Seattle Schools Community Forum

One of the charms that ed reformers like to dangle before public school parents is choice.  It's quite the appealing siren call because 1) we're Americans and we love choices (even when they can overwhelm and even paralyze us) and 2) the idea that "wealthy people have choices when it comes to their children's schooling and so should you." Number two is false on so many levels.  Wealthy people have many more choices period.  Houses, cars, vacations, clothes, colleges, you name it - wealthy people have so many more choices.  What's interesting is that the schools in our district are - almost to a school - full.  Now is that because there are more people in our city? Maybe but the private schools are full as well.  (Imagine if even half those private school parents came back.) Here's a great essay by Chicago Schools' parent, Julie Vassilatos, The Frightening Implications of School Choice (bold hers, red highlight mine.) Because "choice" of...

Called "Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks", a very interesting map of income/rent across the U.S .  Zeroing down to Seattle, you can clearly see the delineation of income in our city. You may have heard that there is work going on around the city for new low-power FM stations for different regions.  One might be coming out of Ballard High via science teacher, Eric Muhs,  (a la the mighty C89.5FM at Nathan Hale High). At one school in NYC, for children K-2, 80% of the parents opted out of testing , effectively shutting it down.  From the New York Daily News : Students at the 36 “early education” schools are too young to take the regular state reading and math exams, so the littlest kids are sitting down for different tests As the Daily News reported earlier this month, such exams, given to kids as young as 4, require students to fill in bubbles to show their answers. In one of the more "let's just stir the pot" columns from Education Week , teacher and...

Like you'll really want to stay indoors and read this weekend but if you do, read on about: a $43K K-5 school in NYC how the income inequality gap hurts kids on both ends public disclosure in NYC lunchroom hidden camera - what's in that food, anyway?