Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Diane Ravitch's blog via the group, FairTest : Today’s technical problems, which disrupted computerized testing in many Florida districts, are far from unusual. Many other states have experienced similar failures, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which monitors standardized exams across the country. Earlier this month, the statewide testing systems in Kansas and Oklahoma both crashed. Last year, technical problems disrupted computerized exams in Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio and Oklahoma. In the recent past, new, automated testing programs collapsed in Oregon and Wyoming, requiring administration of replacement, pencil-and-paper versions. After root cause investigations, both Wyoming and Oklahoma levied multi-million dollar fines against Pearson, the same testing vendor Florida uses. Wyoming labeled the company in “complete default of the contract” and replaced it. Oklahoma let its contract with Pearson ...

Pasi Sahlberg  of Finland wrote a lengthy and compelling piece for the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet.  He calmly and rationally explains why he thinks what is happening in the U.S. won't work.  (To note, he does not address charter schools or Common Core.)  He is talking, very specifically, about teachers and teaching.  In a short bite, he says: First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities. There is no Teach for Finland or other alternative pathways into teaching that wouldn’t include thoroughly studying theories of pedagogy and undergo clinical practice. Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways...

From the Times: Pasi Sahlberg, who heads the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, will be in Seattle this week to talk about how his country achieved its success without standardized tests, teacher merit pay, school choice, or many of the other trends in American public education. Sahlberg, who started his career as a teacher, has written a book about that subject, titled “Finnish Lessons.” Sahlberg will speak at a luncheon Wednesday at the Rainier Club at 820 Fourth Ave.  The luncheon starts at 11:45 a.m., costs $27 and requires an RSVP.  He also will give a free public lecture at  7 p.m. Wednesday at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall,  Room 210.

From the NY Times, a story about a CDCP  advisory committee recommending vaccinating boys and young men against human papillomavirus ( HPV ). The committee recommended that boys ages 11 and 12 should be vaccinated. It also recommended vaccination of males ages 13 through 21 who had not already had all three shots. Vaccinations may be given to boys as young as 9 and to men between the ages of 22 and 26. HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted disease — between 75 percent and 80 percent of females and males in the United States will be infected at some point in their lives. Most will overcome the infection with no ill effects. But in some people, infections lead to cellular changes that cause warts or cancer, including cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in women and anal cancers in men and women. A growing body of evidence suggests that HPV also causes throat cancers in men and women as a result of oral sex. And not to get too graphic here, folks, but for those...