Seattle Schools Community Forum

Wednesday, March 9th Work Session from 4:30-7:45 pm.  Agenda Three different operations of the district will be discussed. First is Internal Audit, second is Technology Services (about 5:15 pm) and third is Assessments (about 6:15 pm.)

Tuesday, June 4th The Board will be evaluating the Superintendent in an Executive Session.  I would think that he would get a pretty favorable evaluation given that he has filled some key posts.  As well, at yesterday's Board retreat, various people were thanking others.  Director Carr said, about Banda's efforts on the Strategic Plan, that she appreciated his collaborative attitude as compared to the previous SP which she labeled "top-down." Wednesday, June 5th Board Meeting , starting at 4:15 pm.   Agenda . I regret to inform you that, once again, the school calendar for next year has been pulled off the agenda by the Superintendent.  I would assume this is about the teachers contract but this is now getting very late for next year's calendar.   Cleveland High School will name its library after a teacher who taught there for 25 years, Edward Landon, and was beloved by students. The district is getting a grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundat...

More stories on the hopeful side. From Scholastic , a story about the superintendent of what is considered the "best" public school district in the country.  That would be Mooresville Graded School District, outside of Charlotte, NC.  The article is called 10 Lessons From the Best District in the Country .  From the article: The district undertook a massive “21st Century Digital Conversion” in 2007. Students now frequently work in groups, and they use one of dozens of interactive learning platforms instead of textbooks. Rather than lecturing, teachers act as facilitators, circulating among groups or leading students in interactive lessons. Results of this transformation are off the charts—the graduation rate for African-American students was 95 percent in 2012, up from 67 percent five years earlier. The overall graduation rate is the third highest in the state, and 88 percent of 2012 graduates are attending college, compared with 74 percent in 2007. Mooresville has ac...

I mentioned previously that I had attended the Assessment Taskforce meeting on Feb. 21st.  I wanted to make note of several things I noticed: - Organized - very much appreciated - Good facilitator who kept things on track - The group is going to be able to look at the MAP test.  I think this is great because as members of this Taskforce, they need what they are talking about when it comes to this discussion. - Two principals - from Mercer and Denny - came in to talk about what was happening at their schools.  A little bit of cheerleading there for MAP but I think the Taskforce took it with a grain of salt.  The only odd thing was the Denny principal saying they had a data wall with kids' scores on it.  I hope not.  - As in any group, there are a few people who speak often and the rest listen.  I hope that the listeners don't allow the discussion to always follow what the speakers want it to be.  That's a facilitator's job. - The head of C...

Tonight's School Board meeting still has lots of speaker slots open. From yesterday's Work Session on Strategic Plan Guiding Principles , a draft document . It's a lot of the same stuff you'd find anywhere.  I'm not sure what specifics will come out of this document. Don't like/believe:   Strengthen family engagement through transparent communications and continue to build partnerships with city, business and community leaders that support student achievement.  Transparent?  As President DeBell has secret meetings (and I'd like to know if the other Board members know this) with Tim Burgess, I'm not sure about that transparency.  And, check out how they want to " strengthen family engagement "?  See that word "parents" anywhere?  That word is not used a single time in this document.  That's where you stand in the Strategic Planning.  Like: Implement an information and communication technology infrastructure and enviro...

From SPS Communications: Families and parents will have a chance to talk with Seattle Public Schools staff on April 4 about the 2011 "re-norming" of their children's Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test – as well other questions related to MAP testing. The meeting will be held 5-6 p.m., in Room 2700 at the John Stanford Center. SPS staff, including Mark Teoh from Research, Evaluation, and Assessment (REA) and Bob Vaughan from Advanced Learning, will be joined by John Cronin from the Northwest Evaluation Association (the makers of the MAP assessment). The meeting will take place prior to the School Board meeting. For questions about this event, please contact the REA department at research@seattleschools.org . Family and Parent meeting on MAP testing Wednesday, April 4 from 5-6 p.m. Room 2700 John Stanford Center 2445 3rd Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98134

A new Gates Foundation report (with Scholastic) has just come out called Primary Sources: 2012 - America's Teachers on the Teaching Profession. They surveyed about 10,000 teachers via e-mail and in person about schools, their classrooms, student and teacher performance and assessment, tenure, family involvement, job satisfaction and digital content.  It was not revealed to the teachers who was sponsoring the survey.  One chart that jumped out at me is on page 12 called "I mpact that various effects would have on improving academic achievement". Will you look at that - Family involvement and support was picked to be "very strong" or "strong" by 98% of the teachers.   High expectations was second at 96%.  Principals was the third choice at 91%.  And coming in fourth (Earth to Bill) - lower class sizes at 90%. Interestingly, lower class size was more important to teachers of older students.  What came in low on the scale for teachers?  A longe...

I read these two articles and thought, "What are we doing?" and "How did we get here?" The first is a blog entry from the Washington Post blog, The Answer Sheet, by Valerie Strauss who, in turn, had a guest blogger, Marion Brady.   It's called, Revealed: The School Board Member Who Took a Standardized Test.    The board member failed the test.  But that's not really the story.  Here's what he had to say:

There are 41 schools that have opted to do school-wide MAP testing this fall.   (All schools have to test new-to-the district students in the fall but obviously, that's a much smaller number.)  That's a fair number of schools and somewhat surprising. I'd love to know each school's reasoning (and would it be the same school to school).  If you see your school on this list, ask your principal and let us know. There are six high schools: Sealth, Cleveland, Franklin, Interagency, Rainier Beach and West Seattle.   There are four K-8s: Blaine, Madrona, Orca and South Shore. There are three middle schools; Denny, Mercer and Whitman. There are 28 elementaries : Alki, Arbor Heights, Dearborn Park, Dunlap, Emerson, Gatewood, Hawthorne, Hay, Highland Park, Kimball, Lafayette, Laurelhurst, Lawton, Loyal Heights, Maple Elementary, MLK, Jr., McGilvra, Montlake, Olympic Hills, Olympic View, Queen Anne, Sandpoint, Stevens, Van Asselt, Viewlands and Wing Luke. The...

I wanted to follow up on some notes I had take from the C&I meeting about MAP testing.  (I'm going to do a separate thread on instructional material waivers as this one is quite long.)   The Committee is made up of Chair Martin-Morris, Peter Maier and Betty Patu but in a somewhat unusual action, they were joined by Director DeBell and Director Sundquist for the discussion on MAP and instructional material waivers.

I attended last week's Metropolitan Democrats meeting.  It wasn't an endorsement event but rather, one for their members to get a first look (and listen) to candidates ranging from King County Council to School Board Directors.  It was a good chance to hear from the School Board candidates (although not all were present).

Over at the Seattle Weekly, Nina Shapiro took a big picture look at what it all means.  She zeros in on some key points.  It makes good points to ponder and mull over. 

Two thing prompted me to want to write this thread.  One was from the thread "This or That" about what readers think are important in the budget.  Here's what "Joanie" had to say (and I believe this person is a teacher): Sorry I didn't say it all in one post. Teachers' plates are getting fuller and fuller. I watch the board meetings fairly often and the teachers and parents who appear seem to be ignored most of the time. I agree with much of what I hear. Now Dr. Enfield is creating another way for teachers to communicate with parents: turning the school website into a potential blog site that will be monitored by teachers. Good Lord! That's not what we need. How much money has been spent on IT in the Distrist already. Put it at middle and high schools where kids can make more of it. Elementary schools do not need more IT. More bandaids for appearances. They need to change the paradigm. And, with all the money that has gone in...

A very funny video from a blog called What It's Like on the Inside (from a Washington State teacher and no I don't know who it is). The video is a little long but really it has to be: it's trying to explain state testing. Thanks to Dorothy for the link.

Before going over what was discussed line-for-line, I wanted to throw out some items that popped out to me as ah ha! or oddities or questions. One thing to point out off the bat - and please help me out if you know for certain - is that on the sheet entitled "SPS 2011-12 (Gap) Estimate Summary" (bundled in a group of documents) was a total list of losses from the state. It STILL has Highly Capable as eliminated. I thought that got put back by both the House and Senate. They budget in about $1.16M to reopen Rainier View, Viewlands and McDonald/QA. I had forgotten that basically McDonald and QA will have TWO opening costs because they are first in Lincoln and then go to their own buildings this fall. Interestingly, I hear that Broadview-Thompson could handle Viewlands for another year so maybe the district could consider waiting one more year and save that money. STEM update - $100k. Look for that to be on-going. STEM came along at a time when the district really di...

I am going to create a one-sheet list of my suggestions for easy reading but here it is fleshed out. (I'll have the one-sheeter by the end of the evening.) As a preamble to what I would suggest the district should cut, I make these disclaimers: I have looked through all the documents available for 2011-2012 budgeting. They do not follow in a real and coherent fashion so it is not really possible to discern exactly what staff is saying. There was an initial listing , followed by another presentation and the Strategic Plan Budget Planning Tool followed by the Budget Balancing tool . I can't tell if the planning tools overlap. I know that the Board pushed back on some initial ideas (like selling the radio station at Hale) so naturally it fell to staff to look at other areas. Staff is right about the difficulty of planning when there are unknowns looming. What will the economic update forecast be on March 17th? What will labor partners have to say? I am going wi...

Did having a budget survey done matter? On the face of it, no, it did not. I say that because (1) it has not been referenced by staff at all during any budget talks except that it occurred, (2) there is no analysis of the specific questions and (3) the comments section was not broken down at all. However, I'll do it if only to let the Board know what was said. What to keep in mind? This was a poorly design survey (numerous respondents said this so it's not just me). Judging from the answers, the district likely got a certain sub-set of parents/staff. That said, they did receive 2700 responses which is still pretty good. Some respondents clearly did not know certain things about the district so you have to keep that in mind. (It was things like not knowing that high school students only use Metro, APP is not a program at Garfield, etc.) However, 2700 parents, community and staff took the time so let's not make it an exercise in window dressing. Demographics...

From Publicola : The Republicans convinced the Democrats to add two more spots to the state senate education committee, expanding it from eight to 10 seats. Last time we checked in , the committee was evenly split —four-to-four— between pro-teachers’ union votes and the (Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan crowd that wants to tie teacher evaluations to student assessment. (They’d also like charters if they had their druthers.) The two new members, Sens. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens) and Joe Fain (R-47, Auburn) side with the Duncan bloc; shorthand—they’re fans of the Waiting for Superman movie. That math puts the union bloc in the minority, six to four. You’ll remember, Hobbs had initially tried to get on the committee, but had been left off. Score one for Stand for Children—the activist group that’s promoting Waiting for Superman — which spent $21,000 on Hobbs’ election in November (the union spent $5,000 against him). And while SFC didn’t spend money on Fain, the...

Good 2010 education news roundup at The Washington Post blog, The Answer Sheet. I suspect many of you have read most of these articles but it is good to have them all in one place. (Thanks to Dorothy Neville for this link.) From the NY Times, an article about the popularity of buying iPads for use in schools. Fad or not? If this is of great use, wouldn't a smart phone do the same thing but more cheaply? As part of a pilot program, Roslyn High School on Long Island handed out 47 iPads on Dec. 20 to the students and teachers in two humanities classes. The school district hopes to provide iPads eventually to all 1,100 of its students. The iPads cost $750 apiece, and they are to be used in class and at home during the school year to replace textbooks , allow students to correspond with teachers and turn in papers and homework assignments, and preserve a record of student work in digital portfolios. Pro and Con: “There is very little evidence that kids lea...

I had wanted to put this quote in from the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, because it made me laugh. He made this remark after the NFL postponed the Sunday football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings (which was played last night and the Vikings won). The NFL called the game off because of the danger of fans getting safely to and from the stadium because of a huge snowstorm. “We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” The " doing calculus on the way down " made me laugh. But then there was this interesting piece on NPR today about Chinese education. Basically, the point is that they are great at learning and memorizing facts but not very good at analytic, problem-solving t...