Seattle Times Article on the Dismantling of Highly Capable Program Hits a Nerve
Update 2: Well, from FOX to the UK rag, the Daily Mail, this story on SPS has legs. Given how long Rainier View Elementary parents had to wait for their concerns to be addressed by the district, I suspect that the HCC changes will have to absolutely crash and burn (a lawsuit maybe?) before the district admits this process was wrong.
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Update: look who made FOX News. Yes, Seattle Public Schools and its revamping of the HCC program. Well, at least as far as I can tell, it's only online but who knows?
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There are over four hundred comments at the Seattle Times for this morning's article entitled, "Why Seattle Public Schools is closing its highly capable cohort program." I wonder if the district is happy with that headline because I think the district thinks they are just revamping it.
I'll print what I said in the Comments section but boy, are people nearly united in their belief that:
a) This is NOT a good thing for any student.
b) It's not going to work because, with large class sizes, to ask a teacher for an individual plan for every student is near impossible except in a cut-and-paste kind of way.
c) This move is going to continue to exodus from Seattle Schools.
The most ridiculous statement comes from SPS administrator, Rocky Torres:
But Rocky Torres, the district’s associate superintendent of school and student support, said the new model doesn’t require additional funding or staffing.
One thing left out of the article is the fact that not only will highly capable students get returned to their home schools but the district is going to have more Special Education students returned to the Gen Ed classroom to learn with peers.
One commenter:
The article points out how they do it at View Ridge and that got slammed. Look at the photo and you see why.
Here’s how they do it at View Ridge Elementary, a neighborhood school in northeast Seattle that serves all levels of students in the same classrooms.
On a recent day in a first grade classroom, seven advanced learners sat on the floor reading silently on their iPads. Several others wrote independently at their desks. A special education student wrote with a paraprofessional aide at their side. The rest of the class sat in a front corner of the classroom while the teacher read a book out loud.
So many commenters were so unhappy that highly capable kids got to read on iPads while other kids worked with the teacher.
One comment:
Great. Now tell me how you do that in 7th-grade math, with students who don't know how to subtract 2-digit numbers in the same classroom with students who are ready for high-school algebra. Those advanced learners who are reading on their iPads in 1st-grade - do we just have them learn algebra independently on iPads too? Or do we have the teacher spend part of the class period teaching them algebra (which means creating an algebra lesson plan AND a Math 7 lesson plan every night)? And if so, what are the confused students who are struggling to grasp the basics of Math 7, and are thus unable to do independent practice work, doing while the teacher is working with the algebra group and is unavailable to answer questions? (Maybe they could read on iPads?) Or do we make the algebra group work on Math 7 instead of algebra, even though they already know it?
My Comment:
Comments
My children attended a "Highly Capable Cohort School," where the principal decided to disband the cohort classes, forcing the kids back into general education. This move essentially had them repeating two years' worth of learning standards. Meanwhile, the principal's own child was enjoying the privileges of Seattle's most elite and selective private school.
I believe there are three core reasons for the dismantling of advanced learning programs:
1) The District receives a certain amount of funding per student. Given the maximum student counts per class, integrating all students into general education allows the District to maximize class sizes up to these limits. This strategy reduces the District's overall cost per student, freeing up more money for salaries for teachers and administrators.
2) Advanced students often qualify for Running Start in 11th and 12th grades, a program that enables them to attend classes at community colleges instead of within the District. By cutting advanced science, math, and other classes, the District ensures fewer students qualify for Running Start. This results in more teaching jobs staying within the District and, consequently, more revenue. A District Board Action Report (BAR) stated as much.
3) Advanced students typically require less direct teacher involvement to meet State standards. When advanced students have their own dedicated classes, they receive equal attention. However, if they are integrated into general education classes, teachers can allocate more time to underperforming students, who are disproportionately from low-income backgrounds, and often correlate with certain racial demographics.
If you are a socially conscious parent comfortable with the District optimizing its budget so it has more money for administrators and teacher salaries—you might accept having your advanced children 'take one for the team.' Alternatively, you could follow the example set by my children's principal: opt for private schooling or leave Seattle altogether.
There is absolutely an equity argument to be made. However, when staff also use the equity argument to promote their own financial interests at the expense of students, I feel nothing but disgust.
Captain Obvious
Wake up, SPS Superintendent and School Board.
SE Observer
Yes, not good for any student and will continue the exodus from Seattle Schools about sums it up.
The April 1 Seattle Times has a reprinted story about absenteeism. It is very interesting. There are many different causes that vary by socio economics. But one factor that would be interesting to know about is "has absenteeism increased because going to school seems like a waste of time?" I remember when my kids were in school thinking "this doesn't seem very productive, but I'm going to trust the teachers and administrators know what they are doing." Well, I was flat out wrong. I would not blame parents one bit who pull their kids out so they can have a learning day of deep focus on challenging topics instead of a situation where they are supposed to be a role model providing peer tutoring help to students who are behind.
What will be really interesting to know, but something I highly doubt SPS staff will report, is how many students currently eligible for Hi Cap services have exited or will exit. What is the fiscal impact of that? Even harder to know is how many don't enroll or move into Seattle in the first place.
And, it would be very interesting to know where they end up going: Eastside? Private? Bainbridge and points west? I would highly discourage looking at options in south King County, those districts in general don't care about Hi Cap kids either.
This was NOT a good faith budget effort - it was a backdoor attempt to bleed HC out. It was obvious then and there was discussion about it within the school parent community. Ultimately, my younger child (who lacked the social tethers) will likely never set foot in an SPS school. And I believe SPS *wants* it that way. In the meantime, my SPS student has a teacher who took 3 months to grade a single assignment.
It's all a numbers racket: you can put HC kids into a general classroom and safely ignore them. They will pull up the standardized test averages regardless and voila! - it looks like you improved the class. And it will probably work for a few years until a percentage of the parents of those kids just decide to leave SPS.
Parents with means will look at the reality that SPS is overtly hostile to academic excellence and see the hulking bureaucracy dedicated to crushing standards down to the point everyone can meet them and realize they have two options: 1) leave SPS either for private or other districts; 2) try to fight an entrenched administration to improve things. Also, they really should have started that fight literally the day their child was born because it takes 5 years to get almost anything done in this nightmare of a district. Who in their right mind is going to choose option #2?
At this stage, SPS should just own its philosophy: give everyone A's just for showing up and call it a day. Equity achieved.
NE parent
PowerSchool, which owns Schoology, which the entire District uses, is launching "PowerBuddy"-- an "AI chatbot assistant" that will
1. "Serve as a personalized guide for parents, students, teachers, and administrators;
2. Provide seamless, tailored support to improve [teacher] efficiency and productivity;
3. Foster enhanced communication, collaboration, and efficiency within your educational ecosystem."
Source: https://www.powerschool.com/on-demand-webinar/ai-chat-bots/
With teachers now expected to differentiate instruction for multiple student levels and needs (a near impossibly task, as many have noted), I am certain that SPS will offer PowerBuddy et al as the solution.
I have 3 kids in the SPS schools, and honestly PowerBuddy might be better than the current state of throttling kids' progress. My youngest learned his times/division tables in 2nd grade, but is in a non-HCC school where many of the 4th graders are still working on them. It seems to me the public school end game will be a lot Ipad/AI instruction for some core academics, and the schools will be place for arts, athletics, socioemotional and project based learning, etc for most along with extra resources/specialized interventions for those who 'need it most.'
SPS Parent
Gross
I can see why the High School option schools lower overall costs, this was brought up in a recent SPS budget meeting.
But the other Option Schools? They were created to promote ideology, there is no reason why they should be protected from being cut. If SPS shooting for one general education model, why haven't these schools been closed?
It hardly seems equitable to continue the Option Schools while ending the HCC program.
-- It seems Obvious
After experiencing three years of the 'Advanced Learning Shuffle' about two decades ago, we saw the writing on the wall, abandoned SPS, and never looked back. We were both public school students and expected our kids would be as well. But it became obvious that the program was under constant threat and that we would drive ourselves nuts trying to keep up and make it work. By the time our oldest graduated HS, they would have changed schools/cohorts something like six or seven times had we kept them in SPS.
I guess 'they' finally decided that they had sunk enough nails in the coffin and the time has come to lower the coffin into the grave. I'm over here pouring one out for all the 'homies' that were impacted (positively or negatively) by the various iterations of HCC and struggles with SPS over the years. I hope you and/or your kids found their way to what they needed.
-Arch Stanton
I do think the district has this in mind in thinking about closing schools.
Arch, Buddy, it IS me. Nice to hear from you. Yes, I am still at it but probably not for long. It is exhausting but as I said when I came back, this blog is mostly to be a record of what happens in SPS. This is because:
1) the minutes of meetings are a joke. You could wonder about something, go to the minutes and it says nothing.
2) The Times doesn't do near enough reporting of what happens in SPS. Ditto on KUOW who only seems to like the hot stories. History has to be recorded somewhere.
In reply to Captain Obvious way upthread who asked "Why haven't voters been paying attention?" - Partly the Times and KUOW only pay attention to short-term hot stories, they don't do the constant coverage they would need to really understand what's going on. And partly that's the demographics of Seattle. I don't remember the exact number offhand, but households with a K-12 student are a minority in Seattle, and the voters who don't have school-age students are understandably not going to go beyond the Times or KUOW. There's a lot of benign neglect, passing the levies and bonds but not going into much depth beyond that.
This is spot on: "There's a lot of benign neglect, passing the levies and bonds but not going into much depth beyond that."
Seattle is full of people who "believe in public schools" as an institution but either don't have kids at all, or their kids have long aged out of the district.
Thus, they vote yes for every funding measure, vote for school board positions based on some ideologically aligned voters guide, and then assume all is well.
I believe in public schools too, but I also believe that kids have one chance for each grade and they don't get a do-over, so we should be creating the highest quality programs we can.
Unfortunately, SPS has been a mess operationally for close to 15 years, and this isn't necessarily something "more money" will fix.
Without a good beat reporter getting their hands dirty on the nitty gritty details (which neither the Seattle Times nor KUOW has) the only people who experience the dysfunction are current parents, a minority of the total Seattle electorate.
--northwesterner
(in long term exile in Los Angeles)
Pick another word. Schools that prioritize a curriculum not solely focused on traditional markers of achievement like grades or STEM subjects...
As an example from Licton's page,
Licton Springs K-8 combines a Native-centered curriculum with Pinehurst’s experience-based, multicultural, social justice education.
Suggest a different word, but can we agree that the word "option" is obtuse?
With regards to "Option Schools do cost more for transportation", that is the myth that is pushed. During the board's October budget subcommittee meeting, there was a hint of transparency regarding the associated costs. One board member highlighted how support positions' costs are obscured in the budget by assigning them to the "central office."
Every school necessitates administrative staff, custodians, food service workers, etc., which could be perceived as duplicative costs amounting to millions. Additionally, the planning required for these additional schools incurs staffing expenses.
The financial burden could be alleviated by eliminating these schools or, at the very least, by harmonizing service maps to utilize half-empty schools more efficiently.
Seattle is not receiving additional funds from the State to support Option schools, contributing to the significant deficit faced by SPS.
As an aside, during the budget meeting one board member suggested that integrating the student populations of Option High Schools would increase costs, implying that these students are more expensive to educate. It's surprising that such remarks about these students didn't provoke more controversy.
-- It seems Obvious
( FWIW I wasn't happy with the word "ideology" either )