Seattle Schools Community Forum

To note about tomorrow, Monday, March 30th, it appears there may be a large number of teachers who may go to Olympia to lobby against SB 5748.   This is the bill that would likely get Washington State back its NCLB waiver and give those districts control of some Title One dollars.  It would also start us down the road of including high-stakes testing in teacher evaluation. So if your school sees a couple of subs coming in tomorrow, that's probably why. 

Vermont says no .  From the Vermont government website, an op-ed by a member of their Board of Education: On Tuesday, March 17, 2015, the Vermont State Board of Education unanimously voted to suspend the use of Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) scores for the 2014-2015 school year for the purpose of annual school evaluation determinations. These English Language Arts and Mathematics assessments were developed to measure student mastery of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which were adopted in 2010. Until students' education has been guided by the new standards and schools have practiced administering and interpreting SBAC, the results will not support reliable and valid inferences about student performance and should not be used as the basis for any consequential purpose. Unless empirical studies confirm a sound relationship between performance on the SBAC and critical and valued life outcomes ("college and career-ready"), test res...

One reader sent along to me a response to her e-mail to Senator David Frockt over his vote on Senate bill 5748.  I'm printing it in its entirety below.  It is nuanced and carefully thought out.  I believe the Senator is probably speaking from a position of good faith in what he believes this bill to be.  Unfortunately, I do not share that trust/comfort that this bill is merely a way to get back the NCLB waiver.  If you read his letter, it seems like he thinks it does almost nothing and, of course, that makes no sense because no one created this bill just to do very little.  Perhaps it is just a foot in the door but it's kind of a Shaq foot in the door.  (I'm going to highlight relevant sections in red along with some comments.)