Did You Know? I Didn't

From Danny Westneat's column in The Seattle Times:

Seattle has the No. 1 big city school district. We should act like it 

Apparently, it is our new superintendent, Ben Shuldiner, who did the research.

"It’s like that old Mark Twain quote, I think the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated,” Ben Shuldiner told the School Board in February.

So Shuldiner set out to do a sort of newcomer’s evaluation of Seattle’s schools. He visited 35 of them in the first month. He took a fresh look at local and national data. He asked a basic question: Is it working?

What he found will probably come as news even to parents with kids in the district.

“In the aggregate, Seattle Public Schools is among the highest performing school systems on the entire West Coast,” a surprised Shuldiner told the board at a retreat in March.  

That list also includes Bellevue SD.  

According to Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project, Seattle ranks in the top 12% of all districts in the nation, including rural, urban and well-off suburbs. Among districts in the 25 largest U.S. cities, we’re No. 1.

Second place among big cities is not close, either.

Seattle’s math scores are in the 85th percentile of all districts, with reading at the 88th percentile. The next best big city district, San Diego, is at the 57th percentile in math and 68th for reading.

The report is the gold standard of school analysis, as it combines state and national testing data. It looks at third through eighth grades and covers 42 states plus D.C., though not all states have comparable data from the latest year. (Among the biggest cities, it excludes New York.)

Westneat says he thought it might be cities like Boston, Austin, or San Francisco. Nope. Or smaller ones like Madison, Boise or Minneapolis. Nope.

“I don’t think you get enough credit for being, really, such a high-performing district,” Shuldiner said.

Why don’t we? It’s a Seattle tic, perhaps an old modesty holdover from our Norwegian days. We’re the Eeyore of cities. We have the No. 1 big-city school district in the nation, and not only does nobody ever talk about that, but much of the public conversation is about how much we suck.  

But one big issue was already in process:

The Stanford report focuses on how America’s schools are in an overall "learning recession,”with falling test scores accelerated by the pandemic. It found this happened in Seattle, too, though the district is bouncing back from the pandemic better than most. It ranks Seattle in the 88th percentile for “learning rate” during the 2022-25 period, a measure of how much students’ scores have advanced compared to grade level.

I want to point out one thing he says - the decline in learning was already in motion BEFORE the pandemic. COVID only exacerbated it. This deserves its own post. 

Overall, Seattle students test about 1.25 grade levels above the national average. At the district’s peak 10 years ago, Seattle was a bit higher than that, from 1.5 to 1.75 grade levels above average.

However, the big and glaring issue - a stubborn one - is this:

Kids from low-income families in Seattle test 1.7 grade levels below the national average. “Nonpoor” kids are testing 2.5 grades above the average. The difference, or gap, is a yawning 4.2 grade levels. This means that when the nonpoor kids start doing high school-level work, their low-income classmates, of the same age, are academically still back in fourth grade.

The gap between Seattle’s Black and white kids is even wider — 4.6 grade levels. If that persists through high school, it means that when the white kids are completing 12th-grade work, their Black schoolmates are, academically, still back in middle school.

Shuldiner zeroed right in on this. The city’s learning gaps are so wide “you can drive a truck through.”

It's the same in Austin and San Francisco but even worse.

Mike Preiner runs The Math Agency, a local nonprofit dedicated to eliminating these gaps in math.

He said it’s crucial to keep accelerating academic offerings, such as advanced learning, otherwise the district may continue to lose families to private schools. For kids who are behind, there are three main things that could help them catch up — “tutoring, summer school, mentoring,” he said.

As someone who tutors herself, there is nothing like one-on-one focus with a child. There are ways to shape learning to a specific child once you know their strengths and weaknesses.

But Westneat also points to another issue - absenteeism. 

The report also notes that Seattle’s students are chronically absent from school at double the rate from before the pandemic. Nearly a quarter of Seattle students miss more than 10 days. (For all Washington state schools, it’s even worse, at 29%.)

It's just hard to know why so many kids are not showing up for school. It might be worth doing a deep dive into schools with high rates and finding out.

One thing I would suggest is a meeting with kindergarten to second grade parents and tell them that the lower grades are SO very important. Kindergarten is NOT pre-school or babysitting. It's getting a child ready for learning. If that foundational base is not there then, when your child goes into third grade, they are already behind.

There were nearly 700 comments on this story. A few of the better comments.

A newly retired SPS teacher making the point of how SPS uses test scores:
"Federal requirements call for the state to report level 3 and 4 scores as meeting the standard of being on track for college-level learning without needing remedial courses,” admitted Katy Payne, a spokesperson for the state’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction."

”51% of Seattle Public Schools (SPS) 8th graders met or exceeded standards (scoring a Level 3 or 4)on the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) for math, while slightly more than 50% achieved a Level 3 or 4 on the English Language Arts (ELA) assessment."

ONLY 50% MADE THE GRADE IN BOTH TESTING AREAS AS PER FEDERAL STANDARDS. SO YOU NOW UNDERSTAND HOW THE BAR WAS LOWERED.
What Mr. Westneat did report correctly were COMPARABLE scores. . .which is a sad commentary on the state of our public schools.

There is direct and indirect pressure on teachers to inflate grades (at the high school level where the GPA's are supposed to begin to matter) to the tune of 47% A's in basic academic subjects.


MariaSG:
Mississippi reading scores *passed* Washington State in 2016, when student groups are compared side by side. MS reduced the gap 5 points while WA increased 5 points. Why? Mississippi transformed reading instruction, systematically retraining teachers in Structured Literacy, the method (not a brand or product) based on Science of Reading research. Phonics is just a tiny part of it. At the same time, MS removed the confused soup known as Balanced Literacy, which directly undermines the brain’s very linear, specific, process.

Yes, and the so-called "Mississippi Miracle" also deserves a post.


User1016933
Danny, Google search how many Seattle public school graduates are at math and reading standards and you will see why SPS isn’t getting much respect. Sure, SPS is one of the cleanest shirts in the dirty laundry basket, but is still failing over 1 out of 3 children!


User 1453:

Look at sites like Niche, which analyzes test scores, college readiness, graduation rates, teacher quality, parental surveys, and more. SPS is lagging where it should not be. Don't pretend or put lipstick on it. Make SPS what it should be -- best in class. Our kids deserve it.