Seattle Schools Community Forum

The members of their legislative education committee took that vote because 74% of students opted out.  From WMTW :

Update:  Packed auditorium with SEA members with lobby nearly filled as well. Kudos to Washington Middle School volunteers - big applause. Following by big tension after Bernardo Ruiz finished his presentation on the annual Education and Racial Equity.  A man stood up and shouted at Bernardo to tell the truth about Middle College.  He wouldn't stop and President Carr said she would clear the room if need be.  He shouted, "*** you!" to the Board and left in a fury. As for the transfers of money, I note that the presentation on the movement of money from the Capital Budget to Operations budget changed and asked Ken Gotsch about him.  He knew nothing and seemed confused. I am VERY suspicious of what is going on with these dollars for the Interfund loan and the Operations and Capital budgets. end of update  Tonight's School Board meeting looks to have one of the longest agendas I have ever seen (and therefore, possibly one of the longest meetings ev...

Thanks to Ann Donovan for this. From OSPI's Smarter Balanced Top 10 Reasons Why Washington is Making the Switch  In the "who says" category - #1 Washington’s new state learning standards in English language arts and math (Common Core) are designed to prepare students for career, college, and life. In the "what the heck does this mean" category - #3 The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium took advantage of each member state’s technical, practical, and political expertise to ensure a blend of everyone. In the "liar, liar" category - #4 Quicker results - Individual scores will be available within three weeks of a student completing the summative tests.

Remember when you got the message from SPS that said: The timing of the state assessment score reports has changed from June to September. SPS went on to say: Due to unanticipated delays at the state level, the district will now send score reports home in September.  September is the typical timing for state assessment score reports, but the district this year had initially anticipated they would be ready earlier. That "earlier" was never June so why they said that I don't know.  How do I know it was never June? I asked OPSI.

From Diane Ravitch's column (this is a parent who wrote to Seattle Opt Out: This spring the SBA was rolled out in grades 3-8, 10 and 11. We were delighted to learn that there were many opt outs across the Seattle School District, as well as in every corner of the State. We formed the Seattle Opt Out Group in Dec. 2014 and have worked tirelessly in the first half of 2015 to inform parents about opting out and the problems that high stakes standardized tests bring with them. We plan to continue our efforts in earnest over the summer and into the next school year. Yesterday, however, we learned of an event that has us quite alarmed, and we want to proceed in as informed a manner as possible. Apparently at a Seattle middle school the principal forbade students who opted out of the SBA to attend a year-end school carnival last Friday. A parent reached out to us and sent us this note: Here is my daughter’s experience with being excluded from the Denny Carnival ...

From the SchoolBeat Newsletter just sent - SBAC scores not available until Sept: "Expect state test scores in September.  The timing of the state assessment score reports has changed from June to September. These are the score sheets from your student's spring Smarter Balanced tests in reading, writing and math. Last month, the district told families that the score reports would likely be sent home with final report cards in June. Due to unanticipated delays at the state level, the district will now send score reports home in September. Scores also will be posted online to the Source in September. September is the typical timing for state assessment score reports, but the district had initially anticipated they would be ready earlier. Thank you for your patience as we work with this new assessment system. To learn more, please see our Smarter Balanced web page."

Sometimes you cannot believe what you read.  Indeed that was my reaction to both Principal Clark's explanation of his not allowing any student who opted out of the SBAC to go to the school carnival last Friday.  Below is the explanation I received from SPS Communications, along with an e-mail that Director McLaren sent to him and my reply. Read my reply carefully because you will see why this  - is - wrong.  (bold mine) The 2015 My Best Performance Carnival at Denny International Middle School In addition to many special activities throughout the year, for the past ten years, Denny has hosted a carnival at the end of the state testing period for those scholars who have given their best performance. The scholars’ effort is tracked on a form called the “My Best Performance Rubric,” a copy of which is located in their student planners. The rubric includes categories such as: ·         positive attitude · ...

Update :  another Denny parent let me know there was no separate Denny opt-out form.  What appears to have happened is that only students who took the SBAC  and completed a "Denny Way"form got to go the school carnival.  The form was given ONLY to students who took the SBAC. So for the students who didn't take the SBAC, they were "empowering" students by having them write "appeals" to go to the carnival.   I don't know how many students who opted out got to attend the carnival  based on appeal. end of update A Denny parent let me know that their opt-out info from Denny had a tiny notation at the bottom about if a student opts out of the SBAC, he/she might not get to do some activities. That apparently has now taken the form of the principal, Jeff Clark, not allowing students who opted-out to attend a school festival that was held last Friday. I'm thinking some people would find that punitive and unfair but that's just me. I...

As further proof that WA State PTA (and National) seem to be moving further and further into the ed reform camp, comes a message from WSPTA urging members to support HB 2214. The first thing to know about HB 2114 is that one of its authors is Chad Magandez, ed reformer thru and thru.  He loves charters, is connected to LEV The second item to note is that this bill is pretty much a wolf in sheep's clothing.   While it says it reduces the number of tests for graduation, it really does this: If you read the bill, you will see it accelerates the SBAC test monopoly from 2019 to 2016 and it will severely harm the Opt Out Movement by imposing a fourth year of advanced math on anyone who opts out of the test in high school - giving Washington state the most draconian graduation requirements in the nation. So not only does it speed up SBAC, it will NOT preserve a parent's right to refuse their student from taking test (and I see that in the House of Representatives, ther...

There is an issue going on with Sand Point Elementary and the sudden pulling of a grant from the Families & Education levy because SP's principal is leaving.  The school planned staff around that grant and are now scrambling because of the rescinding of the grant.  The school is looking for answers and so far no one - from the City or the District - has any to give them. This could mean dire things for other schools who may get F&E grants and then see them taken back should they lose their principal. I have never seen any documentation mentioning this nor did the Department of Early Childhood and Education staff at a recent Board Work Session on the levy mention this possibility.  I'll have full details after I get some answers to queries I have put to various stakeholders. Today I will be attending an odd sort of panel discussion on charter schools at UW via the Evans Schools of Public Affairs.  It's called Charter Schools: Problems and Poss...

1)  Ask the School Board to write a letter like this one from the Palm Beach County School Board and tell them to send it to Governor Inslee and State Superintendent Dorn.  Write to them at : schoolboard@seattleschools.org. Partial (full letter in link):

I ask because I'm seeing various comments on this issue.  So let us know what you have heard and seen at your school (across any grade).  For example, one reader said that Garfield had a couple of late starts this week ....at 11 am. That's pretty late for the school day to begin.  Maybe leadership there thought it better for students to NOT come and have to hang around doing almost nothing rather than coming later. I also heard from a reader at Ingraham who said her daughter took the test (as a junior) and didn't find it all that hard but that she was very annoyed with sitting around for 45 minutes.  It all adds up to lost instructional time of which there are several factors: - the actual time to take an untimed test - the actual time for set-up to take the test (which apparently can be anywhere from 15 minutes to almost an hour). - time that is test prep (how you take the test) - time that is test prep (for what is on the test) Not to mention down time...

David Spring has written a lengthy explanation of what may or may not be coming with state testing.   It's called Comparing Three Graduation Requirement Options for Washington State. It is a lot of heavy reading (and it would require you to go read all these bills which I have not done yet) but I think it worthy.   In this article, we will compare three sets of high school graduation requirements currently being considered by the Washington state legislature. These three options are the current law which was enacted in 2013, House Bill 2214 and Senate Bill 6122. All of these three options are complex. We will therefore provide a comparison table at the end of this article to better help citizens understand the provisions and consequences of each option. Understanding the current Washington state law is important because if no bill is passed in the state legislature in 2015 to replace it, then the current Washington state law will continue to be in effect....

Why I love my readers?  They say the smartest (and darnest) things (about over testing):

The LA Times is reporting that spending for school board races in LA almost $4.6M.  LA is the second-largest district in the country.  Guess who's pouring the most money?  Charter school groups and then, the teachers union.  (LA has the highest charter school enrollment in the nation.) And, there's a new PAC in the mix and who are its top three donors?  A Wal-Mart heir, former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg and LA rich guy Eli Broad.  I do not expect to see that kind of firepower here mainly because we have no real ed reformers running.  (But I think the ed reformers and their elected officials proxies are going to continue to try to get what they want via the Legislature.) Thinking testing is out of hand here in the U.S.?  This was reported back in 2014 but worth mentioning here.

One piece of pretty bad news, especially for high school students and parents, is that the Class Pages are going off-line on June 1.  Apparently the district's switchover to a new system, SharpSchool, cannot extend until the end of school (the district blames the vendor) and so neither you nor your student will be able to access any homework, grades, etc. SPS to teachers: Teachers, students, and families will not have access to class pages the last 2 weeks of schools. We are working on available alternatives to help minimize disruption to schools. Teachers will be receiving additional communication about options for sharing files and announcements during the last two weeks of school.  We apologize for this added inconvenience. We had truly hoped for an extension to beyond the end of the school year to help ease this transition for all of our students and families, as well as for all our staff, especially those in schools. All the functions of class pages will be unava...

It is being reported that as of 9 am this morning, there had been issues with the wireless system at Seattle Schools.  It likely halted SBAC testing for at least an hour.  Outages and/or slow system may still happen.

Good News It is very pleasing to see different high schools do well with programs at their schools.  Ballard excels with video production, Roosevelt and Garfield with jazz bands and now Ingraham is doing great with their Rocket Club. Last Saturday, Ingraham participated in the Team America Rocketry Challenge in Virginia, coming in third.  Over 700 teams competed.  There were three Ingraham teams with Foxtrot winning 3rd and $1,000 for the school.  Each team had to create and build an under-two pound rocket by themselves.  They were judged on how close they came to their predicted trajectory and landing their rocket in less than 60 seconds. Foxtrot was just one foot off the 800-foot target and landed about 48 seconds after liftoff.  Team Foxtrot's first score of 1.0 was the best single flight score in the history of the competition.   Speaking of Ballard filmmakers , SPS Communications is reporting that Ballard was the ONLY school to w...

Monday, May 11th Curriculum&Instruction Policy Committee meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm.  Agenda The agenda is a long list of items, some policy issues (like student fees, student rights and responsibilities handbook) and a couple of very serious items.  (To note, each BAR usually has a list of supporting documents at the end of the BAR.  In the past, each supporting document had a live link.  I now see - with help from the Board office - that instead of making each listed document a live link, those documents now follow the listing of the documents.  I do not know when this changed.) One is the movement of Special Education from the Revised Comprehensive Corrective Action Plan to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Office of Superintendent Public Instruction (OSPI). OSPI has listed the School Board as an approver on the draft MOU.  Fiscal impact to this action will be $3,000,000 in federal Individuals wit...

Thanks to reader Lynn who found out that yes, the SBAC scores will be used to find the students who can apply for highly capable programs. You have to ask yourself a couple of questions: - when was this going to be announced? - why is the district, once again, using a test that is not created to be a gatekeeper as a gatekeeper test? From the head of testing, Eric Anderson: On using Smarter Balanced Assessment Data