Seattle Schools Community Forum

  I have no idea if SPS schools are handing these out federally-based awards but, just in case, here's info about them.

Frank Bruni, who used to be a food critic at the New York Times but now writes op-eds, has a piece in the Times about Common Core.  Or is it the Department of Education. Or teacher evaluations.  Well, it's about public education.  It's daringly called, The Education Assassins   (that actually brings to mind Sarah Vowell's hugely funny,  Assassination Vacation , which is probably not want Bruni wanted). Over at the Curmudgucation blog , the very funny Peter Greene takes Bruni's arguments apart, line for line. What's interesting is that Greene points out the half-truths to what Bruni says.  This is a major irritant for me - just tell the WHOLE story, not just part of it if you have the courage of your convictions.  I'm just going to pull out some great comebacks from Greene but do go read both pieces.

Education Week is reporting that five non-waiver states - including Washington State - may be allowed by the Department of Education to "hit the pause button on their school ratings through next school year." 

The Department of Education has a message for Nevada, Montana and North Dakota over Common Core assessments - get it done.  Even though, all three of those states experienced - thru no apparent fault of their own - massive vendor problems that led to a shutdown of testing last month and this week. From the AP :

Here are the new Transportation Service "Standards" for 2014-2015.  I can't even read it because it has been hacked up so much.  (I note that elsewhere parents have attempted to figure out what it means.) In my opinion, it is messy and a hack job that the Board should reject simply on principle.  (The principle being that parents were pretty much left out of the process, it has been done and redone and JUST submitted, in full, late this afternoon.  Sorry but submitting something less than 48 hours before a Board meeting, something that probably affects - what, 75% of SPS kids - is unacceptable. ) And naturally, the Board will approve it. Did I mention that there was a Statement of Legislative Intent that the City Council adopted late last year?  It would take the Department of Education and Early Learning out of the Department of Neighborhoods and elevate it to its own department (this put forth by Burgess, no surprise there).  It was proposed and...

The Times updates the civil rights investigation by the DOE in SPS by noting there is now a second investigation into ELL students and school closures.  From 2009 through the end of last year, the civil-rights office has launched about 100 civil-rights investigations involving at least one school district in nearly every state.  Those investigations, known as compliance reviews, are just part of the office’s caseload, most of which stems from complaints filed by parents or community members.  The department’s proactive efforts have won praise from those who say there was a drought of education civil-rights cases under the previous administration. About ELL students: In Seattle, the review of services for students learning English appears to have started in 2009. A spokeswoman said that information she received from the education department also indicated that federal officials are looking at whether the district discriminated against some studen...

I'm finally catching up on some backreading on education issues. Arne Duncan.   According to this article in Ed Week on the first speech Secretary Duncan has made since the re-election of President Obama, it appears he will stay on if asked.  His priorities? In his first major postelection remarks, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he will use his second term to continue to leverage education improvement at the state and local levels, with a new emphasis on principal preparation and evaluation.  And, he made clear that if Congress isn't serious about reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which the No Child Left Behind Act is the current version, then his department won't devote a lot of energy to it. Duncan said, repeatedly, that he did not want reauthorization to happen through a bad bill. "We will lead, we will help, we will push, but Congress has to want to do it," said Duncan, who says he plans on staying in th...

I missed this but in June, the US Department of Education released data on disparities in education resources and opportunities for U.S. public ed students.   It is called the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) and covers about 7,000 school districts.  There are two parts.   Part 1 was released in June and covered primarily enrollment data and part 2, which will be released this fall, collected cumulative and end-of-year data.  Part 1 covers: access to the rigorous sequence of college and career-ready math and science courses,  the number of first and second-year teachers in schools,  the number of high school counselors in schools,  availability of pre-K and kindergarten programs,  districts operating under desegregation orders or plans, and  whether districts have written policies prohibiting harassment and bullying on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, or disability. Part 2 will cover; numbers of stude...

Following up on the reports of President Obama's remarks about standardized test comes an article in the NY Times about what some bloggers wrote and the White House reaction.