Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: some common sense from one of my favorite education writers, Jersey Jazzman, and his "The PARCC Silly Season. end of update It's just hard to know where to start. First, the new thought from ed reformers is that parents just don't understand what they are doing when they opt their children out.  Thanks for patronizing them as if they are not thinking adults.  There are also new pro-testing groups springing up and many of them are funded by the Gates Foundation.  It's the same thing, over and over, with the Foundation. Create faux parent groups, data use groups and even media groups. 

Mrs. Clinton sat down with Newsday in Long Island for an wide-ranging interview that included the topic of public education.  Her wording was a bit hard to understand so I'm not quite sure I understand all that she is saying.  She has some things wrong (but that was the propaganda of Common Core so I don't entirely blame her.)  But she offers zero solutions and that's troubling. And she has a lot more faith in charter schools than I do but that's another thread. Common Core and Opt Out (this is how Newsday titled this section of the interview)

Opt Out Bus Spring Tour   (Starting at Garfield HS,  Thursday March 31 st , 2:20 pm ) As the spring high-stakes ,  common core tests begin, the Opt Out B us will be touring Seattle schools to provide families with information on their rights to opt out of standardized testing.  

 Update: a Huffington Post column from the Vice-President for Advocacy for National PTA is not getting much support.  Read those comments; rank and file PTA does not seem to like National telling them what to do. It's getting to be testing time and BOY, are there a slew of states and groups and people worried that the opt-out movement will continue to grow. First, for great information on opting out, United Opt Out is a national group. There are two interesting developments on this front.

From The Washington Post's The Answer Sheet, a story about Indiana governor, Mike Pence,   remark that teachers "shouldn't take it personally" when their students' scores plummet because of a new state test.  One teacher, Donna Roof, a 30-year veteran teacher, answered back.  (In Indiana, teacher evaluations do use test scores although the Governor says that, given the test is new, they get a one-year reprieve.)

Great op-ed from the Washington Post from the 2015 Superintendent of the Year, Philip D. Lanoue,  as selected by the American Association of School Administrators.  He is the superintendent of the poorest county in Georgia.  As Clarke superintendent since 2009, he is credited with making more gains to close the achievement between economically disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students than any other district in the state. (highlights mine) Evaluating the total learning experience for either students or teachers through high stakes testing has no real research base and holds little value for students. Let’s not confuse the high-stakes testing movement with the practice of effective and meaningful assessment. I believe there is consensus among educators that conversations regarding school transformation must shift from problems and failure to solutions and successes. 

Pretty amazing poll - A majority of Americans think there is too much emphasis on testing AND that test scores alone can't judge a student/teacher/school BUT believe parents should not opt their kids out from testing. They reject Common Core.   They believe "lack of financial support" is the biggest problem for their local school. Americans across the board once again named lack of financial support as the biggest problem facing their local schools — the 10th consecutive year in which that issue has landed at the top of the list.

From Diane Ravitch: Rick Hess directs education studies at the conservative, free-market American Enterprise Institute. We often disagree but I am often impressed that he doesn’t follow “the party line” of free-marketeers. This article is a good example of Hess demonstrating his sharp intellect and his willingness to stray from the right-wing corral. I absolutely echo Ravtich's comments.  Hess may be a right-wing thinker but he's an honest one.  He is willing to call out BS on BOTH sides.  He is also willing to say it like it is which probably makes a lot of people on the right wring their hands. His piece is long but worthy reading.  In a nutshell:

From Diane Ravitch, news that the Senate has passed their long-awaited revision to No Child Left Behind, the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). The underlying legislation is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, whose purpose was to authorize federal aid to education targeted to schools that enrolled significant numbers of children living in poverty. The original bill was about equity, not testing and accountability. And we can all see how that turned out. The Senate bill retains annual testing, but r emoves federal sanctions attached to test results. Any rewards or sanctions attached to test scores will be left to states.

How does once in elementary, once in middle school and once in high school sound for state testing for federal reports?   Because honestly, the overwhelming majority of teachers can tell how a child is doing in school so why the time, cost and lack of real help for teachers/parents with multiple year testing.  FairTest has this link to send a letter in support of Senator Jon Tester's amendment (yes, that's his name) to limit testing to three times in a student's K-12 academic career.   (This would not preclude district assessments.) Congress is taking up NCLB on July 7th.  From Diane Ravitch, PARCC is Falling Apart with the Departure of Ohio:

Thanks to Ann Donovan for this. From OSPI's Smarter Balanced Top 10 Reasons Why Washington is Making the Switch  In the "who says" category - #1 Washington’s new state learning standards in English language arts and math (Common Core) are designed to prepare students for career, college, and life. In the "what the heck does this mean" category - #3 The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium took advantage of each member state’s technical, practical, and political expertise to ensure a blend of everyone. In the "liar, liar" category - #4 Quicker results - Individual scores will be available within three weeks of a student completing the summative tests.

Frank Bruni, who used to be a food critic at the New York Times but now writes op-eds, has a piece in the Times about Common Core.  Or is it the Department of Education. Or teacher evaluations.  Well, it's about public education.  It's daringly called, The Education Assassins   (that actually brings to mind Sarah Vowell's hugely funny,  Assassination Vacation , which is probably not want Bruni wanted). Over at the Curmudgucation blog , the very funny Peter Greene takes Bruni's arguments apart, line for line. What's interesting is that Greene points out the half-truths to what Bruni says.  This is a major irritant for me - just tell the WHOLE story, not just part of it if you have the courage of your convictions.  I'm just going to pull out some great comebacks from Greene but do go read both pieces.

As further proof that WA State PTA (and National) seem to be moving further and further into the ed reform camp, comes a message from WSPTA urging members to support HB 2214. The first thing to know about HB 2114 is that one of its authors is Chad Magandez, ed reformer thru and thru.  He loves charters, is connected to LEV The second item to note is that this bill is pretty much a wolf in sheep's clothing.   While it says it reduces the number of tests for graduation, it really does this: If you read the bill, you will see it accelerates the SBAC test monopoly from 2019 to 2016 and it will severely harm the Opt Out Movement by imposing a fourth year of advanced math on anyone who opts out of the test in high school - giving Washington state the most draconian graduation requirements in the nation. So not only does it speed up SBAC, it will NOT preserve a parent's right to refuse their student from taking test (and I see that in the House of Representatives, ther...

1)  Ask the School Board to write a letter like this one from the Palm Beach County School Board and tell them to send it to Governor Inslee and State Superintendent Dorn.  Write to them at : schoolboard@seattleschools.org. Partial (full letter in link):

I ask because I'm seeing various comments on this issue.  So let us know what you have heard and seen at your school (across any grade).  For example, one reader said that Garfield had a couple of late starts this week ....at 11 am. That's pretty late for the school day to begin.  Maybe leadership there thought it better for students to NOT come and have to hang around doing almost nothing rather than coming later. I also heard from a reader at Ingraham who said her daughter took the test (as a junior) and didn't find it all that hard but that she was very annoyed with sitting around for 45 minutes.  It all adds up to lost instructional time of which there are several factors: - the actual time to take an untimed test - the actual time for set-up to take the test (which apparently can be anywhere from 15 minutes to almost an hour). - time that is test prep (how you take the test) - time that is test prep (for what is on the test) Not to mention down time...

David Spring has written a lengthy explanation of what may or may not be coming with state testing.   It's called Comparing Three Graduation Requirement Options for Washington State. It is a lot of heavy reading (and it would require you to go read all these bills which I have not done yet) but I think it worthy.   In this article, we will compare three sets of high school graduation requirements currently being considered by the Washington state legislature. These three options are the current law which was enacted in 2013, House Bill 2214 and Senate Bill 6122. All of these three options are complex. We will therefore provide a comparison table at the end of this article to better help citizens understand the provisions and consequences of each option. Understanding the current Washington state law is important because if no bill is passed in the state legislature in 2015 to replace it, then the current Washington state law will continue to be in effect....

Why I love my readers?  They say the smartest (and darnest) things (about over testing):

The LA Times is reporting that spending for school board races in LA almost $4.6M.  LA is the second-largest district in the country.  Guess who's pouring the most money?  Charter school groups and then, the teachers union.  (LA has the highest charter school enrollment in the nation.) And, there's a new PAC in the mix and who are its top three donors?  A Wal-Mart heir, former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg and LA rich guy Eli Broad.  I do not expect to see that kind of firepower here mainly because we have no real ed reformers running.  (But I think the ed reformers and their elected officials proxies are going to continue to try to get what they want via the Legislature.) Thinking testing is out of hand here in the U.S.?  This was reported back in 2014 but worth mentioning here.

From Politico : Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) will reintroduce a bill today aiming to better protect student data. Like the bill that House Education and the Workforce Committee leaders Reps. John Kline and Bobby Scott have been putting together, the Markey-Hatch bill would change data privacy by updating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.   The bill [ http://1.usa.gov/1obyAzv ] would take several steps to bring the long-outdated FERPA into the digital age, including prohibiting tech companies from using student data to target ads. It would also give parents the right to access records about their children held by private companies — and change that information if it’s incorrect. Districts would have to keep lists of outside vendors that hold information on students and make those lists accessible to parents.  There are now two bipartisan bills targeting student privacy, Markey-Hatch and the bill reintroduced recently by Reps...

Diane Ravitch had this recording of a weekly ed reform show from Michael Petrilli at the Fordham Institute.  In the first 7 minutes of the show, he worries about the opting out going on in NY state.  It's everything from unhappy tweets to 1,000s of parents (actually hundreds of thousands) opting their kids out and hey, what does it all mean? He and his co-host say they just can't tell exactly why parents are doing this.  They opine that it can't be because Common Core testing is costing so much the arts are being cut (surmising that "affluent" schools just can't be cutting the arts).  They fret over this "big deal now" and what if it spreads nationwide? He says: If this goes national, this whole school reform thing is in serious trouble." Sorry, Mike, the genie is out of the bottle. Speaking of Ravitch, she also has news from Minneapolis via the Minneapolis Star Tribune.