Seattle Schools Community Forum

KUOW has a story on the spending in the state superintendent race and spending for Erin Jones' campaign is ahead of Chris Reykdal. One of the largest independent expenditures in Washington state elections this year has come in the race for schools chief: the education reform organization Stand for Children's PAC has bought $164,887 worth of mailers for the Erin Jones campaign for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The PAC spent another $12,809 yesterday on last-minute robocalls for Jones's campaign.

The race for Supreme Court justices continues to heat up with the news that yet another billionaire has teamed up with a legislator to target Justice Barbara Madsen .  From KPLU :

I finally received one charter school's documents that I had requested via public disclosure; these were from Green Dot's Destiny Middle School.  Now it took some doing because initially a couple of charters did not want to give me anything, saying they weren't public schools.  When I pressed them on handing over documents that were created during the time that they were charter schools, then I got an okay but was put off to "March or April."  I'm still waiting for a couple of other schools.  (I note that Rep. Gerry Pollet also got this runaround which should tell you something.) Green Dot itself only sent them to me in hard copy which, of course, makes it more difficult to copy from and track.  They said they have to buy special "software" to send them to me electronically.  Guess what was in the huge stack of documents?  A letter dated October 2015 to a law firm saying that Green Dot would be sending them public disclosure documents...electron...

I may have mentioned it but to clarify, this "new" group, Act Now for Washington Students, is an astro-turf, Gates-funded group made up of DFER, League of Education Voters and Stand for Children.  You don't get more ed-form and Gates-guided than those three.

I thought it might be a good idea to review who's out there and what they have been doing.

Honestly, I think sometimes the Times does not think much of its readers.  For many of their education stories, they always manage to leave out very basic information.  Almost as if they wanted to slant a story. The latest laugher comes via Washington Stand for Children and their " petition" to the Legislature over voting to link test scores to teacher evaluations.  The House will have a public hearing on their bill on Monday. Along with supporting this bill, Stand for Children, one branch of a national advocacy group, has also lobbied for stricter teacher evaluations and more school choice. The group collected the 20,658 signatures mostly online over the past year, said spokeswoman Jeanette Lewis. It vetted the signatures by deleting those with duplicate or invalid email addresses. What's missing - from a reporting standpoint - is not truly explaining who Stand is and who funds them (Gates).  I note the Times uses the cagey "nation advocacy group" and N...

Stand has this "education" petition going around. Consider not signing it. First, note the source.  That should tell you all you need to know right there.  (What's funny is they want one word changed and claim it will "free" Washington from NCLB.  There's no way they can know that for sure.  Next, it is a GOOD thing that Washington State stood up to the feds on No Child Left Behind. Our districts lost the ability to decide how to use the money (and hey, that may mean they have to use it for the most direct services.) We should be telling our state legislators that while teachers and principals need to be evaluated, test scores should not be the main criteria.  All this talk about "personalizing" teaching to the student should be reflect in how teachers are evaluated.  If this crosses your desk, think about just deleting that e-mail and moving on.

A couple of readers asked about some people and organizations that they feel have been perhaps too quiet.

This particular thread will probably end up being quite long as there is both news to report from the actual meeting as well as the upshot of what we are going to end up getting for charter schools. The meeting was held in a conference room off the Governor's office.  There was a high wooden conference table with chairs that had low seats but high backs.  (I found this both funny and irritating because it had the effect of a bunch of kids sitting at an adults' table but you also could not see almost anyone's face as they spoke because the chairbacks block all views.) Not surprisingly, Steve Sundquist "volunteered" to chair the meeting (and, as I tweeted, I suspect he will end up chair of the commission).  To his credit, he's very good at chairing meetings.  I did not recognize anyone else not on the Commission except for long-time charter supporter, Jim Spady.  (He left the meeting quite frequently to confer with various people.)  I was seated next to ...

The Times continues its ed reform push and, as we have previously reported, they continue to do it both editorially and in their reporting.  The latest example is in an article about a "poll" for the A-F grading for schools bill currently in the Legislature.  (It passed in the Senate but hasn't gotten a committee vote yet in the House.) (Sorry, I can't link the story because of the Times' paywall.) The story does not say who commissioned the poll or who took the poll until the fifth paragraph.  That is very odd and would seem to indicate that the Times was more interested in pushing the results than what the poll was about and who created it. The article only states how many people took the poll (402) but not how many questions were on it nor what the questions were.  We all know what a push poll looks like and I suspect this was one of them.  It appears there was a question on the A-F bill which came out 66% for and 29% against (but what the other 5% ...

Amazing.  Not only is Stand for Children NOT a "education group"; now they are against basic democracy. Here's what they said yesterday: "Ask Seattle Public Schools to let the people lead on charter schools.  Instead of waiting to see what the will of the voters is, the Seattle School board wants to preempt our right to decide. That's not what we want from our elected officials" (And I note they didn't put this on their blog but in a super secret message to their supporters.)  But let's look at that request. We elect people to make decisions on whatever entity they represent.  That's their job.  And, we ask public officials - all the time - about their stands on issues.  Jay Inslee, Rob McKenna, everyone. And yet, Stand believes that somehow the Board is to stand mutely by over an issue that will directly affect every single child in SPS (and the taxpayers of Seattle).  How much reasoning is there in that thought?  I submit there is...

In what might be considered a learning experience to other candidates, Publicola takes gives the "loser" tag to Stand for Children over their one-note support to legislative candidates.  I'll let them tell you about it (bold mine): "In this year’s primary, the hard-line education reform group Stand for Children supported Democrat Guy Palumbo as the insurgent Democrat against incumbent 1st District Democratic state Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe (D-1, Bothell). Stand believed that McAuliffe, as chair of the senate education committee, had blocked their reformist agenda. PTA dad Palumbo was a strong backer of their agenda. However, Palumbo, who lost in the primary, de-prioritized Stand’s agenda (including charter schools) today by endorsing McAuliffe. In a statement, Palumbo said: The primary campaign was defined, by outside groups and the press, as a fight over education and charter schools. It was probably inevitable in a race that pitted the head of the...

The Seattle Times had an update to its news that the Washington State PTSA reviewed I-1240 and, despite their past support for charters, stated it was opposed to I-1240.  (Note: Ramona Hattendorf, WA State PTSA, let me know that they are not going to actively campaign against the measure but do not support it.) Apparently Stand for Children thinks that the folks at the WSPTSA can't read. Shannon Campion, a spokesman for the initiative, said she was surprised by the PTA’s decision. “We respectfully disagree with the PTA board’s position and view it as essentially a misreading because of the strong parent involvement in this initiative,” Campion said. Really?  Because: - the word parent is in there 16 times and only once used as a suggestion for charters to include parent engagement in their proposals (not that they have to nor that it will be enforced) - parents get two things in this charter initiative.  One, the ability to flip ANY existing school, failing...

 Update (Wednesday afternoon) - Interesting chart from the Wall Street Journal article on the GAO report on charters underenrolling Special Ed students. Update (Wednesday morning): From at reader at Diane Ravitch's blog: Change.org is still collecting sigs for the group. Their petitions remain. The only thing they have agreed to is to stop offering them paid promotion of their petitions. Please read the HufPo article more closely and you’ll see this is so. They have already gained over a million sigs through these automatic ads. Bottom line: Don’t sign any petitions on Change.org until you feel certain that you are not automatically registered as a “member” of Students First or Stand for Children without your knowledge. end of update Remember how it has been reported that StudentsFirst, Michelle Rhee's organization, had petitions at Change.org that if you signed them, made you a member of StudentsFirst?  Well, I guess Change.org had a change of heart because...

A bit tepid, their website .  It's called - big surprise - "Yes on 1240".  (Interestingly, a web designer I know told me "No on 1240" domain name is taken - very clever.  Only I don't think anyone would want it because, as the designer pointed out, it would read in the URL "noon1240".) There are several things to note about this website: There is NO link to the actual initiative.  Why wouldn't you want people to be able to read what you want them to support?  That says it all.   They say "There will also be an evaluation at the end of the five-year period to determine whether additional public charter schools should be allowed."  See, it's not a pilot project.  Also, if this thing passes, I'd bet money they will ask for the cap to be raised in three years. Of course, they are urging people to "simply" sign the petition so voters can "consider the facts."  I find this very funny because it has NEVER...

Of possible interest to our readers: From Education Week - an article about "a new breed of national education advocacy organizations " and the debate "about whether they can play a grassroots 'ground game' comparable to that of labor. Another article on these groups, this one from Education Next, about Fight Club for ERAOs (Education reform advocacy organizations) in D.C.  You remember the first rule of Fight Club?  There is NO Fight Club.  Why this emergence of these groups?  This article links it to charter operation frustration.  This is possibly the best article I have read in summing up these groups, how they interact and their growing influence. Many of the groups talk to one another frequently,, through a regular conference call organized by the Education Trust, at meetings organized by funders such as the Walton Family Foundation, and at conferences convened by groups such as the NewSchools Venture Fund.   The 34 organizations in the...

I got a tweet from Stand for Children - Washington: Everything you need to know about non-profit public charter schools. with a link to this page .

If you were a prominent education advocacy group and you joined a coalition of groups for a major initiative to be put on the ballot in November, don't you think you might actually have some information on your website?  I mean given your address is the address of record and your chief of staff is the public info contact for the initiative.  Not LEV.  Odd. So the News Tribune has a good story with both press releases from the coalition group and the WEA.  I had to smile at Rep. Pettigrew's statement: “This initiative will finally bring Washington into the 21st century in terms of educational opportunities for public school students,” Charter schools are the most cutting edge thing you can do in education today?  If that's true, we're in real trouble. What I didn't realize (and this is useful) is how tight the timing is to get the signatures (so that means spending a heck of a lot of money just to get on the ballot): Supporters acknowledge they won’...

When Stand for Children came to town, I was contacted by a very nice woman who sat down with me to explain who they were and what they were doing.  I found it interesting but I also felt confused.  Were they working with parents or not?  I tried to get a bead on if they were trying to compete or compliment PTA.  It sounded good but vague.  One thing I do recall is her telling me they had a specific non-profit status so that they could lobby.  That should have told me something but I wished her luck and went on my way. Here's the thing; since 2009, Stand, both locally and nationally, changed their tune.  They suddenly morphed into a less-than-grassroots organization and into a lobbying behemoth.   Their motives, their tactics were on display when their founder, Jonah Edelman, went off in a videotape that was widely seen.  It was a huge embarrassment but that didn't slow Stand much. It is clear that Stand, StudentsFirst (Michelle Rhee...

I've been receiving e-mails of parents receiving robocalls from Stand for Children and A+Washington. First, I thought it was discounted that these things work.  Even when Mayor McGinn calls, I generally don't listen (sorry Mr. Mayor, really busy).  Apparently Stand and A+Washington think they work. Here's two calls (that one person received - note, this person does not even live in Rep. Pettigrew's district so even more annoying): Hi, this is Ann from Stand For Children. I'm calling to publicly thank your legislator, Representative Eric Pettigrew, for his leadership on education in this year's legislative session. Thanks to Representative Pettigrew, kids in Washington state will have better access to great teachers, and principals will have the flexibility to evaluate teachers on performance and skills, not just seniority. Next time you see Representative Pettigrew, please thank him for his leadership for children this year. Hi, this is Mary Grace from A...