Seattle Schools Community Forum

Read this guest column by Colin Pierce, IB Coordinator at Rainier Beach High School, that appeared in the Seattle Times Education Lab. You can comment there on the Seattle Times site.

The Seattle Times started Education Lab on October 24. Education Lab is supposed to be a public conversation about what works in education. I've just made a quick review of the most recent Education Lab stories, the ones on the front page. About half of them have no comments at all. Nearly all of the others have only one comment. Public participation on this blog appears low. Surely they must be concerned that Education Lab isn't achieving its ambition to spark meaningful conversations about education solutions in the Pacific Northwest. Surely the sponsors are also concerned. Surely the Seattle Times, the Education Lab team, and the sponsors are monitoring public participation as a measure of success? On the other hand, the project is less than a month old. This may not be enough of a sample to form the basis for a judgement. Maybe it's just too early to say. On the other hand, the participation was much, much higher when the project was new. It appears that the initi...

It's true - when I want a smile or even a guffaw about Washington state public education, I go to the Times.  I can always be assured of some odd omission of facts, brevity of context or just a nudge to the ed reform side.  And that's just their reporting.  Better to say little to nothing about their editorial writing which is generally shallow and uninformed.  But now comes their Education Lab Blog (remember when they were advertising jobs for this)?  They are going to have no fewer than 5 reporters on this (so that's where Linda Shaw went) and an intern(?) manning their blog "to help foster constructive dialogue online and in-person."  Sounds a lot like what LEV used to do when they had blog (now gone) so you better be on your best behavior and play nice at the Times or they won't print your thoughts. (There's a Solutions Journalism Network they are to be affiliated with and their definitions about "reporting" are pretty funny.  So in ca...