Seattle Schools Community Forum

As promised, I did attend the Washington Policy Center's "gala" fundraiser that featured Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as well as Neil Cavuto from FOX News.  Here's my account as published in The Stranger today. This is a longer version that I wrote for this blog:

Watching the charter school movement in the U.S. has certainly been both intriguing and discouraging. I don't think anyone could have been against charters as they were originated - one or two classrooms in an existing school that were little hotbeds of innovation.  Successes would be sent out to other classrooms and schools and failures duly noted with lessons learned. But that is not how it has played out.  What is the honest truth about charter schools looks like this:

You'll notice I didn't say "looking forward" because honestly, I don't see much hope for public education for all students in this country, state and city.  Let's start with nationally. Trump won the Electoral College and is therefore elected president.  However, that win is clearly not a mandate when you consider that he received nearly 63 million votes to Hillary Clinton's nearly 66 million votes.  Add into her votes the ballots cast for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and others and you get to about 74 million people who voted against Trump. He has not even been sworn in and already there are many warning signs.  His background and actions tell us three important things.

Last week, I asked district Communications a couple of questions about the projected $70M+ budget deficit for the 2017-2018 via email.  I also spoke to a member of the Communications team. When I asked, I was told that was probably a question they would get from many reporters and they would get that info.  (Makes sense, no?)

The president-elect is now considering Michelle Rhee for Secretary of Education .  (I find it interesting his actually going to keep it open because hard-core conservatives want it gone but then again, public education was of little interest on the campaign trail.)  Ed reformers love this because Rhee is all things ed reform (TFA, charters, etc.)  But still I smile.  Conservatives had plenty to say about Hillary's baggage from her husband.  Well, Rhee has even worse baggage with her husband, Sacramento mayor, Kevin Johnson. One of the most moving first-person narratives I have ever read, Academia, Love Me Back , by grad student, Tiffany Martinez.

As we are coming to a close of our long national nightmare that is the 2016 Presidential election, here's some thoughts from Peter Greene at the Curmudgucation blog tries to explain what Bellwether Education Partners, a reliably reformy right-tilted thinky tank, believes the next president should do in public education policy.

It's not often you see public education and entertainment cross (but see John Oliver and charter schools) but now we have a trifecta of Donald Trump, Colin Kapenick of the San Francisco '49s and public education .  (For those out of the loop, Kaepernick did not stand for the national anthem in the last two preseason games he was in.  He said he was because the song is racist (and read that third verse - I honestly never did before this) and the nation does not have freedom for all. In wades Donald Trump.  He addressed the American Legion Convention this morning and said  would be "promoting American pride and patriotism in America's schools." How? Via ABC News:

The video of the day getting a great amount of attention (and it's great that it is) is John Oliver on Last Week Tonight.   He takes on charter schools in his imitable fashion. The main thing he does is take on both sides. Kinda.  He says he doesn't want to examine the "principle" of having charters but their "outcomes."  What he does say is that charters are in 42 states and D.C. so obviously they are here.  This is at three minutes into the program and the segment is 18 minutes long but luckily, there are many abysmal charter stories from all around the nation. Amazing how the NAACP and Black Lives Matters have both recently come out against corporate charter schools (which are most of them) and now this from John Oliver.  The stars seem to be aligning but to see the scrambling of charter supporters to try to figure out how to say the NAACP is wrong without saying, well, they're wrong, is fun to watch. But it's fun for about those 18 minutes...

Corporate Education Reformers may have a lot of business expertise, but that knowledge and skill does not translate to public education. They don’t seem to realize that almost nothing they have learned from the private sector is applicable in the public sector. Competition doesn’t work the way they think it does. They don’t seem to understand that schools have finite capacity. They don’t seem to understand what it takes to start a school. They don’t know what drives academic achievement. They don’t seem to understand the needs of students. Their focus on productivity is misplaced. They don’t recognize teachers as professionals. They don’t seem to understand that all teachers need the union to protect their jobs. They don’t seem to understand which school costs are fixed and which are variable Their first and fundamental mistake is that they have trouble understanding is that the profit motive, which is the force that drives everything in the private secto...

It's not entirely surprising to see this slippage happening in the ed reform world; indeed, with the deep and moneyed pockets they have, it's almost a surprise. But my theory is that they tend to believe that they 1) know all the answers and so 2) they exist in an echo chamber.  As I read my Twitter feed daily, I'm astonished at the same 10 subjects, rehashed and repackaged over and over. All of what I want to discuss in this thread will be leading to another thread on what the new "story" is for ed reform and it comes around "equity." Here's the latest news on this front.

The Associated Press is reporting that a lawsuit has been filed in King County Superior court over the new charter school law passed by the Legislature in the spring. Teachers unions, parents and other groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday over Washington’s new charter school law, a measure that was enacted last spring after the state Supreme Court struck down the old law.  The group includes the Washington Education Association, League of Women Voters, El Centro de la Raza and several labor unions.

 This column appeared in the Puget Sound Business Journal (that fount of public education knowledge) and was written by Bob Wallace, a columnist at the PSBJ.  It is called, "Education Union Holds State Hostage."   Mr. Wallace dissects the issues around McCleary and it would probably have served him better to bone on issues before commenting on them.

I still have to do my write-up about my talk with Wyeth Jessee about his new role as head of Student Supports, overseeing AL, Special Education, ELL, counseling, nurses, etc.  One thing I will say now is that I asked him about changes in AL and he said he had just gotten the job (absolutely true) but it wouldn't happen without stakeholder input.  I reminded him that Spectrum disappeared like sugar dissolving in iced tea but he smiled and shrugged.  But now a reader has alerted us that the AL department wants our input.   Comments on the proposed DRAFT can be sent to advlearn@seattleschools.org with the subject line 2190SP. The proposed DRAFT will be reviewed by the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee at their meeting on Monday, August 15, 2017. Please send your comments in before July 31 to assure it will be reviewed prior to the meeting. There are a number of documents to read. 

As the Republican convention starts today in Cleveland, here are helpful charts from Ed Week on the stands of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on public education.   There are a couple of areas of gray for Mr. Trump because he either hasn't brought forth an opinion or, more likely, has no clue.

 Update: I'm just going to piggyback on Michael's story which needs some sussing out for full impact (but I'm glad he got to it; I'm behind.) Here's the letter that the Gates Foundation's CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellman   wrote earlier this month.  Buried in there are some real gems about public education (couched of course in nuanced language.) The lead paragraph: From the beginning, Bill and Melinda wanted their foundation to be a learning organization; one that evolves and course corrects based on evidence. We want to get continually smarter. One of our greatest areas of learning has been our work in K-12 U.S. education. I actually laughed out loud.  Well, the Gates Foundation may have "learned" something but it has taken them millions to do so and that "evidence" is more experience in failure.  As well, they were using other people's children and schools as their guinea pigs. However, all this learning never seemed to get them ...

  Update: the Governor's office has a list of bill signings this week.  The charter school bill - 6194 - is not on it.  A signal he might let it quietly pass into law? Consider giving his office a call to veto it, 360-902-4111 E-mail

I finally received one charter school's documents that I had requested via public disclosure; these were from Green Dot's Destiny Middle School.  Now it took some doing because initially a couple of charters did not want to give me anything, saying they weren't public schools.  When I pressed them on handing over documents that were created during the time that they were charter schools, then I got an okay but was put off to "March or April."  I'm still waiting for a couple of other schools.  (I note that Rep. Gerry Pollet also got this runaround which should tell you something.) Green Dot itself only sent them to me in hard copy which, of course, makes it more difficult to copy from and track.  They said they have to buy special "software" to send them to me electronically.  Guess what was in the huge stack of documents?  A letter dated October 2015 to a law firm saying that Green Dot would be sending them public disclosure documents...electron...

Update 2: I did forget one key thing. From the get go, the former charter schools wanted reimbursement from the State from their costs, from Sep. 4, 2015, to run their schools if a new charter law came thru.  I found this fairly interesting given that the Court ruled the law unconstitutional and just because the legislature could find a financial fix, it didn't seem to me that the State owed them money. I cannot tell if this is still valid in this bill. 

From Cascadia Weekly : YOU HAD ONE JOB: With fewer than 20 days left in their short legislative session, a nearly paralyzed state House and Senate in Olympia passed watered-down education funding plans on razor-thin margins divided along extremely partisan lines hours before a cutoff deadline that would have stalled the bills in their houses of origin.

Apparently not, at least when it comes to charter schools.  My second batch of public disclosure e-mails raises more troubling questions. In my first batch, I explained how a couple of other districts' lawyers were worried about running afoul of state law in signing interlocal documents to allow students within their district borders to have an ALE with Mary Walker School District. This batch reveals more concerns from other people. Among them was the overarching role of Washington State Charter Schools Association. Who are they?