Seattle Schools Community Forum

Fortune Magazine Fortune magazine has a special report that came out this week on Common Core - Business Gets Schooled. It provides a window into the thinking of big business and public education and folks, it is, by turns, sad and horrific.  This being Fortune, they kind of "tsk tsk" but more over the naviete of some (see Bill Gates) than what these titans of industry say about children and learning. Please - if you don't read the article, don't read my entire thread - scroll down to read what Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil has to say to you as parents about your children. (I'll highlight it in red.) What's equally fascinating is that any dissent mentioned in the article by ordinary folks gets the "blogger moms" attitude with a complete brush-off of what noted education experts have said about CC.  It's like all the dissenters are just the anonymous, ignorant and unwashed masses.  You know, the little people. They also chose to l...

It is becoming very clear that both Democrats and Republicans are going to have public education as a major talking point in the 2016 Presidential election.  This is good and bad.  Good because those voters who are paying attention will be able to clearly see who values what and, hopefully, why. It's bad because it may fracture one or both parties. It may make or break candidates (see Chris Christie who is his own worst enemy).   Both parties embrace "ed reform," just not in the same ways.  Interestingly, they both embrace new pre-school efforts, both at the federal and state levels.   First up, the Republicans.  Republicans seemingly don't know what to do with themselves.  There is furious backpedaling all over the place (see Governor Fallin in Oklahoma who was for but now against Common Core).  The conservatives have two major problems. 1) the Tea Party.  Like that mosquito in the night that just buzzes in your ear, the...

One story comes from California where a California superior court overturned laws related to the employment of teachers and, specifically, the use of tenure.  The other is the defeat of the House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor. The tenure story is somewhat akin to the story on Common Core.  Whatever your views on standards (CC) or whatever your views on teacher tenure (California), how we all got to this place needs some real notice.  (As I previously reported, a rather long expose at the Washington Post revealed for all to see that Bill Gates, once he got convinced about Common Core, was THE driving force behind Common Core.  It's not a pretty road.  Same with the California ruling this week.) So about the California ruling, known as the Vergara Decision. 

First off - read Anthony Cody's column from his Living in Dialogue slot at Education Week.  READ IT in its entirety.   Why?  Because it gives quite the total picture of Common Core and why so many - yes, including Tea Party folks - are against it.  Worried about it.  And will fight it.  You should be, too, if only to protect your child's privacy. Here's the basics from his column but again, READ IT: "1. Sharing of student and teacher data with third party developers of all sorts, with no guarantees of privacy.  As noted in this post, there are plans in place in some states such as Illinois and New York, and others as well, to collect massive amounts of data, which will be housed in a cloud based databank maintained by inBloom, a non-profit created by the Gates Foundation for this purpose."

This issue of what Congress can fund under the Constitution seems to have finally reached public education. If you read any comments after an education story in the Seattle Times, you always get the people who ask why we fund food for free/reduced lunch students or make food at all (bring your own lunch). They ask why the districts fund transportation. They ask why the districts fund bilingual education. I think some of this is the fear that the focus (and the money) isn't on direct teaching and learning and some may be people who feel parents are responsible to get their children fed and to school. (No matter that many of those writing probably had and used transportation and the cafeteria in their public school when they were kids.) Justice Scalia (one of my least favorite Supreme Court justices) just came out saying that women (and for that matter men and he probably meant gay men) are not protected from discrimination under the Constitution. "If the current society wan...