Seattle Schools Community Forum

When thinking of the Gates Foundation's work in the public education arena, there are not many wins to point to except for Common Core.  Of course, that's quite a large win even though many publications either don't know Gates funded that whole mission or they just leave it out of their writing about Common Core. I may have printed this editorial that appeared in June of last year in the Los Angeles Times   before but it bears repeating because of what the Gates Foundation says about itself.  About Common Core: The Gates Foundation strongly supported the proposed Common Core curriculum standards, helping to bankroll not just their development, but the political effort to have them quickly adopted and implemented by states.

I've already written several times about "personalized learning" (here's the latest post that I wrote.) But let's see how personalized learning will play out within a Trump administration. 

Update from Politico: Billionaire Betsy DeVos has been unabashed about using her wealth to advance her own agenda. “ We expect a return on our investment,” she once wrote about her family’s massive political contributions. After giving millions of dollars to politicians over the past two decades, she now heads into her Senate confirmation hearing for education secretary with a clear advantage: DeVos and her husband, Dick, have donated to the campaigns of 17 senators who will consider her nomination — four of whom sit on the Senate education committee that oversees the process. end of update Billionaire Betsy DeVos has been unabashed about using her wealth to advance her own agenda. “We expect a return on our investment,” she once wrote about her family’s massive political contributions. After giving millions of dollars to politicians over the past two decades, she now heads into her Senate confirmation hearing for ...

The Times is reporting that John Muir Elementary's PTA is buying school supplies for all the children at that school this year.  They had taken a survey and parents said this was a big issue for them.  Buying in bulk allowed the cost to drop from $75 per child to $15 per child. Across Washington state, schools are dropping their supply lists or trimming them down amid increasing costs of supplies — and an increasing number of families in need.  The PTA also asked the John Muir teachers what they needed for their classrooms for the upcoming school year and then ordered all those supplies, too.  The Times is also conducting its own annual drive for school supplies for low-income students.  Bravo to the Muir PTA for listening to its membership about how to spend that hard-earned fundraising pot of dollars. 

Yeah, it's true. Actually the phrasing was : A) Common Core is a political third rail that we should not be touching at all. Get rid of it. Given that more states are pulling back by themselves, I think the Dems may not have to do much.  And, with King Trump, it would be gone "on day one." 

 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: read this blog thread below from Wait What and then appreciate that the Seattle School Board recently passed a resolution, 5-1 (with Director Blanford voting no and Director Geary not at the meeting), to ask the state to allow districts to be able to select/create an alternative summative assessment framework to show academic mastery.  (Their discussion is in Part Two of the video of the board meeting. Here's the cue-up from the Seattle Education blog .) end of update From the Wait What? blog by Connecticut writer, Jonanthan Pelto with Wendy Lecker, news that PARCC is not as advertised.   (bold his) In the most significant academic study to date, the answer appears to be that the PARCC version the massive and expensive test is that it is an utter failure. William Mathis, Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center and member of the Vermont State Board of Education, has just published an astonishing piece in the Washington Post. ( Alice in PA...

I have been noticing there is this new meme out there - grown-up bullying.  Do I think it exists? Sure but not in this new expansive definition of one person expressing unhappiness over another person's professional actions and having it called bullying. I find this especially troubling when it comes to public servants/elected officials.  It's almost a way to deflect any kind of questioning that taxpayers may raise.  In New York state, an anonymous person/group has created a Wall of Shame for administrators who oppose opt-outs of students in their districts/states.  (And there's another ill-used word - shame.)

Mrs. Clinton sat down with Newsday in Long Island for an wide-ranging interview that included the topic of public education.  Her wording was a bit hard to understand so I'm not quite sure I understand all that she is saying.  She has some things wrong (but that was the propaganda of Common Core so I don't entirely blame her.)  But she offers zero solutions and that's troubling. And she has a lot more faith in charter schools than I do but that's another thread. Common Core and Opt Out (this is how Newsday titled this section of the interview)

We've had discussions here about the role of PTA in public education in our district.  There are several schools that are now PTOs (parent-teacher organizations) that operate solely at their schools.  Being a PTO is more work in some ways but in another way, it's better as your school gets to keep all your fund-raising dollars (without dollars going to state and national PTA.) We've talked about trying to figure out if it would be possible to share PTA wealth from some more empowered schools since other schools have small PTAs.  (I was doing a random check and so far I haven't found a school without a PTA/PTO.)  As I previously reported, the district says that PTA grants are now well over $3M a year and that's now above some other grant providers. Seattle PTAs have certainly taken on more and more. But it's not just the money but how PTA at all levels seems to be different to me.

 An op-ed from school board members from the Orange County Register on Common Core and data mining: The California Department of Education last week informed school parents of a federal judge’s decision to release up to 10 million student records to a plaintiff’s attorney. The case, Morgan Hill Parents Association v. California Department of Education, could allow student records to be released that contain “names, addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers, as well as sensitive information on behavior, academic performance and health.” The future of this legal case remains unclear What is generally unknown by parents, and far more egregious than the data release requested in the Morgan Hill lawsuit, are similar data-mining requirements by federally and state-authorized Common Core programs. Parents want their children to learn academic material without the psychological conditioning, data mining, tracking and analyzing of behavioral patterns. These fed...

A very wonderful letter from a mom with a special needs child after "social skills" training in her child's school that forgot that there are many types of people in the world that we should all be kind to and show respect for.  In case you didn't know, as of Feb. 2, 2016, OSPI reports that there are 35, 511 homeless students in Washington State.  That's 3.3% of the P-12 population.  It's an over 9% increase from 2013-2014 and a 62.7% increase from 2009-2010. 

Two interesting thoughts for discussion. One was this post from Diane Ravitch's blog , A Father Learns about Common Core.   (Readers point out that this dad may be confusing AP Language and Composition for AP Literature and Composition - I don't know.)  He's a little sad over the reading list which, according CC standards, is more non-fiction based than fiction.  Here's some of the works (which he also says seem short):

Not from The Onion - Court rules Michigan has no responsibility to provide quality public education

I have many public ed stories that have piled up on my computer so here goes.   (There won't be any charter school stories because there are so many of those, I'll be giving them a separate thread.  The news is not good.)

Fortune Magazine Fortune magazine has a special report that came out this week on Common Core - Business Gets Schooled. It provides a window into the thinking of big business and public education and folks, it is, by turns, sad and horrific.  This being Fortune, they kind of "tsk tsk" but more over the naviete of some (see Bill Gates) than what these titans of industry say about children and learning. Please - if you don't read the article, don't read my entire thread - scroll down to read what Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil has to say to you as parents about your children. (I'll highlight it in red.) What's equally fascinating is that any dissent mentioned in the article by ordinary folks gets the "blogger moms" attitude with a complete brush-off of what noted education experts have said about CC.  It's like all the dissenters are just the anonymous, ignorant and unwashed masses.  You know, the little people. They also chose to l...

(Editor's note: I seem to recall that some were saying that "Common Core was here to stay." Read on.) This reads like it's from The Onion but nope, it's from the NY Times regarding a taskforce that Governor Cuomo of New York created around Common Core:

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.”

Yet another eventful week. Attended the great Rainier Beach High School town hall on transportation.  It is a weird thing to have kids begging for help to get to school.

Update; these are some choice comments made by the Gates as reported in the Washington Post today. Gates on Common Core: “The early days almost went too well for us,” Gates said. “There was adoption, everything seemed to be on track. ...We didn’t realize the issue would be confounded with what is the appropriate role of the federal and state government, we didn’t think it would be confounded with questions about are there too many tests, confounded with if you’re raising the bar, what is the right set of things to help teachers be ready for that? Mrs Gates on testing: “In a few states, they went too quickly, rolling out the standards and the assessments went too fast and parents rightfully said, ‘Oh my gosh, a new test,’ ” Melinda Gates said.   OH, blame it on the states.  You'll note there is no admission that they might have been wrong.  Not one single word. End of update.