Seattle Schools Community Forum

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 will note that Director Murray has received no answer from the Mayor. I will note that Councilman Tim Burgess announced this week to an elementary school group that there WILL be 14 classrooms in SPS with the City's preschool plan.   Not "may" or "hopefully" but "will."  He did NOT mention the vote tonight by the Board nor did Director Marty McLaren.  In fact, McLaren said nothing about his statement in her own remarks. Done deal much? You will also recall that the Action Item on tonight's agenda has some Exhibits attached and that I had stated that there was no Exhibit "C."  Well, there is but it is not attached.  It's mentioned here in Exhibit B:

 I'm first going to say that this is all complete nonsense that NO board in its right mind would agree to.   Second, I had a pretty long public ed day (Watching entire Dorn press conference on SBAC, interview with Dorn, attending Governor press conference in Sea-Tac and going to Highland Park Elementary.)  It ended with me attending a Town Hall at Highland Park Elementary over their status as an "intervention" school.  (HUGE shout-out to the parents and teachers - in a full library - who showed up on a hot August night. More on this to come.) However, to the point of this thread, there were a couple of City Council members there; Tom Rasmussen (who no one but me seemed to recognize) and Tim Burgess (the so-called Godfather of Preschool). Want to know what Burgess said?   Well, first, it was "sorry to run" but he stayed long enough to tout the F&E levy and all the great things that Highland Park is getting (and that's true but he left out one thing...

I'll lead with this - I urge you to write to the Seattle School Board and tell them to say NO to the agreement witht he City's preschool plan at Wednesday night's Board meeting.  SPSDirectors@seattleschools.org I'll say right now that if this is approved, the district will rue the day they signed onto it.  It is NOT in the best interests of the district and gives the City much more power and control than is necessary.

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

The Times had big news this morning that preschoolers can learn math but nobody in preschool teaching ever knew this before. Naturally, I'm being facetious as most parents do know this (even if they don't know the best way to teach their own children).  As well, I would think most bonafide preschools do know this (and I certainly know Montessori and Waldorf do). This article seems a bit of a cheerleading piece for the City's preschool but then, the City extended the deadline for parents to enroll so maybe they need the help.

From Diane Ravitch: Rick Hess directs education studies at the conservative, free-market American Enterprise Institute. We often disagree but I am often impressed that he doesn’t follow “the party line” of free-marketeers. This article is a good example of Hess demonstrating his sharp intellect and his willingness to stray from the right-wing corral. I absolutely echo Ravtich's comments.  Hess may be a right-wing thinker but he's an honest one.  He is willing to call out BS on BOTH sides.  He is also willing to say it like it is which probably makes a lot of people on the right wring their hands. His piece is long but worthy reading.  In a nutshell:

Update: for one, turns out there's someone from the Gates Foundation on the Committee.  I'm sure that's a bit voice for charters.  His name is David Wertheimer. What seems to be the explanation for this "mandate" for investment in charter schools is the idea that (1) SPS isn't building new schools (wrong) and (2) that school facilities could be built into housing. On the first issue, we all know SPS is opening up every building they can (and those are some schools that have been closed so long, they might as well be new) and, as well, the district IS opening two new schools at the Wilson-Pacific site.  I have no idea why someone would say the District isn't building new schools if they didn't know for sure but you'd have to ask members of the Committee. Now if the City thinks that having charters will serve all these new students, they clearly don't know charters.  For one thing, charters are deliberately smaller so any idea that a char...

From the Washington Post's Answer Sheet (partial): Along with the Common Core, the big winners in terms of issue were charter schools — especially in Washington state (where Gates helps finance a campaign to win voter approval of charters) — and online and technology-based learning initiatives.

Update :  here's the presentation that Dr. Herndon is giving at the Board meeting. Early on  at tomorrow night's School Board meeting there will be a " Levies 2016 Update" that starts off with this ludicrous statement:

Despite the fact that most Board committees only meet once a month, here's another meeting of the Executive Committee for June.  With just a single item on the agenda.  What's that?  Why the next City/SPS Preschool agreement, of course. The odd thing here is that the Executive Committee meeting of the Whole, which was two weeks ago, saw this particular partnership agreement rejected by the Committee to even move it forward for consideration by the Board. Now the Executive Committee meeting of the Whole two weeks ago never had this preschool agreement attached to their agenda so I can't compare what has changed from that one to the new one. From the BAR: Space/Facilities: Seattle Public Schools is experiencing significant enrollment growthand does not have adequate capacity to meet it. Given the opportunity that exists with SPP, the City will be leading conversations to identify space. I almost do not have to write one more single word on this subject because tha...

Update : From SPS Communications about the EIS: This  This is a state requirement for large programmatic changes within the District.  Legal advised us to conduct the EIS for the bell time change as part of the feasibility study (as they would do for any such possible change that the state could deemed impactful to the environment).  They reviewed the language, consulted our SEPA attorney and determined that this is required under the statute. We will be speaking to this at the Task Force meeting. is a state requirement for large programmatic changes within the District.  Legal advised us to conduct the EIS for the bell time change as part of the feasibility study (as they would do for any such possible change that the state could deemed impactful to the environment). They reviewed the language, consulted our SEPA attorney and determined that this is required under the statute. We will be speaking to this at the Task Force meeting. I could not find the next Task...

From Diane Ravitch's column (this is a parent who wrote to Seattle Opt Out: This spring the SBA was rolled out in grades 3-8, 10 and 11. We were delighted to learn that there were many opt outs across the Seattle School District, as well as in every corner of the State. We formed the Seattle Opt Out Group in Dec. 2014 and have worked tirelessly in the first half of 2015 to inform parents about opting out and the problems that high stakes standardized tests bring with them. We plan to continue our efforts in earnest over the summer and into the next school year. Yesterday, however, we learned of an event that has us quite alarmed, and we want to proceed in as informed a manner as possible. Apparently at a Seattle middle school the principal forbade students who opted out of the SBA to attend a year-end school carnival last Friday. A parent reached out to us and sent us this note: Here is my daughter’s experience with being excluded from the Denny Carnival ...

 Update: the Times has more reporting on the situation with First Place Scholars.  According to their article, two Commissioners wanted to revoke their charter. It was pointed out that FPS will probably owe money back to the state because they did not enroll as many students as they said they would.   FPS has another deadline of June 17th - less than a month - to meet the Commission's requests.  It appears most of the Commissioners agree that if these requests are not met by June 17th, they won't "kick the can" down the road again.  Head of FPS, Dawn Mason, continues to claim it's not FPS' fault because they opened too quickly.  end of updates From the PI , news about charter schools in Washington State: First Place Scholars is still under scrutiny. According to written reports to the commission, the school has made some progress in its work with students who do not speak English at home and in setting academic plans for children with spec...

In what is a fairly astonishing piece of video, The Answer Sheet has the CNBC interview with Bill Gates AND Warren Buffet AND Charlie Munger (of Berkshire Hathaway) opining on public education. Munger on McDonald's as one of the nation's educational institutions (just starting from the premise that education is what McDonald's does is ridiculous):

I was checking in at the DFER website to see if there was any statement walking back the one from the NY state director, bemoaning opt-outs and real estate values and I found none. But I did find this scathing commentary on opting out and it's from Nicole Brisbane, the director of the NY state DFER.  Apparently she can't help herself. Highlights: - they start with their title, by immediately drawing a line in the between them and teachers unions/"affluent parents" - The Opt-Out Movement; whose kids are really at stake? - What's interesting is they do say several nice things about teachers unions but then: In this case, they are trying to maintain a status quo that has been inherently unfair to low income and minority students. Yes, we are still using that tired old line of "status quo."  And again, I don't read/hear from virtually any teachers or parents who don't think some testing is necessary. -But the reason why this opt-out mo...

You can read the whole article at USA Today about the huge number of opt-outs in New York State.  But this gem of a quote from the state director of Democrats for Education Reform - one Nicole Brisbane - reveals the REAL issue about opt-outs: "Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs," she said. "How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn't clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data." You can't make this stuff up. For those of you who may not know, Scarsdale is a fairly upper-crust town in north of NYC.  The median income for a family there is about $290K. Interestingly, here's what one superintendent in Cold Spring, NU had to say: "Parents want to have a say in their child's education and this is one way they feel they can be heard," she said.

Seattle Schools has now finished just one part of the state testing cycle.  According to the schedule at OPSI, the 3rd grade reading is done.  That leaves plenty more to do before the June 15th cutoff date.  (I'm thinking the district will be done a lot sooner than that.) CPPS and the Equity in Education Coalition are having an "informative community conversation on the Common Core State Standards and the Smarter Balanced Assessments" on April 27th at the African American Museum.  It includes Eric Anderson, the head of assessment for SPS.  The panel also includes two people from OSPI, a teacher from Kent and someone from the Office of Education. But this appears to be by invitation only, sorry. The invitation ends by saying: We hope this will be an ongoing dialogue and the first of many community conversations on Common Core and the Smarter Balanced Assessments. It's great that CPPS and the Equity in Education Coalition are trying to create an o...

The Work Session today is going to be wide-ranging and vital to the work of the district (well, part of it). The first part - the useless part - is about whether the district should become a charter school authorizer.  This should be the quickest part of the entire Work Session because the Board should say NO.  There is NO good reason and many reasons why not.  See my letter to the Board below. The second part is around the Strategic Plan.  Here's the huge presentation .  Here's what staff says they heard at the Jan. 14, 2015 Work Session on this topic: Fix the infrastructure before building improvements – System has been broken for a long time – The Superintendent can propose course corrections to the strategic plan Identify highest value work – “Think Big... Get it right ” – We need to explicitly prioritize and sequence work – We need to identify what will be pushed out to later dates or stopped – Directors need to be able to clearly justify why we may...

Looks like three people have filed to start campaigns for School Board , each in a different region. Ruben Van Kempen, a 35-year teacher and head of the drama program at Roosevelt High School , is retiring.  I can't say enough about this man, his energy, his hard work to build a stellar drama program and, most of all, his belief in students.  A fund has been set up to raise money to name RHS' theater the " Ruben Van Kempen Theatre ."   Who got the Federal Reserve building?  Long-time developer Martin Selig.  No word on what he'll do with it. I had been waiting to see what tomorrow's Work Session on Charters/Strategic Plan was about and now I know. The Board is actually considering being an charter school authorizer.   The Presentation reads like a campaign ad for 1240 and includes "best interests" of the District and discussion of continuum of partnership and collaboration .   And guess what?  Not a single Director or staff ...