Seattle Schools Community Forum

There has been some lively discussion about the steps that Dr. Goodloe-Johnson took to improve schools in Southeast Seattle (if any) and the positive impact of those steps (if any). Because this discussion came in another thread with another primary topic, I thought it would be useful to bring the discussion out to its own thread where it would have better visibility.

This is the best guest column about the school district that I have ever read in the Seattle Times. You absolutely have to read this. You have to encourage other people to read this. And then you have to bring these questions to the Board and to the District staff. The column finishes like this: There are two districts in Seattle. Our children attend the failing one. What is the district's plan? How much longer will we have to wait for the kinds of schools our children deserve? The District's plan, as we know, is to do more of what hasn't worked in the past. The District's plan, as we know, is for these communities to wait for ever. The District's response to low-performing schools is described in their Performance Management System. It's all about the teachers: tighter control on teacher lessons, replacing teachers, teacher coaches, more pay for the teachers. There is nothing in the plan for the students despite the fact that all of the schools tha...

There has been some discussion of Rainier Beach High School on the NSAP thread and it has been along the lines of "What can be done to make Rainier Beach a school of choice for the families living in that neighborhood?" The fact that we are asking this question after three years of the Southeast Education Initiative is conclusive proof that the Initiative was an abject failure. The primary purpose of the project was to make Rainier Beach, Cleveland, and Aki Kurose schools of choice. Neither Rainier Beach nor Aki Kurose are schools of choice and Cleveland is closed. STEM has moved into the building. Bird asked: So what would fix Rainier Beach so that families and students would choose to attend it? What could the district do to make it attractive? Isn't it to some extent a case of it not being well attended because it's not well attended? Rabbit wrote: Since most of the families living in the RBHS attendance area choose not to send their kids to RBHS, the first...

There were three schools that were the focus of the Southeast Education Initiative. Although that project was completed at the end of the past school year, let's remember that it formed the pilot for school Performance Management as the District will practice it going forward. So what was the performance for those three schools as measured by the WASL/MSP/HSPE? Rainier Beach High School Reading pass rates: 2006-2007 - 70.0% 2007-2008 - 69.1%, down 0.9 2008-2009 - 61.5%, down 7.6 2009-2010 - 54.9%, down 6.6 Cumulative change: down 15.1 Math pass rates: 2006-2007 - 37.4% 2007-2008 - 28.6%, down 8.8 2008-2009 - 17.6%, down 11.0 2009-2010 - 14.1%, down 3.5 Cumulative change: down 23.3 Writing pass rates: 2006-2007 - 72.0% 2007-2008 - 92.7%, up 20.7 2008-2009 - 82.4%, down 10.3 2009-2010 - 82.5%, up 0.1 Cumulative change: up 10.5 Science pass rates: 2006-2007 - 10.5% 2007-2008 - 10.9%, up 0.4 2008-2009 - 9.8%, down 1.1 2009-2010 - 8.0%, down 1.8 Cumulative...

The results of the Southeast Initiative came up in the recent Board discussion of the Cleveland STEM proposal. Director DeBell said that the Southeast Initiative results were disappointing and reflected failure. Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson responded both that the Southeast Initiative was, in fact, successful and that three years is far too short a time frame for measuring results. Both of her statements were false. Let's take the second one first, the idea that three years is just too short of a period to look for improvement. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was superintendent when the Southeast Initiative was debated and adopted. She was superintendent when the three-year time frame was set. She was superintendent when the accountability benchmarks were set. In fact, she set them. She has been superintendent for the entire life of the project. Every decision about the Southeast Initiative has been made with her implicit approval if not her explicit approval. She has reported to the Board a...

From the Candidate Scorecard thread, this discussion started: On 9/8/09 at 1:11 PM, tg wrote... As a new parent in the south end, I'm curious how the board will make an effort to keep families like mine in the public system if the assignment plan seems to be moving more towards keeping kids going to the schools located closest to their home. If my choices come down to sending the kid to a school with less programs and support, moving, or finding a way to pay for private school, I'll probably pick one of the latter two choices if Seattle's south end schools continue to lag behind the north. I never thought I'd send my kid to private school, but the more I read this blog and other things on Seattle's schools, the less inclined I am to stay in them, at least down here in south Seattle. At 3:04 PM, Charlie Mas asked... tg, I hope you're still around and can answer an open-ended question. What would it take for you to choose your neighborhood school? What would the...

The OSPI has released the WASL pass rates for the tests taken in the Spring of this year. In general, the results are not good. Of the 48 different pass rates for the high schools (12 high schools with a reading, writing, math and science pass rate for each), 33 of them are down and only 15 of them are up. And 6 of those 15 are in science, which is still in the early growth phase. Areas of particular concern are the schools in the Southeast Education Initiative. All four pass rates for Rainier Beach High School were down, some down sharply. Rainier Beach has the lowest pass rate for all of the high schools in three of the four categories. I don't know what the accountability goals were for Rainier Beach around WASL pass rates, but there is no way that the school met the goals. Cleveland high school saw an increase in two of the four pass rates - for math and science. Of course they are still next to last in reading (only RBHS is lower), next to last in math (only RBHS is lower), an...

Let me see if I can keep all this straight. We have a number of balls in the air right now and I want to have a sense of what's going on with a diverse set of issues. Please remind me of anything I've left out. 1) Follow up and fall out from Capacity Management Plan A) Design Teams are meeting but their authority - relative to the principal's authority - remains unclear. In the absence of a clear sense of their authority, their purpose remains unclear. There's a rising concern that they have neither. B) Open Enrollment has been delayed and the School Fair has been cancelled. C) There is supposed to be a second phase of Capacity Management for high schools. But no one is talking about it, when it will start, or how it will work. D) The Capacity Management Plan was flawed in a number of ways, but there is no sign that anyone in the District leadership is interested in fixing those flaws. 2) Work on the new Student Assignment Plan continues. A) It has supposedly completed ...

Just like the Superintendent, I keep coming back to accountability. The difference is that for her, it is all in the future, while for me it is all in the hypothetical. The Superintendent talks about accountability - and she talks about it incessently - as if it were something that we should expect next year or the following year. It's something that she is going to insist upon. The Board seems to have caught the accountability bug, too. They throw that word around like seed for chickens. But I haven't seen them look for any, expect any, or demand any. I keep wondering what they are waiting for. They have had opportunities. There was supposed to be a set of accountability requirements for the Southeast Initiative. They were about a year late - to the point that the first year's numbers came before the first year's benchmarks - and no one has mentioned them this year. No one mentioned the specific targets that were required to continue the expanded transportation for the...

Hello I have been meaning to do this for quite sometime, but I just found my copy of this. There are concrete metrics that Rainier Beach , Cleveland , and Aki Kurose are going to be held accountable to. These metrics will be used to determine if the SE Initiative is a success or failure. There are 4 Academic Milestones, each with multiple Academic Achievement Metrics. I don't know how this will come across, since I am copying an Excel Spreadsheet, but here are the metrics: Academic Milestone Academic Achievement Metric Cross-Milestone 1-1 Annual Enrollment 2-1 Annual Average Attendance 9th Graders Ready for High School 3-1 On-time 9th graders earning at least five credits (%) 10th Graders Passing WASL 4-1 Reading WASL (%) 4-2 Math WASL (%) 4-3 Writing WASL (%) 4-4 Science WASL (%) 4-5 Met AYP Students Ready for College & Work 5-1 Graduates meetin...

Hello I saw this as a sidebar to an article posted on March 28th in Seattle's Child: http://www.seattleschild.com/article/20080328/SCM02/301450785&template=SCMart Rainier Beach High School’s enrollment has been dropping for years. Now, with about 300 students, it is smaller than some Seattle elementary schools. Seattle Public Schools estimates at least 1,300 high school students in the southeast part of the city pass by Rainier Beach and go elsewhere – many opting for north end schools. Rainier Beach is one of three schools “in glaring need of assistance,” says Carla Santorno, the district’s chief academic officer. The district is helping with a new effort called the Southeast Education Initiative. They’ll spend between $800,000 and $900,000 each year – for the next three years – to increase enrollment and academic achievement at Rainier Beach, Cleveland High School and Aki Kurose Middle School. Each school received $25,000 in September to figure out what their needs are. The s...

This article about the SE Initiative was in this morning's Times. Will this district ever, ever learn not to make promises they don't know how to keep? (You'll note, I didn't say promises they don't intend to keep; they do that as well but this one went off half-baked as Charlie has noted several times.) Basically, the district has gone beyond what I knew about the SE Initiative. I knew there were to be additional resources driven to those schools; more AP for the high schools, more yellow-bus service, beefing up the curriculum. But it turns out that there were other promises like bonuses to teachers who teach at those schools. From the article: "Some members of the board are rethinking the Southeast Initiative, the district's much-lauded effort to improve three underperforming South End schools: Aki Kurose Middle School and Rainier Beach and Cleveland high schools. The School Board launched the initiative last year with $250,000 and a three-year pla...