Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Crain's , Cathleen Black, the newly installed Chancellor of Schools in NYC, has resigned.    No big surprise because: Ms. Black ascended to the city's top education post last fall amid heavy criticism that she was not a suitable choice. She had no professional background in education and no direct experience with the city's public school system, having sent her children to boarding school in Connecticut.  Critics said her only qualification was that she traveled in the same high-powered Manhattan circuit as Mr. Bloomberg. It was only after the Bloomberg administration struck a deal with the state Board of Regents that Ms. Black was granted a waiver (for not having the required education experience) that she was allowed to become chancellor.  In that deal, a largely unknown former principal and education administrator was appointed to the newly created post of chief academic officer. It was hoped that Shael Polakow-Suransky would silence c...

We've been focused on SPS issues and many have posted about other national stories so let's take a look at what has happened over the last couple of weeks. all the teachers, administrators and other personnel at one Rhode Island high school were fired (the focus seems to be on the teachers but news reports say the entire staff will be let go). That's a big wow all the way around. Central Falls High is one of the lowest-performing schools in R.I. and is in a low-income area. From CNN: Of the 800 students, 65 percent are Hispanic and for most of them, English is a second language. Half the students are failing every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent proficient in math, officials said. They also have one of highest transient populations in R.I. The superintendent, under federal guidelines, had asked teachers to work a longer day than 7 hours and tutor students weekly for one hour outside of school time. There would also be 2 weeks of paid profes...

President-elect Obama chose Chicago's superintendent of public instruction, Arne Duncan, to be his Secretary of Education. Mr. Duncan is the son of educators - his father is a college professor and his mother ran a school for African-American youth - although he himself was never a teacher. He attended Harvard where his thesis was "Values, aspirations and opportunities of the Urban Underclass". (I'll see if I can find it and see what he thinks.) He himself aspired to play professional basketball (and thus Obama continues to round out the White House basketball team with the count now at 4 including Obama). He did play professionally in Australia where he met his wife. They have two children. In 1992 he was tapped as director of the Ariel Elementary Initiative in Chicago's tough South Side. In 2006, the City Club of Chicago named Duncan Citizen of the Year. In 1998, he was selected as Deputy Chief of Staff for then-superintendent Paul Vallas (who is now r...

A recent report out finds that American students are making doing somewhat better as compared to students in other countries. This article was in the NY Times this week. From the article: "American fourth- and eighth-grade students made solid achievement gains in math in recent years and in two states showed spectacular progress, an international survey of student achievement released on Tuesday found. Science performance was flat. The results showed that several Asian countries continued to outperform the United States greatly in science and math, subjects that are crucial to economic competitiveness and research." I know, where's the good news? Well, "solid achievement gains" are something. Here's who did well: "Students in Massachusetts and Minnesota, which participated in a special study that attributed a score to the states as if they were individual countries, also demonstrated stellar achievement, outperforming classmates in all but a h...

David Brooks wrote an interesting column (published in the Times) about who Obama will pick for Education Secretary. From the column: "Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance-pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions." "The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It's not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform." "This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galva...

Hello I subscribe to the Public Education Newsblast and here is an article I received today: In her first speech since being elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten signaled her openness to a number of school reform ideas that have been unpopular with teacher unions. Speaking at the National Press Club, Weingarten stated: "With the exception of vouchers, which siphon scarce resources from public schools, no issue should be off the table, provided it is good for children and fair to teachers." Weingarten urged that all stakeholders in public education -- parents, teachers, school administrators, business leaders, and elected officials -- take responsibility for public education and work to find common ground on divisive issues like differentiated pay, tenure, and teacher assignment. She also took exception to what she considers the widespread scapegoating of teachers and teacher unions for low student achievement, and called the No Child Left...

The NY Times this week had several articles that overlapped in their take on education. There seem to be a couple of different issues. One article is a column by Nicholas D. Kristof, "Obama and the Our Schools". He first takes issue with education coming in 5th on Obama To Do list. (I'm thrilled it's even there at all.) He then had this startling piece of news: "The United States is the only country in the industrialized world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the Education Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington." Then he goes for his premise: "The most effective anti-poverty program we could devise for the long run would have less to do with income redistribution than with ensuring that poor kids get a first-rate education, from preschool on. One recent study found that if American students did as well as those in several Asian countries in math and science, our econo...

So the Gates Foundation's education wing is back in the news; this article appeared in yesterday's Times. To wit: "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today unveiled ambitious new directions for its education giving, which include working to double the number of low-income students who complete some kind of college or post-high school degree. Efforts also would be made to identify and pay higher salaries for good teaching, help average teachers get better, devise better tests and create a national set of learning standards for high schools." (What no cure for cancer?) Sorry, but that's a lot of education reform for anyone's plate and to do it nationally? Good luck. I do support all of it but it's a little unclear, because the goals are so broad, what it all means. Do they mean tests for NCLB? Define average for "average" teacher. I truly support national standards for high school (I support one national test for NCLB) but education i...

Two articles of interest today.  First, an editorial I co-wrote in today's PI: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/387559_schoolclose13.html The district will get into detailed specifics for cutting costs.  We'd love to see them give equal attention to the improvements they seek.  For instance, they say they want to make all neighborhood schools great.  We all have opinions on that, but what exactly do they plan to do for the struggling schools?  I'd like to see them write down the details so we can comment, and more importantly, so we can identify where we can participate and how we can hold them accountable to it.  They've got the stick down... now we need the carrot.    I'd love to hear additional thoughts on what the district could do to make you more confident in the schools you may be forced to choose from (due to closure, overcrowding, or changes to the assignment plan). And here's an interesting article from today's New York Times: http://www.nytim...

This article appeared in the October 31, 2008 NY Times. It details questions about a principal-hero at an elementary school in Charleston, S.C. (Dr. Goodloe-Johnson's previous city of employment) and the school's sharply rising test scores. From a story in the Charleston Post and Courier dated June 12, 2008 that details Ms. Moore's decision to move to another district in North Carolina: "Moore has earned respect and recognition for her dramatic transformation of Sanders-Clyde, which once was one of the academically weakest schools in the district. The school now outscores district and state averages. Former schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson was so impressed with Moore's leadership that she asked her to guide a second school through a similar transformation. This year was Moore's first to lead Sanders-Clyde and Fraser simultaneously, and preliminary test scores from Fraser showed strong gains. Moore is the only county principal who was responsibl...

Highly influential former Bellevue superintendent, Mike Riley, died yesterday. He was 58. Here is the story from today's Times. I bring this to your attention because Mr. Riley brought real and concrete change to the Bellevue School District. Whether you agree or not with what his vision was, he was a force for change. He had left Bellevue district to work for the College Board that administers SATs and AP tests. When the Bellevue teachers were on strike this fall some of their grievances stemmed from his legacy of trying to laser-focus curriculum and encourage all students to aim higher. The teachers' complaint was the the curriculum was too automated and left them with little room to individualize. Interestingly, an article in the Times during the strike had a chart that laid out his legacy. I had read it (and saved it) intending to blog about it because the results were so striking. Here is some of it: ...

It was Obama. When McCain and Obama were asked to rank what order they would place different issues (entitlement reform, health care or energy) to work on, Obama said energy, health care and then, instead of entitlement reform, he said education. "And, number three, we've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy." I was really pleased and surprised even though it was only one sentence and the only mention of education. It seems to rank high in his mind. For the record, Senator McCain said (and I'm just putting in the last sentence because it covers the question), " But we can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements."

This op-ed piece in today's PI caught my interest because the term "elitist" gets thrown around a lot during presidential (and other) elections. The author, Steven Roy Goodman, is discussing getting an Ivy League education and whether it can hurt you should you choose to run for office later in life. (Please note: I'm NOT looking for a fight or even a discussion about right versus left, liberal versus conservative. I'm trying to start a discussion about education and what it means in American life.) I grew up at a time when many adults hadn't gone to college and most parents dreamed that their children would go on to college. It was the ultimate American parent dream that your children would live better than you (based on the belief that a college education would allow you to do better). I also remember, vaguely, the huge gap between who went to Vietnam and who got to stay home (and some of that was about having a college deferment). This was viewed as...

Merit pay for teachers was discussed on KUOW's "The Conversation" this afternoon. I haven't had a chance to listen to the show yet, but did read some of the background links they provided: 'Merit pay plan's unintended lesson' , St. Petersburg Times 'Pros and Cons of Merit Pay For Teachers' , About.com: Elementary Education It's a tough issue to say the least. I like the idea of rewarding the best teachers. I think money for a rewards system would be easier to come by politically than simply raising pay for all teachers. But, setting up the right metrics to decide who is best is certainly problematic. Bonuses cannot be based on test results alone -- as per the Florida example, you don't want to set up a system where teachers in affluent schools reap most of the rewards. Also, teaching at its best is a team activity, and we cannot have a bonus system that pits good teachers against each other. Perhaps all of the teachers in a school should ge...

This article , "U.S.-British 'learning gap' a Real Education for Mom" appeared in today's Times. It is by Associated Press reporter (and mom) Nancy Zuckerbrod. Ms. Zuckerbrod was living in London and she and her husband had been looking at schools for their 5-year old Olivia. From the article: "The head teacher and I exchanged pleasantries, and then she laid it out. My daughter, who commonly invokes the Mandarin word for little brother and usually wins at the game of hangman, has a significant "learning gap" when compared with her British peers — especially in literacy." "An e-mail from the school followed. It politely spelled out exactly what the kids in that school were expected to master by Olivia's age: telling time; fractions — whole, half, quarter and thirds; counting in 5's up to 50; reading books (something called the pink new level) and starting to write "news" independently. I thought about Olivia's s...

This paper , Lessons Learned: New Teachers Talk about their Jobs, Challenges, and Long-Range Plans , is a survey of first-year teachers. (This is based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of 641 first-year teachers in March/April 2007.) From the NYC Parent blog: "76% of teachers overall said that reducing class size would be " a very effective " way of improving teacher quality, and 78% of teachers who work in high needs schools. 21% of teachers said reducing class size would be "effective", for a total of 97% -- far outstripping every other strategy mentioned, including : Increasing teacher salaries (57%), increasing professional development opportunities (54%), making it easier to terminate unmotivated or incompetent teachers (41%), requiring new teachers to spend time under the supervision of experienced teachers (35%) requiring graduate degrees in education (21%), requiring teachers to pass tough tests of their knowledge ot their subject ...

Ever wonder what IS working in education today (and how do you know)? I found this great paper called "Identifying and Implementing Educational Practices Supported Rigorous Evidence: A User Friendly Guide" put out by U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. It starts out with this information: "This Guide seeks to provide educational practitioners with user-friendly tools to distinguish practices supported by rigorous evidence from those that are not." "If practitioners have the tools to identify evidence-based interventions, they may be able to spark major improvements in their schools and, collectively, in American education. As illustrative examples of the potential impact of evidence-based interventions on educational outcomes, the following have been found to be effective in randomized controlled trials – research’s “gold standard” for establishing what works: ■ One...

There's a thread over at the Editorial page at the Times about summertime homework following from a story (linked at the blog) in the Washington Post. The dilemma is the belief that kids lose a lot of learning power during the summer so some schools have reading list assignments or even homework assignments. The flip side is "it's summer, let'em relax". I'd be somewhere in the middle. When my kids were younger, we always participated in the Seattle Library's summer reading program. They got charted for progress, got little prizes and a there was a party at the end. Pretty painless and it kept up their reading. I'm not big on assignments because it feels punitive. However, if your child had a poor grade in math or was struggling with reading, giving them the whole summer off is not going to help. It also brings up the point of whether year-round school makes sense. Is 6 weeks in the summer enough of a break? Would it keep the learning levels h...

This blurb appeared in today's Times: "Fuel and energy costs are rising so quickly for the United States' public school districts that nearly one in seven is considering cutting back to four-day weeks this fall. One in four is considering limits on athletics and other extracurricular activities, and nearly one in three is eliminating teaching jobs. In the first detailed look at how fuel costs are affecting schools, a survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that 99 percent of 546 superintendents contacted said they're feeling the pinch, and 77 percent said they're not getting any help from their state." I've read more and more of these stories, most of them about how states are limiting bus service (this is the first I have heard about 4-day weeks). And yet, our district, with a very liberal transportation policy, is mum. Does the district seriously have the money, for the next 2 years until we have a new assignment plan that p...

In what seems to be the longest and largest effort from the Gates Foundation to create smaller high schools, results are in from the first graduating classes from throughout high schools in Oregon state. This article appeared in The Oregonian. What's the outcome? Not much improvement. It's sad because there, as here in Washington state, schools were compelled to revamp and come up with "transformation" plans. But it seems that there was so much going into planning and not enough into resources, students didn't get much further. From the article: "Instead, their statistics look a lot like results from the lumbering, impersonal high schools they are supposed to replace. Lots of students quit, and most of the graduates aren't ready for the rigors of college. At Marshall and Roosevelt high schools in Portland, which each house three academies, about half of their students didn't make it to graduation. That's the same low graduation rate as when ...