Maybe - Just Maybe - the Seattle Schools Superintendent and Board have a Myopic Focus

I never have been a fan of the targeted universalism push in Seattle Schools. 

One problem is that when this was first proposed and staff had a Work Session with the Board, they rolled out stats that were a mixed bag. Meaning, in a couple of measures Black students (all of them, not just boys) had worse stats but, in 3 other categories, Latinos were worse in one, Pacific Islanders were worse in another and Native Americans were worse in still another. I do recalled former director Betty Patu - who is Pacific Islander - saying she didn't understand the push for Black students over these other student groups who were also struggling. But it went through.

Another problem - as vividly put on display in today's Danny Westneat column in the Seattle Times - is that there are no real wins yet to this approach. SPS as a district is NOT doing well. One big area that I believe both the Superintendent and Board know about is large number of absentee students. And yet where is the all hands on deck for that issue? 

Still another problem is that I do wonder about what the reception is for the Seattle legislators in Olympia when they explain that SPS needs more money. SPS does not have stats that have climbed since McCleary came through. SPS has had large deficits now (and will continue on in the future). I wonder what the Seattle legislators hear back from their colleagues.

Yes, COVID certainly is a factor but there's another question.

After students finally went back to school, it almost felt like the Superintendent and Board didn't want to have any real discussion about what happened AND the aftereffects. They didn't bring communities together to talk about how parents and students felt. I believe every single public school and its community experienced trauma from COVID. To try to hurriedly move on past that seems a mistake to me.

The district's interest seems to be in student mental health which, naturally, is a good focus but where is the context for that anxiety? And, when you have two student school board members saying the students don't feel heard, what does that tell you? (I note that one member - Luna Crone-Barón - in her first year on the Board said that she felt like the Board wasn't really taking to heart the information the student members gave the Board.) 

Here's the headline for Westneat's column (all bold mine):

 Gone missing: The struggling public schools as a top issue in WA 

Westneat talks about years of public education being a top issue in Washington State. Today, not so much. Could it be that people believe McCleary fulfilled the money needs? Could it be COVID fatigue? 

For most of the past three decades, Seattle pollster Stuart Elway has asked voters to set the agenda. He includes a question in his polls asking what people think state politicians in Olympia should laser-focus on.

“I do it to set the stage,” Elway said. “What is everyone going to be talking about this year in local politics? What matters?”

He’s noticed that ever since the coronavirus floated into the state, something strangely has gone missing.

“Education and the public schools have always been near the top of what’s most important,” he told me this past week. I asked him to look back. “From ’95-2000, 2003, 2005-2006 and from 2015-2018, education was the No. 1 issue in the state. And every other year it was in the top two or three.

“Now it’s just dropped off the agenda.”

Westneat has listened to recent speeches by state leaders:

This past week, I tuned in to Olympia to hear the “State of the State” address from the governor. And also opening remarks to the Legislative session by the speaker of the state House, Laurie Jinkins. It’s not just these polls; Jinkins didn’t mention the K-12 schools at all, while Inslee noted he hopes to boost pay for paraeducators. That was it.

You can make a case that of all societal institutions struggling to recover from the pandemic, the schools are still struggling the most.

The lost learning, which researchers have pegged at about half a year in most Washington school districts, has mostly not been regained. Test scores still lag pre-pandemic levels by 10 percentage points. This means about 100,000 more kids in the state are failing to meet grade-level standards — many of them kids who weren’t failing before.

I think he is right on the mark about schools trying to recover from COVID because of the myriad of factors that districts face. 

Recently the Seattle School Board was reviewing some equally grim stats when the staff gave a shocking reason for why test scores haven’t recovered. About 40% of middle-schoolers, and 30% of elementary students, are chronically absent from the city’s Title 1 schools.

“This is saying that 32% of all students in third grade in Title 1 schools missed 18 or more days of school? Across all races and incomes?” she asked.

Yes, came the answer.

“Whoa,” said the school board member.

No amount of great intentions or high-dosage tutoring is going to make a dent if the kids simply aren’t there. Something has shifted; before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in Seattle’s elementary schools was about 15%. That’s not great, but 30% to 40% is a five-alarm crisis.

Why else might the public not be focusing on academics in education?

Elway said it isn’t clear why the public isn’t dialed in right now. Other big crises like homelessness and crime are more visible. Other problems, like the soaring cost of living, are more broadly shared.

There’s also the nationalization of politics.

“Everything is filtered now through a national partisan lens,” he said. “If the national candidates and parties aren’t talking about it and whipping everybody up, then the media doesn’t focus on it. It kind of drops out of sight.”

Westneat also puts up stark stats about Washington State versus another state.

In 2015, the gold standard of tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, ranked us eighth among the states in fourth-grade math, and 12th in eighth-grade math. Reading scores were similar. This put us within range of the longtime star of American public schooling, Massachusetts. I recall heady talk at the time, as education advocates had a dream of making Washington the undisputed Massachusetts of the West Coast.

Last year we slid to 27th in fourth-grade math, and 18th in eighth-grade math, with reading scores similar. Academic scores dropped everywhere due to the pandemic, including in Massachusetts, but it remains No. 1 overall.