Seattle Schools; New Appointments Announced
(I have very mixed feelings about these appointments. Both men have good education skills. Mr. Wright is the more worrisome of the two. He has close ties with the Gates Foundation. He got onto the board of the Alliance for Education just nine months after he moved to Seattle a couple of years back. That's something of a record for the Alliance to put him on their Board. His resume shows that he has been something of a job hopper and frankly, I doubt he'll stick around longer than a year or two. He looks like a real data guy and, for our concerns about student privacy data, he may be a key player to convince in order to protect those privacy rights. Mr. Herndon, like Superintendent Banda, comes from a small district where, according to the bio, they just passed their first (!) capital levy. The enormity of the facilities and capital issues in SPS may look like a tidal wave to him. On the other hand, he seems to support alternative...