Seattle Schools Community Forum

 Update : in yet another desperate effort, Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education put out this writing effort.   It's semi-hysteric tone sounds a lot like what comes out of the Washington Policy Center. To my great surprise, she is one of the few to still say this: Our law is one of the best in the country. What? All of this progress was threatened last September, however, when the state Supreme Court ruled the initiative unconstitutional. This innovative approach didn’t fit into a 1909 definition of “common schools”, leading the court to conclude that the schools couldn’t receive traditional public school funding streams. Right, that pesky state constitution.  Here's a thought - write an initiative or bill that is constitutional sound and you will have your charters.   And she makes the claim - without one single shred of documentation of data - that most of the charters are seeing massive improvement with their students.  Sayi...

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.

The Times starts off the year with their "headlines we'd like to see" contest.  Funny thing, their editorial doesn't even give the top reader winners' headlines but only the ones the Times wants to see.  (None of were about public education except for "No U.S. school shootings in 2015 " which won first place.) The Times calls their own headlines "wishful thinking" and they certainly are. Hey, look at that - four of them are about public education. 

 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 ...

This summer, Rep. Eric Pettigrew went to a talk by Jeb Bush, a champion of the worst of ed reform (just look at Florida).  Now, in yet another disturbing trend, Pettigrew (who says he's a Dem), is going to accept an award from the Washington Policy Center for his "courage" in standing up for charters.  If I were in the 37th, I'd be suspicious of someone who is so cozy with partisans from the other party. The WPC, which calls itself non-partisan, is nothing of the sort. Here's WPC's  idea for what would be good for Washington State - Eight Ways to Improve Public Schools: -Put the principal in charge -Give parents choice among public schools -Let teachers teach -Double teacher pay -Replace current state tests with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills -Create no-excuses schools -Transparency: Put school budgets and teacher qualifications online, and rate schools based on their ability to educate children -Make the Superintendent of Public Instruction an ap...