Seattle School Board Meeting this Wednesday - Big HC Protest Planned
Update:
The speakers list is full at 25 with 30 people on the waitlist. Most of it is about the Highly Capable program.
The update for the Highly Capable program is now attached to the agenda. I didn't see much that was new. At the last meeting the Board said they wanted a real plan so how they accept this "update" is anyone's guess. Dr. Torres-Morales is sticking to the April 1 deadline for a plan.
There is also the documentation for the Strategic Plan. All I can say is taking a year to figure it out seems like a lot of time.
As for the presentation, it's a lot of talking. I also see wording like "return on investment" which is much more language akin to business than government. Makes me uneasy to see that.
It also says the time to engage community will be April 2025-September 2025. But we know that's not true. They claim they will be doing this in August. Yeah, sure. And will it be their regular 3-4 meetings for show or real engagement?
end of update
The HC parents' message?
Stop Taking Opportunities from Hicap Students and Don't Sunset the cohorts until Hicap is implemented in EVERY neighborhood school.
There is a Highly Capable update on the agenda. To note, HiCap services are legally mandated by the state.
This should make for an interesting meeting.
A dedicated group of parents has gathered data and have questions and concerns that they plan on outlining to the Board. For example, this from SPS:
SPS Highly Capable Neighborhood Schools Model
2023-2024 Elementary cohort schools continue grades 1-5
2024-2025 Elementary cohort schools grades 2-5 - All elementary school new model.
What questions are parents are asking?
- What are the specific, measurable goals of this model?
- How has the district tracked the results of this model since 2023
- What does the research show? Has this model proven to benefit identified HiCap children?
- Who are the SPS administrators overseeing the education of Highly Capable Children? Which of these administrators carries a Washington State Gifted Education Specialty Endorsement?
- A
plan that was supposed to have already been implemented before the
cohort schools were phased out, but Board members admitted doesn't even
exist.
Across the district, in many schools, parents of HC-qualified students who choose to stay in their neighborhood school are not receiving the education they should.
What a couple of these parents did was to examine the CSIP of every elementary school to see what their documentation says about service delivery. What you see:
- Allowing each school to decide its path is wrong because of the unevenness between schools. You see "curriculum compacting" and "acceleration" many times but where is that defined for parents?
- Bailey Gatzert is only using MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Support).
- From Beacon Hill International
Teachers are focused on promoting deep thinking through rich discourse, encouraging critical analysis, and the exploration of complex ideas. By nurturing these skills, teachers aim to foster a deep understanding of academic concepts and promote intellectual curiosity among advanced learners.Okay, give examples in writing so everyone knows what that means.
- B. F. Day DOES give examples so good for them as does Bryant.
- Dearborn Park uses a paragraph of a bland word salad of ideas (and they use bad grammar in one sentence!). Denny also uses this method of communication.
- On the other hand, you have Fairmount Park that has a lengthy section of information.
- A couple of schools have a notation: In progress. Who would want to enroll in a school that has no clear plan for these students?
Comments
Job 2 in the inclusive classroom is meeting the legal entitlements of special education students with IEPs and 504s.
Jobs 1 and 2 already add up to 130% of the human capacity of the typical teacher. You only need to look at the SBA statistics to see that Job 1 is never finished. Special ed parents will be happy to tell you at great length that Job 2 is never finished. It wouldn’t matter whether advanced learning is Job 3 or 27. Never will more than a de minimus amount actually happen. This is a hard structural constraint which would defeat all good intentions, even if they existed (which they mostly don’t).
1) Advanced learning happens through small group instruction. This is the most flagrant lie they tell. Students spend 98% of their time in mixed ability groups, by design, because that best advances Jobs 1 and 2. If you try to ask teachers when HC students are grouped for instruction, how often, on what subjects, they will dodge the question, and often refuse to answer. If you manage to get any answer, it will be something like “we do a book club in February.” Banning of walk-to math in SPS is the most screamingly obvious example of how SPS does not actually use grouped instruction to serve advanced learning students.
2) “Teacher will guide students in choosing just-right books for independent reading.” Sounds sensible and sincere, but from our experience, this is actually used more as a technique to limit students than challenge them. A quick assessment is done; the student is assigned a letter in the guided reading scale, and then not allowed to read anything rated above that. That actually happened to our youngest in first grade, so she abandoned the classroom library and started reading much harder books from the school library, where the teacher was not present to impose limits. HC students in K-1 do best reading 3-4 level above their latest assessment, and they will do so happily and easily if allowed. From grade 2 onward they are off the scale. Fun fact: JK Rowling provides more advanced learning in literacy for Seattle students than all teachers combined.
3) “Higher expectations on assignments.” It’s true that most schoolwork is open-ended in character, and students can do less or more. Tell them to write a story, and they can refuse to write anything, or write their first novel. But in practice, it’s entirely on the student to take up the challenge. We saw close to zero evidence that any elementary school teacher ever articulated a higher standard to any student or gave feedback that reflected higher expectations. Teachers at our elementary school had a strict, consistent practice of withholding all student work until the end of the year (to keep parents in the dark), and sending it all home in one huge batch, hoping that families would be too busy with year-end activities to bother slogging through it, once it didn’t really matter anyway. If you looked closely at the giant work pile of an easy-4 student, you would find very little evidence of any feedback from the teacher at all (like one in 20 items having any mark or comment at all). In many cases, it seemed unlikely that the teacher had ever even looked at the work. Easy-4 students were well aware of the system, and the prevailing ethic among them was “do the minimum; no one cares.” (It catches up to them, alas, when they get to high school and take AP world history, and discover the hard way that the College Board cares and the minimum no longer works.)
In short, advanced learning happens in a cohort setting, or it doesn’t happen. Cohorts are being abolished, because district leadership doesn’t want advanced learning to happen. Because equity.
I agree with Outsider, but perhaps for different reasons. They need to sack these segregated schools because the privileged kids don't learn as much there. The L4s at the two North End HCC bastions get dropped by Whitman kids all the time because they cannot work.
After we get rid of these flattery farms, all teachers at all schools need to spend equalish time on interaction and written feedback be they L1 to L2 (neglected) or L3+ and above (neglected).
Stop it with the segregated programs, and teach all kids well.
SP
You may be right about how teachers prioritize, but the LAW in WA state is to meet students where they are at, even if they are already above standard. Which is why abolishing the HCC program was really dumb. SPS, ever prone to lawsuits, could point to HCC as meeting the spirit of the law. This fake neighborhood model creates all kinds of openings for inconsistent services, in addition to not meeting legal requirements. To top it off, killing HCC is bleeding enrollment, threatening the financial health of the whole district.
Good on parents for fighting back!
Hell Ya
Except the full quote was, "These programs have been created based upon the ‘manufactured brilliance’ of the children of mostly white and affluent families.” That was a quote from Superintendent Jones' Chief Academic Officer.
Under Dr. Jones' Leadership, "Differentiation" means that when the kids go to the library, they should choose an appropriate book, and when they write an essay, it should be written at an appropriate level. That's a direct quote from my kid's ELA teacher.
Under state law, the District must provide HCC services. By providing books at different levels in the library for students to choose from, according to the PhDs and lawyers in the District Leadership, that meets the requirements of state law.
Dr. Jones is black. He hired a Black Head of Equity, a Black Head of HR and a Black Chief Academic Officer. The statements made by his senior staff member were clearly racist.
Dr. Jones has a good reason to be angry because there are a lot of underperforming black kids in this District and not enough money. The question parents with advanced learners must ask themselves is whether they want that anger being taken out on their kids.
I get that it makes it hard on teachers and when you have a district that openly says there will be no resources or extra help in classrooms, then you are giving teachers permission to mostly ignore anything for HC since that's the lowest hanging fruit for a teacher.
--Let them Fly!
SP