Seattle Schools Community Forum

To note for today: - Diane Ravitch , talking about her new book, Reign of Error, at UW's Kane Hall at 7 p.m.  It should be full so I would advise getting there early. Diane will be on KUOW at 1 p.m. today.   - another taskforce meeting on the Mann building from 5-7 p.m.  at JSCEE.  You'd have to call the district to find out which room because it changes.  I am not surprised they are still having these meetings since no one at the district will verify what is happening with that building and its occupants. - School Board candidate debate at the Vera Project at Seattle Center from 6-8:00 p.m.  My caution here is that it is co-sponsored with City Club by the so-called Our Schools Coalition and the Alliance coached the students who will act as the panel. 

I agree with this author, Amanda Ripley, writing for The Atlantic.  I have no idea why ed reformers and others seem to look the other way as the dollars and resources and energy and time flow to sports.  It's a great article . But what to make of this other glaring reality, and the signal it sends to children, parents, and teachers about the very purpose of school? In countries with more-holistic, less hard-driving education systems than Korea’s, like Finland and Germany, many kids play club sports in their local towns—outside of school. Most schools do not staff, manage, transport, insure, or glorify sports teams, because, well, why would they? Let's ask some international students who come to the U.S. for high school exchanges: One element of our education system consistently surprises them: “Sports are a big deal here,” says Jenny, who moved to America from South Korea with her family in 2011. Shawnee High, her public school in southern New Jersey, fields te...

You remember DFER, right? Democrats for Education Reform, a small outlier of Dems who love ed reform. Well, they valiantly trudge on, trying to seem relevant. I'm on their Twitter feed and I noticed an op-ed at their website authored by a young "progressive" Dem, a student at Harvard named Colin Diersing. He was decrying the education view of the winner of the Democrat race for mayor of NYC, Bill de Baliso, who has pretty much said he would roll back a lot of what Mayor Bloomberg has done for/against public education in NYC. With all the full-blown (and overblown) rhetoric that defines ed reformers, he goes on the attack: One Blogger's Progressive Case Against Bill de Blasio September 16, 2013 This piece was originally posted by the Harvard Political Review By Colin Diersing* I’m a progressive Democrat. I care about widening inequality, would like my government to more actively redistribute money from the very wealthy to the very poor, and find the racia...

From the New York Review of Books comes a comparison review of Diane Ravitch's new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools and Michelle Rhee's book, Radical: Fighting to Put Students First .  (Ravitch's book just came out and is now #1 in sales at Amazon.  Ravitch will be speaking this week, Thursday the 26th, at UW's Kane Hall  from 7-8:30 p.m.)                             What is striking about this review comes almost at the end when the reviewer, Andrew Delbanco, gives them each a fair pro/con assessment. You would think it possible to take ideas from both sides and put them to work together. In order to agree that America’s schools ought to be better (Ravitch), we don’t have to believe that they are worse than ever (Rhee). We don’t have to think, as Rhee does, that “great” teaching is a magic bullet in ...

The push is on to expand charters, TFA, student data and yet, more and more people (including some legislators) are finally saying, "What is going on here?" A highly acclaimed charter group in NYC were found to be trying to push out a child with disabilities - it was recorded on tape. From the Daily News : The tapes, a copy of which the mother supplied the Daily News, poke a hole in claims by the fast-growing Success Academy chain founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz that it doesn’t try to push out students with special needs or behavior problems. Nancy Zapata said she resorted to the secret tapes last December and again in March after school officials used their “zero tolerance” discipline policy to repeatedly suspend her son, Yael, kept telephoning her at work to pick him up from school in the middle of the day and urged her to transfer him. The News reported earlier this week that the Success network, which boasts some of the highest test ...

With her new book ( Reign of Error ) on September 26, 2013.   Her talk will be at Kane Hall (Red Square on the UW campus) in Room 130 from 7-8:30 p.m.  Free and open to the public.  REIGN OF ERROR. An incisive, comprehensive look at today’s American school system that argues against those who claim it is broken and beyond repair; an impassioned but reasoned call to stop the privatization movement that is draining students and funding from our public schools. Note: the book comes out on September 17th and is naturally available for pre-order at bookstores and on-line retailers.  Books will be available at the talk and Diane will be signing them from 8:30-9:00 p.m. that evening.   Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at NYU and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. For more information contact: kenzeich@uw.edu or tepinfo@uw.edu .

I know that many believe that the drumbeat, the concern, the outrage over corporate ed reform is a few voices in a canary mine.  Or exaggerating.  Or those voices are conspiracy therorists. And yet the evidence is stacking up as I have documented.  Against TFA, against charters, and now, in one of the biggest exposes - corporate ed reform.   The good news is that this house of cards is sagging and will fall.  From the eagle eye of Washington Post writer of The Answer Sheet, Valerie Strauss, comes a story about thousands of public disclosure e-mails, across six states, that show quite a lot of linkage between corporate ed reform and making money off of it. The non-profit that did the public disclosure request and released the information is In the Public Interest.   The correspondence is available at: • Rhode Island: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/node/2746 • Oklahoma: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/node/2745 • New Mexico: http://...

 Update:  And so he did resign, saying an old ed reform canard,  Florida "doesn't have time to waste." He also said (and again, another old tactic):  “The most important thing we have to do is educate children,” Bennett said. “Maybe what we ought to do is debate how the best way to do that is without being personal and assigning motives to it.” From Indiana Public Media: Bennett’s successor will be the sixth person to fill the position as Education Commissioner under Florida Governor Rick Scott. Pam Stewart, current Florida DOE Chancellor, has been names as a possible choice for interim commissioner in Bennett’s absence. End of update Frederick M. Hess, a more moderate righty who writes for Ed Week, thinks so.  As he puts it for poor Florida: If Florida Supe Bennett resigns today, will be tough to recruit strong replacement.  Three chiefs in three years?  Yikes.  It's like drumming for Spinal Tap. He also tweeted: If Fl Supe Ben...

Remember that column I linked to at the Washington Post written by the Dean of Education, Leslie T. Fenwick at Howard University?  She said: "Mayoral control, Teach for America, education management organizations and venture capital-funded charter schools have not garnered much grassroots support or enthusiasm among lower- and middle-income black parents whose children attend urban schools because these parents often view these schemes as uninformed by their community and disconnected from the best interest of their children. Indeed, mayoral control has been linked to an emerging pattern of closing and disinvesting in schools that serve black poor students and reopening them as charters operated by education management organizations and backed by venture capitalists. W hile mayoral control proposes to expand educational opportunities for black and poor students, more-often-than-not new schools are placed in upper-income, gentrifying white areas of town, while more ...

Slow down, it's not Tom Stritikus.  Please. No, this amazing piece of writing comes via the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet with a guest column by the Dean of the Howard University School of Education and professor of education policy, Leslie T. Fenwick.  You should read the whole thing but highlights (bold mine): "Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher conferences. Despite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor. The lie is that schemes like Teach For America , charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation -prepared superintendents ad...

The district had what is called an "exit conference" yesterday from a regularly scheduled state audit.  Two items of note turned up. For the FOURTH year, the district claimed more students than they could justify for the federal grant for Native American students.  According to the Times, they received about $6k more than they should.  The district has returned nearly $330k over the last 3 years to the feds. Not good and really, truly - there is no excuse.  (I'm sure the district had one but I'm glad I was not there to hear it.)  And people wonder why the Native American parents are mistrustful of the district.  And, the district was questioned in the spending of federal grant money for preventing high school students from dropping out to the tune of about $490k.  The district got the grant in 2010 for about $12M over five years and apparently the questioned spending was not part of what was in the district's original application.  Fro...

As you may recall, there was a school board election in LA in April that had an odd feature - millions of dollars poured into it by corporate ed reformers from outside the state.  Even in mega-large, uber-urban LA, there was surprise over why this was happening. Out of three candidates, one ed reformer won, one moderate won (who had been targeted nonetheless by the ed reform crowd) and one seat went to a runoff. Yesterday that runoff was held. The ed reform candidate, Antonio Sanchez, had an interesting combo - labor unions and money from the political-action committee formed by outgoing LA mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa (which was more than $1M). His opponent was Monica Ratliff, a career teacher.  She went out and got newspaper endorsements and relied on small donors.  She raised about $50k. I don't see that the race has been called but Diane Ravitch is reporting that Ratliff has won, with 52% of the vote.  Unless something really shifts, I suspect Ratliff wi...

Over at Diane Ravitch's blog, she has more evidence of corporate ed reform crack-up.   I'll just let her tell you: At a panel discussion in New York City, Bridgeport Superintendent Paul Vallas made a startling admission. He said that the efforts to develop a teacher evaluation metric was a huge mess and that no one understands it. He said: “The Bridgeport, Conn. superintendent — who has served stints in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans and earned a reputation as a turnaround consultant for struggling districts with big budget gaps — said reforms he backed were at risk of collapsing “under the weight of how complicated we’re making it.” “We’re working on the evaluation system right now,” Vallas said of Bridgeport. “And I’ll tell you, it is a nightmare.” Vallas went further and said: ““We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing ind...

I am working on a series on Common Core (which is coming at you like a Japanese bullet train.)  But there are some pretty funny things happening so I just couldn't wait. Conservatives and Dem ed reformers and corporate ed reformers have been able to join hands and sing Kumbaya over charters, TFA, teacher evaluation, etc. But here comes Common Core and it all falls apart.  The conservatives loathe Common Core and have succeeded in spreading the word.  The GOP passed a resolution against it and conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation have lined up against it.  At least 10 of the 45 states that signed on to Common Core have introduced backpedalling legislation.  A few, like Virginia, are still holding out. It is absolutely fascinating to watch this thing unfold.  I knew that at some point conservatives would turn on ed reform and indeed they have (with a vengenance).  Their buddies, the Dem ed reformers, have, in turn, unleashed the dogs...

 Update:  on Assessments, exhibit one , from CBS in Albany.  A teacher came to the hospital where a student is undergoing pre-brain surgery screening.  He has epilepsy and they have to withdraw his meds in order to cause a seizure to see what is happening in his brain.  Did she come to give him her best?  Nope. She was from the district there to administer the 4th grade NY State test to the boy.  The parents say they had made arrangements for him to make it up.  The district claims it didn't share any info about the student's absence with NYS Ed Department or the hospital.   Enough. End of update. “Thursday morning a woman walked into his room with a piece of paper that had his name on it and told my husband that she was a teacher from the New York City School District and that she was there to administer the 4th grade New York State test to my son,” Furlong tells CBS6. The family was shocked. They had already made arrangements ...

I normally don't agree with a lot of the thought process over at LEV.  But here's something I agree with: Which of these makes more sense to you? A) Keeping questionable industry tax breaks on the books? OR B) Amply funding our schools? If you picked "B," it's time to voice your choice. Please take two minutes of your time sending a message to your legislators.  We need to get a tsunami of e-mails to these legislators.  We need them to hear our voices. I know, it's Spring Break, there's a fugitive on the loose in Boston, it's Friday and so on. Please do this. Don't listen to me.  Listen to the words of Blair Butterworth, a well-known political consultant, who died recently.  This is from an op-ed posted at Crosscut .  I have no idea what type of ed reform he is speaking about but it seems to come from the heart.  This is partial:

Man, did they ever.  From the LA Times : The clash over education had been building throughout the three-day convention, underscoring a larger debate taking place in education circles.  California Democrats on Sunday condemned efforts led by members of their own party to overhaul the nation's schools, arguing that groups such as StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform are fronts for Republicans and corporate interests. Before delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution excoriating the groups on the final day of the party's annual convention here, speakers urged them to focus on protecting students and teachers. "People can call themselves Democrats for Education Reform — it's a free country — but if your agenda is to shut teachers and school employees out of the political process and not lift a finger to prevent cuts in education, in my book you're not a reformer, you're not helping education, and you're sure not much of a Dem...

 Update:  City Hall will be open to the public tomorrow from 10 am to 2 pm.  They will have performances (acrobats, dance crew) as well as food trucks and adoptable dogs/cats.  You can tour the Mayor's office as well as the City Council offices.  It's a fun activity for kids and you get a little face time with the Mayor and City Council members. The Times has a couple of interesting headlines.  One is a feature story about Governor Inslee stating that while he likes the concept of "grading" schools, he thinks it needs further study.  Apparently the Republicans had been counting on his early comments of support for the concept as support for their bill.  I talked to the Governor's office weeks ago and they very clearly told me he did NOT support Senate Bill 5328 and, in fact, were not happy that some media outlets were linking that support to the bill. I am pretty happy at his up-front stance because I don't believe a one-letter grade represen...

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% ...

There has been many, many news stories out this last month that all lead me to believe that ed reform is starting to collapse.  Is it anywhere near full-collapse?  Nope and that's because there is a lot of money to be made so it will not go without a fight.  But the signs are all there.  Let's start with assessments and the posterchild that is Atlanta .  (But close on its heels is Rhee's D.C., Texas and Florida.)  What is this all about?  It's about a superintendent who wanted to make money for herself and for the administrators and teachers in her district, make a "name" for herself and the kids be damned. Today the first suspects in the Atlanta cheating scandal turned themselves in.  There are 35 educators who were indicted in a 65-count indictment last week including former superintendent Beverly Hall.  The indictments claim there was a pattern among the educators to cheat or conceal cheating or retaliate against any whistleblowers i...