Seattle Schools Community Forum

So many threads to get to including Director Burke's meeting on the reopening of Lincoln High (about 250 in attendance.)  And, he has the sole director community meeting tomorrow, Oct. 29th, at the Fremont Library from 11 am-1 pm. If Richard Sherman of the Seahawks played Quiddich who would be on his team (and guess who is a Seahawks fan ?)

Show the kids what a bear - Big Baloo - looked like right before he goes into hibernation.  (With that physique, I think he's good to go.) From the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Just wanted to point out the powerful story from KUOW's Ann Dornfeld on Black Lives Matter Day.  She, like all the press, was not allowed into any Seattle school to observe and report on the day but she's a resourceful journalist and went to Highline SD.   Seems like this class did just fine with their discussion with her present.

From OSPI: H ow many states scored statistically higher than Washington?

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.”

From Diane Ravitch: Rick Hess directs education studies at the conservative, free-market American Enterprise Institute. We often disagree but I am often impressed that he doesn’t follow “the party line” of free-marketeers. This article is a good example of Hess demonstrating his sharp intellect and his willingness to stray from the right-wing corral. I absolutely echo Ravtich's comments.  Hess may be a right-wing thinker but he's an honest one.  He is willing to call out BS on BOTH sides.  He is also willing to say it like it is which probably makes a lot of people on the right wring their hands. His piece is long but worthy reading.  In a nutshell:

I wouldn't exactly call this hell freezing over but maybe it's a bit of a frosting over.  I cover two views about accountability and NCLB. From The Hill (a blog about Congress) comes this op-ed from two different leaders of ed reform - corporate and reality-based.  The authors are: Linda Darling-Hammond is professor of Education at Stanford University and faculty director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Paul T. Hill is research professor at the University of Washington and founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. (Disclaimer: I think Darling-Hammond is brilliant and should have been Obama's pick for Secretary of Education.  On the other hand, I have very little appreciation for Dr. Hill's thoughts on public education.)

 Update: First, still nothing about the charter applicants and the upcoming Charter Commission meeting.  Still odd. Second, there was an article this morning. about public school funding throughout the country that may give some insight into why our state legislature drags its feet on fully-funding education.  To whit: nearly all states doubled or tripled the amount of money spent on public schools from 1970 to 2010; but the growth has been uneven But the biggest per student spending has been in nine states, with seven of those in the NE Seven of ten states with the least growth in spending are - you guessed - in the West and yes, Washington State is one of them. Despite what Washington Policy Center wants to tell you (they regularly say that the average WA State student spending is about $12k), according to Ed Week, Washington State spending is about $9,497 (adjusted for inflation from the 1969-70 rate of $4,794).    The top six states spend ab...

I'll let Diane Ravitch explain these newly released scores to you (as she's the expert) - bold mine: The National Assessment of Educational Progress ( NAEP ) just released the results of its Economics test for high school seniors. Only 18% of students ranked “below basic,” which surely included high numbers of students who are English language learners and have serious disabilities.  82% are basic or above. A remarkable 43% of students ranked “proficient” or above. Proficient is excellent performance. Having served on the NAEP Board for seven years, I believe that a student who is proficient demonstrates A level performance. 3% of students rank “advanced.” This is A++ performance.  In any classroom where 43% of the students earn a solid A, great things are happening. Congratulations to our high school social studies teachers! What is interesting is that NAEP reports that there is no significant change from the overall scores from 206-2012. From N...

The White House announced that it has received about $118M in commitments from private companies to support public education.   From the AP story:

I missed the start of this but there is still time to access a ton of good education articles at Education Week , the online education news website, during their free Open House week. It started March 17 but goes thru Wednesday, the 24th. Most of the time you have to pay to read articles there. Here's some good ones that I found: STEM - a lot of good articles. STEM Defection Seen to Occur After High School - Schools produce a strong supply of STEM candidates but many go into other fields once they graduate from high school, a study says. STEM as a Curriculum - "We must first recognize STEM as a unitary idea, not simply a grouping of 4 disciplines in a convenient, pronounceable acronym," write Jan Morrison & Raymond V. Barlett. This is written by the woman who runs the institute, TIES (Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM) which I had hoped the district might use to create the program at Cleveland. Going from STEM to STEAM - interesting article about additi...