Seattle Schools Community Forum

With CBS, director Davis Guggenheim, will be showing a new two-hour documentary called Teach about four teachers.  (I note that they all look to be under 30 which I find troubling.)  The show will air on Friday, Sept. 6th at 8:00 pm. It is to be a big event with Queen Latifah hosting the show and "will pay tribute to America's teachers." The two-hour program, set to air Sept. 6 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, will go directly into schools all over the country, looking at the school district classrooms of several teachers, including Matt Johnson, a 4th grade teacher at McGlone Elementary, Denver; Shelby Harris, 7th grade math teacher at Kuna Middle School, Kuna, Idaho and more. This is part of an effort with a group called Teach.org "to inform and engage students and recent graduates as they consider career choices.  The initiative aims to rebrand and reinvigorate interest in the teaching profession." Teach.org's site says they started out of the DOE.  It is...

Two items of interest from the Times. One is an editorial pushing for the district to fulfill its Special Education obligations to students.  One key paragraph: The School Board must demand a more informed, inclusive tone around special education.  Board discussions about special education services are frequently framed in terms of costs.  But board members must take care not to make special education a scapegoat for broader budget woes. Correct on all points but the district needs a clear assessment of the issue before them before they make any changes/corrections.  What is working, what isn't and how do principals/teachers feel?  I introduced myself to the new executive director of special education, Zakiyyah McWilliams, at the Board retreat, and she could not have been warmer.  I think an ability to make people feel welcome to come to her is a big step. But if the State does not even get close to meeting McCleary AND now OSPI is threatening to...

A reader asked about the Arbor Heights Elementary charter forum last week.  It went well.  There were about 35 people there, mostly from Arbor Heights but some from other surrounding schools.  The principal, Christy Collins, was there along with several of their teachers.  (What was really nice is that some of the PTA leaders from Olympic View, who had also put on their own charter forum a couple of weeks back, came to this forum and stayed for a tour of the building.) It was well-organized (with little Halloween candy packages for all). As per Olympic View, I was the fact-checker with Beth Sigall, pro side (from the Lake Washington School district) and Kristen King, con side.  Both of them had very good PowerPoints and I think the audience appreciated that. (Note: I did an update as I misspelled Beth's name and got her district wrong in the first version.  My apologies.) What was somewhat different from the Olympic View charter forum was Beth's empha...

The education documentary, Race to Nowhere , will have a screening at Roosevelt High, sponsored by Bryant Elementary PTSA, Roosevelt High School and Assumption-St. Bridget School tomorrow night, Monday the 31st at 7 p.m. Online tickets are available here ; $10 for adults and $5 for students. General admission tickets will be sold at the door for $15. Student tickets will be $5 at the door. In the same vein, I note that Roger Ebert, the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, softened his thumbs up review of Waiting for Superman. He tweeted, “ Why maybe ‘Waiting for Superman’ wasn’t all that it seemed. If I’d known, my review would have been different. ” He then put a link to the Valerie Strauss article about the film in the Washington Post. On a different note, I was checking for information at the Bryant website and noticed that they have two principals. Anyone know why that is?

Big movie fan I am, I had to check out the Oscar nominations this morning. Without going over a lot of it, I just want to point out that my movie-going instincts were right. Waiting for Superman did not get a nomination for Best Documentary. Beyond the presentation of its POV, it just wasn't a well-organized film. (And hey, a local girl got nominated for best adapted screenplay AND best picture - Winter's Bone.)

The Seattle Times published a guest column discussing "Waiting for Superman" with a focus on what isn't shown in the movie.

Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large wrote today about the film Waiting for Superman.

I said it before, go see Waiting for Superman (or conversely, wait until it comes out on DVD). There are other films on education out there but you might want to judge for yourself since this one has received so much hype. As I said in my review, the film's website says it is an "exhaustive" of public education. Judge for yourself if you walk away understanding the history (total or recent) of public education in this country after you watch this film. Watch the film carefully and see if you see ONE, just one good to great regular public school shown OR even mentioned. It doesn't happen. Listen carefully (and don't blink) or you will see the ONE mention that oh, by the way, charters, overall, don't do better than regular public schools. (This is not a reason to not try them but yes, it's a reason to not believe they are the silver bullet that will cure all public education ills.) As I said in my review, it's interesting to hear Michelle Rhee (Op...

An editorial in today's Seattle Times buys into Waiting for Superman. As usual from Times editorials, it is a bit difficult to cut away the meaningless language and try to determine what the Times is trying to say. In this case, the message seems to be "Don't get complacent about education just because your school and teachers are okay - there are parts of the city where children are not doing well and it is up to you to fix that for them." However Ms Varner doesn't offer us any means for helping these students. Aside from that message of your responsibility to the less fortunate in your community, Ms Varner insinuates that the villian in this melodrama is the teachers' union - " the ills of public education's bloated bureaucracy: the high dropout rates, the widening achievement gap and powerful teachers unions that keep the conversation about adults rather than children " Where does she live? What color is the sky on her planet? Ms Varn...