Seattle Schools Community Forum

When is site-based management an intentional strategy to allow schools to tailor practices to the individual needs of their communities and when is it just a euphemism for the culture of lawlessness and the district administration's inability or unwillingness to set and enforce practices and procedures?

The recent $1.5 Billion prize in the PowerBall lottery made a lot of news. A lot of people who don't normally buy lottery tickets bought some for that drawing. I didn't because, as my brother succinctly told me, buying a ticket does not significantly improve your odds of winning. Needless to say, I didn't win the big prize. I didn't think about what I would do with the money if I won. That's what you buy when you buy a lottery ticket, right? You buy the license to dream. I didn't buy a ticket so I didn't have license to think about how I would spend the money and I certainly didn't presume that I would win and start spending the money before the drawing. That would be crazy, right? Yet that's what Seattle Public Schools does on a regular basis. They draw up all of these initiatives - Targeted Universalism is the latest one - which, I suppose, are all very high-minded and well-intentioned, but are predicated on one or more fantasies.

Here's the latest in a recurring topic. School Board policy 3208, Sexual Harassment , requires an annual report. The Superintendent shall make an annual report to the Board reviewing the use and efficacy of this policy and related procedures. Recommendations for changes to this policy, if applicable, shall be included in the report. The Superintendent is encouraged to involve staff, students, and volunteers and parents in the review process. I have written to the Board on numerous occasions over the past two years - since the NatureBridge incident - asking for this annual report. Every time before that I have asked for it, I have been told that no such report has ever been made. That story just changed. I just got an email from the Board office saying that the report has been made. How did I miss it? Because the claim is pretty weak.

I want to be sure that everyone has seen this. It's important. CLOSING OPPORTUNITY GAPS An Action Plan for Accelerating Achievement for African American Males and Other Students of Color In this document, the District commits to some very specific benchmarks: Every student will achieve proficiency in Reading and Mathematics by end of Grade 2. Every student will have a personal learning plan and an advocate/mentor to keep him on track to high school graduation and successful post-secondary transition. Every student will meet standards of performance in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, and Science at the end of key transition grades. Every student will receive fair and equitable treatment regarding discipline and access to rigorous instructional programs. Every student will graduate from high school prepared for success in college or career. Whenever I see commitments of this kind from the School District, I always want to ask "What if it doesn't go like that?...

Here is the latest version of the superintendent's 100-day (or 120-day) communication plan . You can find it in the Friday Memo to the Board for December 19, 2014. You can compare this plan to the plan he outlined for KIRO on the day that he was offered his long-term contract. I gave details about that plan in this blog post: Communication Plan . They generally match up except that instead of completing elements of the plan on specific days he only says that he will start them on those days. He doesn't say when the work will be done - if ever. Consequently this plan is not an action plan but an inaction plan.

The agenda for the regular legislative Board meeting on December 3 has been amended. The scheduled vote on the motion to offer an extended contract to Dr. Nyland has been changed from December 3 to a Special Board meeting on December 10. The special meeting is already on the Board Calendar and other scheduled Board activities for that day have been re-scheduled. Immediate action is no longer in the best interests of the District. I can only presume that Board President Peaslee acted unilaterally when scheduling the special meeting and re-scheduling the other activities. Board Policy 1400 gives her that authority: " Special meetings may be called by the President or on a petition of a majority of the Board members ." Moving the vote to December 10 still allows only half of the usual amount of time between introduction and action on a motion. The Board is meeting on December 17th as well, the usual two week gap between introduction and action, but President Peaslee did ...

Since the sexual assault complaint that arose on a Garfield High School field trip to NatureBridge in November of 2012, we have heard from the Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors and senior management about how seriously they regard it and how committed they are to tightening up procedures, policy, and compliance. But what have they actually done? Shockingly little. And let's remember that they have had almost two years since that day. Almost two years and they haven't really done anything. We got the lip service. We got the crocodile tears. What we didn't get was any real movement towards improved policies, procedures, or practices. Nor have we seen any movement to hold anyone accountable for failures to follow the policy or procedures. Instead, we've seen the Board and the senior management close ranks to not only excuse the non-compliance, not only condone the non-compliance, but actually defend the non-compliance. I'm sorry, but how tragic do the outcome...

A guest column in the Seattle Times today spread the weird idea that "Teacher Quality" is important and should be the focus of the school district's efforts to close the achievement gap.

Please forgive me, but I'm old, and old people like to natter on about the past. It's just what we do. We like to imagine that our experience has value. We see things and we think "Hey, I've seen this before!" That's bad enough, but then we feel compelled to tell you about it. Back in 2000 Seattle Public Schools was on fire with a revolutionary idea. It was a change in perspective that would reform public education. We were going to become a Standards-Based Learning System. Once implemented, Standards would fix all our woes. It would get all struggling students to learn at grade level. It would support advanced learners without those politically disturbing self-contained programs. It would integrate our students with disabilities and our English Language Learners. Once we became a Standards-based Learning System we would enter a new education paradise. The District headquarters spoke of little else. They did pilot projects with big announcements and then mad...

Here's something that happens when you move: you handle all of your stuff and you have to ask yourself if you should keep it, sell it, gift it, or toss it. You handle ALL of your stuff. For me, that meant a lot of handouts that I have received from Seattle Public Schools at meetings over the past fourteen years. Among these documents were a number of supposedly important decisions the District had made about Advanced Learning. They included a copy of the bound report "Review of Highly Capable Programs 2000-2001" which was the genesis of my activism. Three different versions of the report from the Second Highly Capable Review delivered the following year complete with recommendations. A March 24, 2003 letter from Dr. June Rimmer to all fifth grade families clarifying that only programs with self-contained classes are Spectrum and those without self-contained classrooms will be designated as A.L.O.s. A description of the accreditation process that all advanced learning pr...

There are a lot of people in Education who say all of the right things, but then, somehow, go ahead and do all of the wrong things. This continues to astound me. We see it all the time from US Secretary of Education, the Governor, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Education Reformers, Board Directors, the Superintendent, and the senior staff. No one, however, shows me a bigger gap between what they say and what they do than the Alliance for Education. They top the list with the biggest gap of all because they always, always, always say the very best things. They not only say the right things, but they state them eloquently and passionately. Then they always, always, always do the very worst things. They do them with extraordinary gusto and grim determination. It freaks me out every time I witness it. That happened again today when I received an email from the Alliance for Education President Sara Morris.

The superintendent declared the State of the District to be fabulous, despite failing to meet 22 of 23 statistical goals for academics. The District remains focused on closing the academic achievement gap, but still refuses to develop a plan to achieve the goal. The Superintendent claims some progress and attributes it to improved instructional quality resulting from the new teacher evaluation system.

From the Friday Memo to the Board of October 4 : Advanced Learning Task Force Advanced Learning has contracted with a facilitator, Barbara Grant to help guide two task forces this year. The first is focused on the identification of students for highly capable services, with particular attention to reaching culturally diverse and underserved populations of gifted students. This group begins its work on October 10th, and expects to have recommendations by November 29th. The second task force will focus on service delivery models (APP, Spectrum, ALO, and other options) and will begin meeting in December in order to make recommendations by mid-February. Task force members are a diverse group invited from the community and SPS staff. So who are these Task Force members? Anyone know? Any of our readers among those chosen to participate in these secret meetings?

You may recall our discussion about whether charter schools are really public schools ?  This particular thread was around rights students/staff may have under the U.S. Constitution and the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that for staff, charters aren't public schools. Now, there is yet another case - this around the public funding of charters - out of California.  Here's the headline from Ed Week's " Living in Dialogue " - Charter School Defenders Insist They are "Private Entities." A California couple, Yevgeny "Eugene" Selivanov and Tatyana Berkovich, who were convicted in April of multiple counts of fraud related to their practice of using their charter school bank account for personal expenses and thousands of dollars worth of meals.   According to the LA School Report ,  The couple is appealing their conviction, however, asserting that this amounts to a misunderstanding over the nature of charter school finances. An amicus brief ...

The National Council on Teacher Quality , an Education Reform propaganda engine, has reviewed the recent two-year contract between Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association, the teachers' union. The review by the NCTQ compares the final contract language to the Seattle Public Schools’ Bargaining Platform and - inexplicably- the Our Schools Coalition’s platform as if the Our Schools Coalition had any kind of standing or qualifications. Inexplicable, that is, until we discover that the Our Schools Coalition commissioned the review . So when the question is "How closely does the contract align with OUR goals?", then things that are aligned with the OSC goals appear to be good and variances appear to be bad, without any determination of whether the OSC goals are good or bad. This subtlety was either lost on Lynne Varner or intentionally omitted from her editorial about the review. You can read it for yourself. Lines like this: " The six pages ...

There were two issues discussed at the third meeting of the Horace Mann-African American Community Partnerships Task Force. The two issues are not closely linked. The immediate issue is about the Mann building, but that is actually the smaller issue. The Mann building issue was created to bring urgency to the big issue: the failure to educate African-American children in Seattle Public Schools. There isn't much of a natural connection between these two, so it is easy and appropriate to regard them separately.

On June 1st, at the Board Retreat, there was a lot of talk about trust. Here's one statement from that event that I recall clearly: "You cannot talk yourself out of a trust issue that you acted yourself into." Everyone at the retreat - Board directors and senior staff - pledged themselves to building trust. That was just a few weeks ago. Then, yesterday, we get a presentation from the senior staff, Board Work Session - Equitable Access, Growth Boundaries & Capacity Management , which is rife with dishonesty and deception.

Much was revealed at the Growth Boundaries presentation this afternoon. Here is just a short list: There will be new service delivery models for Special Education: Resource, Access, Behaior, Contained, and Distinct. We don't know what these mean or how they will work, and the whole thing is subject to the collective bargaining process, but it looks like radical change. There will be a new delivery model for APP. The District isn't saying what it will be or how it will work. They won't even offer the pretense of engagement on it until next year - after they make all of the decisions. There will be a new delivery model for Spectrum. It appears to be nothing. For many families this will be nothing new. Just because a school chooses to become a STEM school it doesn't make it a STEM school. It's only a STEM school if the District decides that it will be a STEM school. The difference is indistinguishable in practice, but the District says that one kind of STEM is ...

The Alliance for Education has released their annual report for 2012 . Let's have a look.

Today at the Management Oversight work session for Teaching and Learning we learned of some new definitions, or, more precisely, the re-definition of some terms. Early Education now refers to Pre-K through grade 5. Cashel Toner will be responsible for all of that. Previously, early education referred only to Birth to Kindergarten. Now it includes all of elementary education as well. The definition of Academic Assurances has been narrowed. It now refers only to the academic opportunity that the district is required by law to provide students. It had previously meant the baseline minimum that each Seattle School would offer or which every student would have access to. Under the old definition it included access to advanced learning, access to AP or IB classes for high school, access to music and arts instruction. No more. It is now only what the law requires. Curriculum now refers only to the set of knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire as defined by the Comm...