This and That, August 9, 2024

From the Seattle Times:

Family of Ingraham student who was killed sues Seattle Public Schools 

The mother of a 17-year-old Ingraham High School student shot and killed by another student inside the school in November 2022 filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Seattle Public Schools this week, alleging the district’s negligence led to her son’s killing.

Attorneys for Haile’s family filed the complaint Tuesday in King County Superior Court, alleging the school did not adequately protect students from the shooter, who had a known “violent propensity and affinity for guns and weapons” and who had been suspended for bringing weapons to school one month before killing Haile, according to the complaint. 

In a statement Thursday, Seattle Public Schools declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, but said the district “generally disagrees with the proposition that the actions of an individual that resulted in a shooting was the fault of the district.” 

The district has a point. Did have anything to do with the killer getting a gun and shooting his classmate. No.  But did they have a responsibility to do more AFTER that same student had brought a weapon to school previously? I would say they did. 

According to the complaint, school officials failed to protect Haile by not adequately disciplining or supervising the shooter after he brought weapons to school in October 2022, and failed to intervene after a student reported the boy for acting “agitated and aggressive” on the day of the shooting. 

But Haile’s family said in their lawsuit that school officials suspended the boy for fewer than three days and never conducted a threat assessment, allowing the boy to return to school with “no apparent safety plan” in place. 

The details of the day of - many of which I didn't know - are stunning. 

At about 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 8, 2022, a student who was closely associated with the shooter reported to a teacher that he was worried “something was going to happen.” About a half-hour later, a person reported the shooter was acting aggressively to school security. Neither the teacher nor security personnel — who remained in their office instead of searching for the boy — acted on the reports, the complaint alleges.

The complaint does not specify the amount in damages Haile’s family is seeking, but a tort claim notice filed in late May said the family sought $45 million. 

“[Seattle Public Schools] has to wise up and has to make the safety of its students and employees a priority,” Snow’s statement said. “Ingraham High School’s naive, Pollyannaish approach to safety is inexcusable.”

I'm sure the Garfield family won't be far behind and have plenty to lay at the feet of the district. 

The Superintendent and senior staff STILL have released no plan for high school safety despite the first day of 2024-2025 less than a month away.

In another story about gun violence, the Times is reporting that a drill team - Dolls and Gents - which had performed in the Seafair Torchlight Parade for 18 years. The 100+ team was removed by Seafair which said there were safety concerns over relatives of a recently murdered teen, Xavier Landry, a Rainier Beach HS student, being on the team. 

As you may recall, the earlier Chinatown Seafair parade was abruptly stopped because of three young teens with guns who had been displaying them. 

SPD had asked that if the boys be barred from attending the Torchlight Parade. Somehow that seems to have morphed into pulling the drill team out. All are wearing an electronic monitoring device.

The removal of the team stunned the Dolls & Gents and its community, who said they were not consulted by Seafair before the decision and who prepare each year for the Torchlight Parade as a key event. The team also felt as if they were being punished by Seafair for the behavior of the three teens, whose allegedly armed presence on July 21 terrorized a team still grieving the loss of a member to gun violence. 

SPD says it was Seafair who made the decision to pull the drill team.

It is my understanding that neither the killer of the Garfield High student nor the killer of Xavier Landry have been arrested. 

Interesting story on "grade inflation" on AP test scores from Education Next. It makes for a good FYI to parents and students.

A “recalibration” of scores on the AP tests taken by hundreds of thousands of high school students means that this year, the share of students receiving top scores on some of the most commonly taken tests has roughly doubled.

In AP United States Government and Politics, 24.1 percent of the 329,132 students who took the test in 2023 earned a 4 or a 5, the top two scores on the test, which is graded on a 1 to 5 scale. In 2024, that share soared to 49 percent.

In AP United States History, 25.4 percent of the 467,975 students who took the test in 2023 earned a 4 or a 5. In 2024, that share soared to 46 percent.

Wow, that is quite the change. 

Are the high school AP history and government teachers in 2024 twice as good as the teachers in 2023? Are the students twice as smart or twice as hardworking?

Not exactly. The College Board, which administers the tests and charges fees for taking them, says it is “recalibrating” the test scores to match the reality of the grading in the college courses for which the “Advanced Placement” tests can sometimes earn students credit.

High school students who received the higher scores this week were pleased, but not all of them understand that the 4 or 5 scores they got aren’t equal to those earned in previous years, but rather have been devalued.

A teacher, John Moscatiello, had this to say:

Moscatiello also notes, “The College Board has argued for years that grade inflation is rampant in schools and that objective standards like SAT and Advanced Placement Exams provide a stable measure of student success. But by aligning AP scores to college grades, is the College Board pegging its currency to another currency that is experiencing its own runaway inflation?”

He asks, “Will all of these changes undermine the AP program’s position as the gold standard of rigor in high school education?”

A longtime education policy researcher, Tom Loveless, warned, “AP is undermining its own legitimacy through an opaque recalibration of scores. Sad thing is, if colleges begin doubting AP scores, a lot of working class kids will lose a way to reduce college costs by reducing time-to-degree.”

Interestingly, it appears that pressure from a New York Times article in 2023 - about racial disparities in scoring - seems to tilted the College Board, which is the keeper of AP tests, to reexamine its scoring. 

Some analysts are cheering because it means these students can use the AP scores for college credit and get a college diploma faster and for less money. But if the point is actually learning skills and content rather than shuffling students toward the next meaningless credential that signals no actual achievement or ability, the development is troubling.

The reporter makes his own statement:

I see it as part of an overall trend of confusing mediocrity with excellence, and of trying to address persistent racial and economic inequality by eliminating standardized testing and merit-based distinctions rather than by improving education and expanding opportunity.

 

Throughout the country, districts are wrestling with what to do about cellphones in classrooms.  From The 74:

Whether they use Yondr to secure devices or send students to their lockers, educators are finding that setting policy is easy. Enforcement is hard.

 

“All of these have pluses and minuses,” said Todd Reid, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education. The agency is gathering public comments on how best to implement Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s July 9 executive order to have phone restrictions in place by Jan 1. Officials will release guidance in mid-September. “All of them really come down to how the policies are implemented.”

At one school:

At lunch last school year, sixth graders at Bayside Middle School in Virginia Beach could be heard shouting “Uno” and tapping out sound patterns on a Simon game console. 

Getting students hooked on classic games is one way Principal Sham Bevel has tried to soothe their separation anxiety after the district banned cellphones two years ago. At Bayside, students must keep the devices in their lockers during school hours.

But convincing kids there’s something better than posting TikTok videos or browsing friends’ Instagram posts is an ongoing struggle.

“Cellphones are to children what the blanket was to Linus,” Bevel quipped.

In NYC:

In New York City, where Chancellor David Banks is currently hammering out the details of a ban expected next year, some teachers prefer Yondr because it takes them out of the enforcement business: Students lock up their phones in a pouch when they come to school in the morning and can’t remove them until they leave in the afternoon.

But no method is foolproof. Students have been known to disable Yondr locks or even surrender a dead older phone while stowing their current model in a backpack.  

And parents:

Parents have been among the most divided over districts’ efforts to ban students’ phones. The Phone-Free Schools Movement has a team of 80 ambassadors across the country, mostly parents who track district policies and promote cellphone bans for students in their communities. 

But a recent national survey from the National Parents Union showed that while parents support “reasonable limits” on use, a majority — 56% — think students should occasionally have access during school hours.

That’s especially true for parents whose children have disabilities or health issues.

One parent said they had gotten their student an Apple watch. I had been wondering about what that would mean as well if students started popping up with those. 

 

On the Sand Point Elementary School invasion over a year ago, I am finally getting some of the public disclosure documents I requested. (Yes, it often takes that long. Also interesting is how some submitted terms cross-reference to something else entirely.)

We learn:

- The principal and the cop clearly didn’t understand each other. I am wondering why the cop couldn’t arrest the guy who came on the grounds for trespass.

- Former Board director Chandra Hampson was very angry at the cop for saying the principal wasn’t helpful in his report which got released to some neighborhood blog. To note, Sand Point is where her children went to school so she had a personal interest.

 

 - Meanwhile the cop was pissed that the principal didn’t give him full info on the situation at the time because otherwise the officer could/would have arrested the guy and the other people - the DHL driver and another cop - wouldn’t have gotten injuries after the guy left the school. 

- The principal had called his executive director but couldn’t reach that person. Then he called Tony Ruby, another ED who lived nearby and got there in 5 minutes. Interesting that the principal thought Mr. Ruby would somehow be at home in the middle of the workday afternoon. 

 

- There was a substitute in the portable that day but I still don’t understand where she was or why she would have left the kids alone. 

- Hampson had been going to give a talk on SOFG to SPS folks as well as someone from LEV and SCPTSA folks when the incident happened and canceled the talk because of the Sand Point incident.

 

- The Sand Point PTA (I think) had created an event for “fun and healing” and included “protest signs” in “what to bring.” The principal was worried about those protest signs and wondered if he should ban them.