Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Politico : "The American Federation of Teachers ended a five-year relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation after rank-and-file union members expressed deep distrust of the foundation's approach to education reform. AFT President Randi Weingarten told Morning Education the union will no longer accept Gates money for its Innovation Fund, which was founded in 2009 and has received up to $1 million a year in Gates grants ever since. The Innovation Fund has sponsored AFT efforts to help teachers implement the Common Core standards - a Gates priority - among other initiatives. - Weingarten said she didn't believe Gates funding influenced the Innovation Fund's direction, but still had to sever the relationship. "I got convinced by the level of distrust I was seeing - not simply on Twitter, but in listening to members and local leaders - that it was important to find a way to replace Gates funding," she said. Weingarten plans to ask members t...

A new initiative is coming on student data privacy in Washington State but here's the latest from California via the NY Times.  California has always been a frontrunner on this issue and this bill may be one that our Legislature could use as a template (along with the bills now going in Georgia, NY, and Colorado).  This is an issue that is gaining steam.     This says it all: “We don’t want to limit the legitimate use of students’ data by schools or teachers,” Senator Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat who is the sponsor of the bill and the president pro tempore of the California Senate, said in a phone interview. “We just think the public policy of California should be that the information you gather from students should be used for their educational benefit and for nothing else.” Also in a continuing pattern, Governor Cuomo of NY state yesterday said he would side with parents if Common Core rollout in NY state doesn't get better. “I think the ...