Seattle Schools Community Forum

Now what if there were NO Common Core standards being enacted?  Would he be quite so calm?  He was quite happy in 2013 when the scores went up and he crowed about how all eight states using CCSS showed improvement in at least one score with none declining.  Today? “Big change never happens overnight,” Duncan said. “I’m confident that over the next decade, if we stay committed to this change, we will see historic improvements.”

Good News: Duncan's much anticipated departure finally at hand. He's leaving in December. Bad News: Bloomberg reports that John King, former NY Ed chief, will be named as replacement by Obama at 3:30 today! Meet the new boss, worse  than the old boss. Friday, October 2nd Community Meeting on Bell Time Analysis at Washington Middle School from 6:30-7:30 pm. Bikes being recalled.   Nearly 1.3 million bicycles in the United States are being recalled for a defect that could cause riders to crash. The recall affects 17 different bike brands from 13 companies, with bikes ranging from model years 1998 through 2015, and a price range of $200 to $10,000. Referendum to overturn tougher vaccination opt-out law in California fails. Flu shot clinics at SPS high schools.  Free to adults with insurance (or $28 without). Flu shots are offered to all children (age 18 or younger) free of charge, regardless of insurance coverage . Got T-Mobile ? They got h...

Must be the month for "I knew it" moments (the first being the Washington State charter school law.) Common Core may be toast now.  Except that states and districts, like ours, have invested millions on following and using it.  And invested millions in testing those standards. Guinea pigs - your children were nothing but guinea pigs to these people.  Shame on them. 

I thought it might be a good idea to review who's out there and what they have been doing.

Let's see. One story is that the District is consistent in collecting fines from the State over workplace safety violations for Local 609 members.  It's a sad thing because 1) it's money walking out the door (just this money $32K) and 2) because apparently the District does not care enough about the safety of its employees.  (I'll note this is not the first time for the District - they have paid out $28K in fines since 2011).  It's things like not properly training employees to use equipment that can burn their hands or amputate fingers.  No emergency eye wash station.  No training on hazardous chemicals.  Out of eight violations, seven were labelled by the Department of Labor and Industries as "serious." The West Seattle Blog reports that the largest elementary in West Seattle, Schmitz Park, is receiving three more portables (for what I was told is called "Schmitzville" by parents) this month.  They are expecting 642 kids at SP in Septe...

One of the big complaints about NCLB was that it gave the federal government a much larger role in public education beyond mere oversight and reporting.  It gave them a very big stick to use on districts and states.  (Bringing in RTtT was more the carrot but I'll bet it felt very much like a stick sometimes to states who got those funds.) This federal Big Brother idea made people on the right AND on the left unhappy. That's quite the trick for one law. The one usefulness of NCLB was that it forced districts to account for every - single - student.  As they should.  But trying to fit all these students - ELL, Sped, homeless - into the same testing box with everyone else was never going to work.

Well first, it's hot (but I'm from Arizona so you can't scare me) and dry so please have a safe and fun 4th and let the experts handle the fireworks AND be careful if you go out into the water (not in a pool).  The waters here in the Puget Sound region are very cold.   Kind of a fun survey on "How Creative Are You?"   if you draw (and I don't).  We like to talk about family engagement here and boy, did Arne Duncan fall flat in his latest Twitter chat.  From Conversation Ed: The topic of Arne Duncan’s July Twitter chat was “Parental engagement”. And that’s ironic for two reasons: He received a lot of parental engagement on the chat he probably wasn’t expecting. He didn’t “engage” much with the parents who were asking him the tough questions regarding his education policy that affect their kids. In fact, Duncan didn’t say much, but parents and educators certainly did. On the Seattle Craigslist, they are advertisin...

State Superintendent Randy Dorn appears to be quite upset about the opting out of the SBAC in Seattle high schools.  So much so that the Times granted him an op-ed to write about SBAC where he says "few 11th graders are grappling with refusal to take the test..."   That would be almost a thousand juniors opting out of testing in the largest school district in the state.  That's not "a few" student "grappling" with anything. Then the Times has a new story updating how many more SPS juniors have opted out.

From Chalkbeat New York :   U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that the federal government is obligated to intervene if states fail to address the rising number of students who are boycotting mandated annual exams .   “We think most states will do that,” Duncan said during a discussion at the Education Writers Association conference in Chicago. “If states don’t do that, then we have an obligation to step in.” Federal law requires all students in grades three to eight to take annual tests, and officials have said districts could face sanctions if fewer than 95 percent of students participate.  And yet he also said this: Duncan also said that students in some states are tested too much, and acknowledged that the exams are challenging for many students. But he argued that annual standardized exams are essential for tracking student progress and monitoring the score gap between different student groups.  He seemed to also forget that for...

I wouldn't exactly call this hell freezing over but maybe it's a bit of a frosting over.  I cover two views about accountability and NCLB. From The Hill (a blog about Congress) comes this op-ed from two different leaders of ed reform - corporate and reality-based.  The authors are: Linda Darling-Hammond is professor of Education at Stanford University and faculty director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Paul T. Hill is research professor at the University of Washington and founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. (Disclaimer: I think Darling-Hammond is brilliant and should have been Obama's pick for Secretary of Education.  On the other hand, I have very little appreciation for Dr. Hill's thoughts on public education.)

One reader sent along to me a response to her e-mail to Senator David Frockt over his vote on Senate bill 5748.  I'm printing it in its entirety below.  It is nuanced and carefully thought out.  I believe the Senator is probably speaking from a position of good faith in what he believes this bill to be.  Unfortunately, I do not share that trust/comfort that this bill is merely a way to get back the NCLB waiver.  If you read his letter, it seems like he thinks it does almost nothing and, of course, that makes no sense because no one created this bill just to do very little.  Perhaps it is just a foot in the door but it's kind of a Shaq foot in the door.  (I'm going to highlight relevant sections in red along with some comments.)

Really, Mr. Secretary?  How about this:  You are at a school where you feel known, safe and are part of our community. You're making friends, learning from your teacher and being a good citizen of that community." That's what you tell a 2nd grader.

Arne Duncan pushes hard on Obama's preschool initiative. “ Two different challenges that I think we have to face,” Duncan said. “One that [HHS Secretary] Kathy [Sebelius] talked about is sometimes you have a cultural piece where people are scared to put their kids in more formal care and they prefer, you know, to do the grandmother, the neighbor, whatever. “And so how we communicate very directly with families and churches and non-profits to make sure if we build it they will come, there’s some work we need to do there,” Duncan said. Sebelius said pre-school could make Hispanic children “culturally comfortable” with entering public schools as kindergartners. And this is the challenge (and the dismissal) by those pushing universal preschool. Who is Arne Duncan to say that people who want their children with them are NOT getting what they need educationally?  It's almost like saying, "we know better for YOUR child."  He is treading into dangerous waters here. ...

The WEA did a survey of schools that field tested the Smarter Balanced assessments .  The highest score - on a 1-4 scale - was "alignment with Common Core."  That came in at 2.65. The lowest was a 1.72 for "Overall Impact of SBAC Practice and Administration on the School Day." 50% (!) of member respondents said it 11-20+ hours for student to take the test. Also SB had an estimate of how long it would take students to complete tests in various subjects.  Most respondents said it was about one hour more than estimated.  (Learning curve?) But when asked what were challenges to students in taking the LA test, the biggest one was "keyboarding skills" followed by " test screen - split screen, navigation, scrolling." For math, the biggest student issues were "test tools - fractions, calculator, graphs, formulas), followed by "difficult, above grade level." The biggest concern for teachers was "Schedule disruptions, ...

I only watched the Board comments and a bit more of the meeting.  (They moved at lightening speed and I think may have adjourned by 6:30 pm.)  This is NOT coverage of all their comments but just the issue-specific ones that they made. I wish I had heard one Board member say that he or she was committed to following thru on every stated commitment and accountability measure that staff has said.  No one did.

Secretary Arne Duncan issued a statement today as schools start up around the country.  Rather than saying how poorly our schools are doing, Duncan said this: First, the thanks. America’s students have posted some unprecedented achievements in the last year – the highest high school graduation rate in the nation’s history, and sharp cuts in dropout rates and increases in college enrollment, especially for groups that in the past have lagged significantly. For these achievements, we should celebrate America’s teachers, principals, and students and their families. These achievements are also indications of deeper, more successful relationships with our students. All of us who’ve worked with young people know how much they yearn for adults to care about them and know them as individuals. He even thanks teachers: I have heard from many teachers that they have not received all the support they’d want during this transition. Yet America’s teachers are making this cha...

Update: as Charlie points out, Arne Duncan has really decided - without real authority backing his actions - to be large and in charge of public education in this country.  (I suspect this is one reason so many conservatives, not just in the Tea Party, don't like the DOE.) One conservative education writer, Michael Petrilli,  advocates for Washington State to go to court over the NCLB waiver issue.  Now the head of the state group for Washington school superintendents says he thinks that's a good idea as well. Bill Keim of the Washington Association of School Administrators said this : For me, one of those continued sources of irritation is the unfettered federal intervention into what used to be the states’ domain—operating our public schools. I was amazed when the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation passed that there was so little debate regarding the expanded role it created for the federal government to dictate how schools in each state must function. It was ...

From Superintendent Banda: Dear Seattle Public Schools community, Over the last several years we have made great strides in ensuring our students graduate ready for success in college, career and life. However, much work remains to ensure that each and every student has the academic and community supports they need to be successful learners in school and beyond. In order to best serve our students and families, Seattle Public Schools is asking the U.S. Department of Education for a Local Educational Agency (LEA) waiver from several provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

North Carolina is poised to exit from Common Core.  They also passed a student data privacy law earlier this year (and I'll be working to get one passed in the Washington Legislature).  North Carolina was one of the first states to embrace Common Core, now in place in more than 40 states. But support among some conservatives for the standards dissolved in recent months as nation-wide opposition mounted from activists who argued it infringed on state sovereignty. Others complained about age-inappropriate teaching material and more testing. To note, the NC legislature may be picking from CCSS to beef up their own existing ones .  It looks like several states want this ability to "hybrid" standards.  (Under CC, states can only change up to 15% of the standards which seems to be a sticking point for some states.)   What Oklahoma's governor, Mary Fallin, says seems to be ringing true for many states: “Unfortunately, federal overreach has tainted Common C...

WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn has sent a letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asking that Washington be waived from the NCLB requirement that public schools send out letters about how they are all failing under NCLB (about 96% of schools would have to send out these letters).   Naturally, 96% of Washington schools are not failing; it's just the failure of Congress to act on this (dying) law.   Sending these letters would cause undue confusion to parents and be a cost to districts.  (Over at Washington Policy Center, they bemoan that parents won't get their choice, under NCLB, to move their kids to another school and/or access tutoring if their child is at a failing school.  What they fail to understand is that most parents, currently at "failing" schools neither access the movement of their child nor tutoring even when they are notified of this option.) Speaking of Arne Duncan, apparently he made a speech at the rec...