Seattle Schools Community Forum

I am obviously way behind on this thread as the next Charter Commission meeting is this week.  It was held at the Technology Access Foundation headquarters in White Center.  Very nice building and great staff.  One of the Charter Commission members, Trish Millines Dziko, runs TAF and its programs.  Chair Steve Sundquist, in his chairman remarks, stated that the Commission had sent a letter to the Board of Education.  The Commission would like to influence the BOE on the issues of timelines and fee schedules.  It appears they did get what they wanted.  One, there will be a requirement of a letter of intent to apply for a charter .  This is great because it gives everyone a heads up to who is coming and where they intend to apply (either through the Charter Commission or a school district).  Two, t he timeline for extending the deadline for decision-making has been moved to Feb. 24th.   The BOE rejected their ideas on the fe...

A recent round of public disclosure documents tells me that I'm not wrong about the tsunami effect of ed reform that is likely headed our way.  Frankly, I think that the state-supported Center for Reinventing Education is really nothing but a think-tank for ed reform.  They likely get at least half their grant money from the Gates Foundation.  I see almost no research on anything else but charters, CMOs, TFA starting a principal TFA (a number of you saw that coming), etc.  I don't mind it so much when it's a privately-funded right-wing think tank but it is depressing to see your tax dollars at work for a one-sided effort.  The current push on ed reform: something called a " fiscal analytics center" that Paul Hill at CRPE was pushing before he left there recently.  It appears to be a souped-up benefit-cost ratio idea. using CRPE as a "lead" for any state-driven research so that the research looks more nationally-based.  This was discussed in an e...