Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: here are the minutes from that Work Session; in some ways more fleshed out than mine but I don't see all the things I have reported.  (They also attribute something to Director Pinkham that I do not believe he said and I will ask him about it at tomorrow night's Board meeting.) This section will cover only the Advanced Learning Work Session on Feb. 8th because this thread turned out to be quite lengthy. I'll cover the UW Equity Summit on Gifted Education, Feb. 9-10 in a final part to this series. Advanced Learning Work Session All the Board members were there except for Director Blanford.  (As an aside, I see that Blanford seems to be missing more meetings or coming in very late.  Not sure why but a trend.)

The Board has scheduled a work session on Advanced Learning for an hour and a half on October 5 after the Management Oversight meeting for ELL and Distribution Services. This is the time to contact the Board as they prepare for this work session. If you do, please remember a couple things. First, the Board's focus is policy work. They should not be engaged in the details of how things are done, but setting a clear purpose and clear expectations. Second, the Board should address themselves to correcting the problems in the system, many of which, not coincidentally, come from the flawed policy in place, but many others come from the central office's refusal or failure to manage schools, enforce policies and procedures, and hold staff accountable. So what are the problems and how could the Board address them?

I'll just start by saying that I'm not surprised. You cannot have a district policy and/or a procedure about a program that does NOT clearly define all the elements/parts of that program.  If you are going to have ill-defined parts of a program, then at least the policy and/or procedure should say, "At this time and place, we are allowing principals to define the Spectrum program and/or ALO program at their school as they see fit for their community." Because that seems to be exactly what is happening.  Advanced Learning, as an office, seems now to only exist to test.  That's it.

Advanced Learning Opportunities have never been very well defined. The discontinuation of self-contained Spectrum classes at all elementary schools and some middle schools has muddled that program's definition. Now, with the "de-tracking" and the introduction of "Honors for All" in 9th grade ELA and Social Studies at Garfield, questions are arising about the definition of Highly Capable Services and the Highly Capable Cohort. So let's explore how these programs and services are defined by Board Policy and Superintendent Procedures and compare that language with the actual situations we find in schools.

My e-mail to the Board (via the schoolboard@seattleschools.org which means I sent it to senior management as well):

Update: another parent wrote AL and asked this question about taking the SBAC or MAP as a requirement: "And what if a parent has opted their students out of those tests?" AL: I believe that this year only, we will offer achievement testing to students who do not have district administered achievement scores but have CogAT scores in the qualifying range. It is my understanding that in the future, opting out of district achievement testing may constitute opting out of Advanced Learning.  

I have said, over and over again, that having an ALO in a school is usually no different from not having an ALO in a school. Schools typically don't define their ALO in any meaningful way. They cannot and do not describe the ALO for families or tell families what the ALO provides that is any different from the norm for good teaching practices. There are typically no practices specific to school ALOs. Schools cannot identify anything they do differently for students in ALOs than they do for students who are not in ALOs. Often the school cannot even say which students are participating in the ALO. There is no assessment of school ALOs. The District has never made any assessment of their quality or efficacy (or even their existence) and the schools make no assessment of their quality or efficacy. The bulk of ALOs are a fiction. They exist exclusively in marketing materials. I recognize that this is a pretty harsh characterization of ALOs and, let's face it, Spectrum sinc...

I don't know if this effort would be at all worthwhile, but I would really like to see someone try it. Given the presumption and the suspicion that the advanced learning at most ALOs exists exclusively on paper, and that blended Spectrum is no different from an ALO, which is no different from nothing... has anyone ever tried to get their child's teacher or principal to provide evidence of an advanced learning opportunity? What would happen - or, if someone has tried it, what has happened - when a parent or guardian demands evidence that a school is actually providing the advanced learning opportunity that the Board Policy 2190 and the Superintendent Procedure 2190SP requires?

As we all know, trying to understand how gifted education in SPS is presented is a losing proposition.  The District has this three-tier system that, on paper, looks somewhat orderly.  But, brush off the cobwebs on this old plan, and you find that:

I came across two articles recently on gifted students.  One is quite good, the other somewhat useful but over the top (and the tone is distracting from the content, in my opinion). NOW, to start, if you don't agree that there are gifted students or the need for gifted education, please don't comment.   Because many readers here already know that conversation. Tomorrow we will find out what the Advanced Learning Taskforce has to say about how Seattle Public Schools might view these students and their programs.  This work may or may not guide what changes the Board approves district staff to do. I offer these articles as both educational and thought-provoking. Nearly every "gift" that a child has can come with/have a double-edge to it.  For example, athletes are only as good as their health/lack of injury.  Gifted kids have the ability to go faster and farther but often have behaviors that backfire on them from this ability. No one has a better child o...

Update:  AL Supervisor Stephen Martin provided the grant application to me but I can't seem to create a link.  He said this: As you may know, the final guidance from OSPI will not be available until Tuesday June 17, so the iGrant application is very much a work in progress and likely to change before submission. OSPI understands that districts may need to make revisions as local plans are finalized for this first year of implementation of the new WACs. From the SPS webpage: - Summer Testing: For students who moved to Seattle after October 2013 and were not able to test for Advanced Learning eligibility, a summer testing opportunity is available. Information and Application Form . Applications are due by August 1, 2014. - For students found eligible for Advanced Learning programs, a School Choice Form must be completed in order to enroll. Forms are available from the Enrollment office (www.seattleschools.org/enrollment or call 252-0760). You can still apply for a ...

There is a joint meeting of the Advanced Learning Taskforces tomorrow, Thursday the 29th from 4-8 pm in the JSCEE auditorium.  They will be discussing their recommendations with an eye to presenting a combined recommendation plan to the Superintendent and Board in the future.  The public is invited to attend but no questions or feedback will be happening as this is purely a meeting for the committees.  There's a very interesting report of "recommendations" that is a compilation of various members of the Taskforce at the Advanced Learning Taskforce page .  However, this is NOT official.  (What is interesting is apparently the first eight-and-a-half pages are from two students at Ingraham.) It makes for tough reading as it is a large volume of very specific ideas.   You find yourself trying to figure out, "if this, then that? or "what would happen with X,Y,Z." I think it great that these people have put forth a plethora of ideas because it he...

A reader sent in this letter - from View Ridge's principal, Terri Skjei - and frankly, it's all I need to believe that Spectrum is dead. But the letter also makes me wonder about this slow death. What is the point? A few thoughts on the contents: 1) quite calm and thoughtful, almost the epitome of "we want your input" except that there really is no need to give any. The fix is in. 2) The principal is either misleading families or has been mislead herself because in the third paragraph she states, "With the support of Shauna Health (sic), the Ex Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and direction of task forces specifically working on recommendations for Advanced Learning..." No, none of those task forces worked on "AL" - they all worked on APP and only APP. In fact the charge of the last two did not include Spectrum or ALOs. The district should disabuse any principal of this thought so that they do NOT pass it along to parents. It's ...

Remember that Leonardo DiCaprio movie, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?  The SPS version is, "What's Going on with Advanced Learning?"   What appears -to me - to be happening is that Michael Tolley and Shauna Heath are quietly making a lot of decisions behind closed doors and quietly spreading them out through the schools.  Spectrum principals, either on their own or thru Tolley and Heath, seem to be dismantling every single Spectrum program, whether popular and/or working well. It is now late April and at the time of year that staff loves because the end of the school year is nigh, you parents get distracted and the staff has the entire summer to continue to roll out whatever they are doing. That much of this is happening all the while the district has not one, but two AL taskforces, both dedicated only to APP makes it quite clear what is happening.  (The Taskforce that Charlie and I served on?  All APP, all the time.)  This district does not care f...

Many updates on Advanced Learning via the Superintendent's Friday update (thanks to Mirmac 1 for finding this).  It is a litany of woes about many issues affecting AL (some of their own making and some the district.  One of them, lack of cooperation from schools, needs some attention from someone.)  Emphasis mine: From Advanced Learning: The most important update continues to be the changes that occurred in April 2013 to the Washington Administrative Code (WAC 392-170) regarding Highly Capable Learners. After speaking with OSPI and colleagues around the state, most districts are making adjustments to their Highly Capable programs in response to the changes. During this transition year, OSPI is providing some lee-way in their annual consolidated program review to allow the districts to adjust.  The new WACs regarding Highly Capable Learners requires that changes be made to our current program delivery model. State law now re...

Have you noticed that just about any time Melissa or I write something about APP or Spectrum or advanced learning in almost any way two things happen: the thread gets about a hundred comments and the comments get nasty. Have you noticed that school board candidates - like all other politicians - prefer to speak in vague platitudes and evade any discussion of specifics? It's a funny thing, but in their pursuit of a decision-making job they appear incapable of making any decisions at all. That's because having positions on any issue will alienate the people who have the opposing view. To prevent alienating anyone, they don't espouse any position at all. Sure they will assert their strong stance in support of motherhood, the flag, and apple pie, but the more contentious and heated the issue, the less likely they will take a stand on it. So we shouldn't be surprised that the School Board would prefer not to take a position on advanced learning which, according to the ev...

From Shauna Heath: We have had several questions regarding the AL Task Force. I have included information about members and member selection below and provided more detail about the entire task force in the attached draft charter. The draft charter will be brought before the Task Force to finalize at the meeting on Oct. 23, 2013. Our Taskforce Members Baker Harvey, Bruce; Bennett, Erinn P; Bower, Stephanie; Boy, Ronald D; Campbell, Carri J; Clemons, Noelle; Daniels, Roger; Geoghagan, Rina; Heath, Shauna L; Herman, Gail; Hertzog, Nancy; Hochwalt, Nisha; Horrigan, Meg; Horwich, Lisa; Huff, Sumiko ; Libros, Tracy; Martin, Stephen B; Ruiz, Bernardo; Schweickhart, Vicky; Simon, Brenda; Skjei, Terri; Triandofilou, Katherine; Vasquez, Kathleen; Watters, Cindy J; Whitworth, Kim; Williams, Sharmila Naidu Member Selection Because this is a task force and not an advisory committee we invited members. The invites went to all members of the Advanced Learning Advisory Committee, parents of hig...

This is an e-mail I sent to Al Interim Director, Steven Martin.  I cc'd the Board, Shauna Heath and Michael Tolley. Dear Mr. Martin, As a former member of the Advanced Learning Taskforce - who served for a year and was asked to stay on for the next year (which never materialized and with no explanation) - you can imagine my surprise to learn there are TWO AL Taskforces already in place.  I am very disappointed to not even be asked to serve when my knowledge of the subject and the programs in this district is quite deep. My questions to you are the following: - how were members chosen? - are the committees now full?  If not, how may one apply? - why was there no public process or even notice? - who are the members and what is their connection to AL? - how many meetings have there been? - where are the minutes of the meetings available? - when are the meetings for both taskforces?  Where is that info available to the public? If you don't know the answers to the...