering education.
Eww, you paint some picture of non-HCC students as the rowdy masses that need smart white kids to civilize them. This is not about social engineering, it’s about supporting kids ready for more academic rigor. It’s gross people think BIPOC kids can’t cut it. Apply universal testing standards and offer the service to all qualifying students. Otherwise haughty capable kids - white AND BIPOC will continue to exit and what you’ll “kill” is the financial solvency of the district (already on its deathbed). Why won’t SPS serve a range of academic achievers?
Fix It
Your comment also doesn't account for the 2e learners in HCC (of which there are not a few) who could have ADHD, be on the spectrum, or both. Your idea that the HCC kids are all model students sitting still and chiming "yes, teacher!" on cue couldn't be farther from the truth. Take it from someone who has volunteered for years in HCC classrooms.
Sending those kids back to Gen Ed classrooms is not going to make it easier for the teachers, it will make it more difficult, especially when those kids start to act out or stim from boredom. And those who don't have behavioral issues... are they supposed to serve as unpaid teachers' aides in your scenario instead of getting the instruction at their level that they are constitutionally guaranteed?
And yeah, parents of kids in the cohort ARE going to take the kids out of SPS if they're not getting served. I know, because...
I'm One of 'Em
As to the issue of behavior, I think some HCC students have every possibility to be rowdy. Having a 40+ HCC class isn't a great idea.
From my experience (and what teachers have told me in the past) that less about behavior and more about the HCC students being more enthused learners and passing that onto General Ed students. The teachers like the push that the HCC kids bring to class.
And I'm sure hoping we don't get the "the HCC kids can help the teacher if they are done with their work." Kids are not unpaid aides.
"Return to a segregated HCC might be ok if it also includes a funding differential adequate to compensate for the problems it creates." I'm not sure what you mean but if they did stay with separate HCC classes, they better look different than they do know. I think there are ways but the district seems to just throw their hands up.
my comment was directly addressing the issue raised about the concentration of impoverishment and behavioral issues left behind in regular classrooms in the original post. And yes it was the white and Asian families who left regular education en masse to provide rarified segregated environments for their kids. That’s the reality. And it was always the case. The other reality is that IQ tests highly rewards whites and Asians with higher IQ results. No amount of encouragement or school tweaking or “looking real hard” is going to rectify that. Nobody has accomplished this yet. Look at elite colleges. They were stuck making up for lower SAT scores with affirmative action. SAT scores test aptitude and are a stand in for IQ tests. Now, affirmative action is out the window. My proposal would be to fix the challenging child concentration problem by creating financial equity. 45 kids per class HCC, 15 kids per class general education. Everybody wins. Segregation lovers get to keep segregation, others get reduced class sizes.
It is the only obvious alternative to…
Kill it
Getting rid of HCC will drive a lot of families with resources out of the district entirely. Either way ends up with a higher proportion of students with greater needs in the average SPS classroom and HCC kids from marginalized backgrounds never get a chance to reach their potential.
SPS Parent
As an aside, the TAF program that was implemented at Washington came in, guns blazing, ready to die on the hill of "We don't track students, everyone is in a classroom together". The parents who asked how it was supposed to work to have about 6 different grade levels of ability in one math classroom were figuratively patted on the head and told not to worry. I don't think they got through one school year before they did, in fact, have to split out math classes because no teacher can teach that broad an audience.
It's not that parents want "segregation", it's that kids need to work at the appropriate level, and it logistically cannot work to have so much variation in one classroom. In fact, cohort parents I've known are some of the most vocal about finding ways to identify historically underserved kids who would excel in that environment because they see the value of lifting kids up instead placing upper limits in the name of equity. Some cohort parents have served on advisory groups working to better identify kids and get the cohort looking more like the district as a whole, only to have the recommendations ignored.
I'm One of 'Em
And this:
"And yes it was the white and Asian families who left regular education en masse to provide rarified segregated environments for their kids."
Rarified? HC was a moveable feast that never had a home. HC tended to have bigger classes. HC had near zero for resources as most the money was spent just on testing. And to note, the district is testing every single second grader now. If they were smart, they'd talk to teachers of kids who score well (this is just on the state test, not the test the AL department uses)and find those children of color.
Kill it: your dismissal of BIPOC’s ability to participate in advanced learning is gross and prejudiced. Children are not cogs, meting out standardized education is corporate ed reform, not the social justice you think it is. BIPOC students will suffer the most when the system collapses. The vouchers, charter schools and online homeschool alternatives are circling.
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