Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Annual School Reports and the District Scorecard have been released. Discussion follows. The District Scorecard reports that the District is on pace to reach ZERO (0) of the 23 Goals. That is how bad they suck. Not only are they missing, they are missing badly. The District is within ten percentage points of the target in only four of the twenty-three categories. I cannot imagine a worse report. Superintendent Banda, on the other hand, says things look great: “The State of the District is strong,” Banda said. “We have work to do to make sure all of our students are succeeding, but I am pleased to see our schools improving and growth occurring both in test scores and enrollment.” That's from the District Press Release . Here's the PowerPoint that came with the State of the District .

The new school reports - for the school year 2010-2011 - have been released. They can be found here . This year's School Reports are different from last years in only two ways. The changes are the two corrections that were promised in December of last year. They are long overdue, but better now than later still. Last year, the measure of student academic growth was grossly mislabeled " Students making gains on the state reading test " but was actually a derived relative measure. This year the student academic growth gets a label like " 4th and 5th graders who met or exceeded typical growth on the state reading test " and it is a new measure. From the glossary : This measure shows how students are growing compared to other students in the same grade, with the same test score throughout the state. It is the percentage of students whose growth was above average (50th to 99th percentile) on the state test from one year to the next. Students are compared...

Looking ahead to the next couple months, there are few items of interest that will come due.

I hate to be so tedious about all of this, but the District still has not updated the School Reports as they promised to do in December. When I contacted Mark Teoh about this he wrote back to say that he would write to me the following week. That was three weeks ago, and I still have not heard from him. I have written to him and the Board, but still haven't heard back.

On January 11, I wrote this blog post called Don't Hold Your Breath about my doubts that the district staff would follow up on commitments to make corrections to the school reports. The blog post also expressed my dismay at a Board that appears completely unfamiliar with the whole idea of following up. They actually accepted promises of future action from a staff person that they knew was leaving the District. Incredible. It has now been over three months since the changes were promised (and promised promptly), yet we still have not seen any of the promised action. I wrote to a couple of Board members asking about it. One of them forwarded my concern to the superintendent. She wrote back on Thursday the 17th that the changes would be made on Friday, March 18. The changes were not made. I wrote back to the Board member to make her aware of that fact. No response. This sort of stuff does not restore public trust in the District. I recognize that this sort of thing may appe...

On December 15 Brad Bernatek gave the Board an update on the School Reports . The update focused on a few topics, primarily the percentage of students ready for a 4-year college, the students making gains on state math and reading tests and the number of advanced learners at each school. Mr. Bernatek claimed that the District staff had learned that they need to ensure definitions are clear, manage changes in data and proactively communicate with stakeholders. Further, he promised specific future actions. He said that the district would adjust the language for the student gains measure, update and expand the frequently asked questions about school reports on the web site, change how they report the number of advanced learners at schools, and make a significant adjustment to Ballard High School's results to reflect a corrected understanding of some classes there. During the conversation with the Board, Mr. Bernatek said that he would guide a couple of Board members through the ca...

When Brad Bernatek presented to the Board on the changes in the School Reports, a couple of Board members asked for more instruction in the Colorado Growth Model. Mr. Bernatek told them that he would meet with them and provide it, but Mr. Bernatek is no longer with the District. The Board members will not be getting that tutoring in the Colorado Growth Model. Not by Mr. Bernatek, and, apparently, not by anyone else.

There will be some statement about two of the misleading statistics on the school reports (students making gains and advanced learners) at the quarterly Strategic Plan Update tomorrow. For some reason, my hopes are not high. Let's review the language from the superintendent's [cough] apology [cough]. Do you see anything here that suggests that they will: Ensure Definitions Are Clear ‐ We need to be crystal clear around the definitions of the performance measures in our district scorecard and school reports and make adjustments in language as necessary. But they are in no hurry to make those changes. They can wait until Wednesday. Proactively Communicate with Stakeholders – It is our responsibility to ensure the community understands our district scorecard and school reports. Again, this can wait. There's no hurry. We are responding to community feedback and sharing what we learn together about how to improve the way we measure and report on our progress. Examples inclu...

So I attended this Community Center for Education Results' The Road Map for Education Results kickoff today (I'm tired just typing all that). More on that later but they had breakout sessions that, like most conferences, were a lot better than the speeches. One was about Seattle Schools and Data (the word transparency was used). It figured out favorite manipulator of data, Brad Bernatek and a couple of other SPS women (a data coach and a data steward). They went through the creation of the School Reports and how they used MAP and how they could put together data as a " trigger " to help students. Fine, I'm sure other districts are interested. Now Dorothy had been in the first session of this information and told me Brad apologized for the 17% stat. Indeed he did. He called it a " good lesson for all of you ". He explained how it came about and that last year they had changed it to "TBD" (first I heard of this) and they were not ...

I have already raised questions about the data points on the School Reports that are labeled "Students making gains on state tests". That's a misleading label. The correct name for that data point would be: "Students with a delta on state test greater than the bottom third of their test score peers." Yes, I know it is something of a head-scratcher. The District's label makes it sound like the number represents those students with a positive delta, but it does not. Here's another number on the School Report that I'm having trouble with: Advanced Learners. The count of advanced learners at each school appears in the bottom left of the first page along with the other school demographics. The reported numbers are hard to believe. These are the reported number of advanced learners at the schools in the Aki Kurose service area: 00% Graham Hill (ALO) 00% Martin Luther King (ALO) 11% Wing Luke (SPECTRUM) 00% Dunlap (ALO) 00% South Shore 00% Em...

First up this week, if you want to speak at Wednesday's Board meeting, sign ups are taken starting at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning (Monday the 6th). Also tomorrow (night) is the NW School Reports meeting from 7-8:30 p.m. at Whitman Middle School. Again, all the principals from schools in that region will be there along with central staff. Tuesday afternoon is the Audit and Finance Committee meeting with the focus on Audit. This is a longer meeting, from 4-7:00 p.m. which leads me to think something big is being covered (or they need so much time because our district has so many issues to cover from the audit). Tuesday, the 7th is the Central School Reports meeting from 7-8:30 p.m. at Washington Middle School. Wednesday is the School Board meeting starting at 6 p.m. One highlight will be the election of new Board officers with Steve Sundquist expected to be the new Board President. If you don't want to attend a Board meeting, LEV is having an event discussing The Pa...

Onward. On January 12th the Board will have their annual Legislative luncheon. It was interesting because (1) they are all very worried about the state budget and (2) Michael asked about evaluating the district's lobbyist (we have one of those). It was agreed that it was a good idea but I think it surprised some staff. This would be done at a Board Executive Session. Michael said he had met with Rep. Carlyle about curriculum adoptions at the community college level and how it affects SPS. He said there was a group of teachers interested in piloting it and Dr. G-J said the district would have to pay the teachers. Michael countered that they had to do professional development anyway and the other Board members agreed. So on the agenda for this meeting was Community Engagement . The time came for this topic and the Superintendent said there was nothing new and she can't do more. It was somewhat awkward because she seemed defensive but said nothing. I was a little surpr...

I attended the School Reports meeting on Monday night at Roosevelt. There were about 45 people in attendance. All the principals of the NE schools were there as well as Phil Brockman, the Executive Director for the NE region, Susan Enfield, CAO, Jessica de Barros, Ramona Hattendorf and Lauren McGuire of the SCPTSA and Olga Addae, president of the SEA. They had the individual school reports for all the NE schools. (I learned that Jessica de Barros has a different title/job now but I don't know what it is.) It was structured so that staff gave a presentation and then there were small table groups (4-6) where these questions were to be discussed: 2 areas at your school to focus on and 2 to celebrate what do you want your principal to do to improve your school areas the district needs to focus on to improve your school areas you feel the district needs to have better communications what can family members do to help your school I wasn't sure how well this would work if there w...

A Roundup of Meetings and Activities: School Report Community meetings , co-sponsored with the SCPTSA, start this week. The first one is on Monday, Nov. 29th at Roosevelt High School from 7-8:30 p.m. (These are going by region so this is the NE region meeting. You can, of course, attend any of them but your region's school won't be represented by your principal or regional director.) There's also an APP Advisory Council meeting : * Monday, November 29,* *at Garfield High School (in the commons)* *6:30-8:30pm* This will be an opportunity for the APP community to learn about Garfield capacity issues and possible solutions, the proposed APP high school path to Ingraham, and to express all your questions, concerns, and hopes. The next School Report Community meeting is the SE Region on Tuesday, Nov. 30th at South Lake High School from 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 30th is the Board Work Session on the Budget from 4-8:00 p.m. Director Maier has a communit...

So I'm at the Work Session (got here late, terrible traffic even on 99). One thing that Charlie will appreciate is that SPS staffer Jessica de Barros was asked by Director Carr about the school reports that are to be approved tonight. Jessica said they were all done and on-line today at 11 o'clock. (Which is still too late if every Director wanted to check the schools in their district as Director Carr seemed to be trying to do last night.) I do not understand how staff can expect the Board to take a vote with information coming in so late. Charlie said he did a random check and they still aren't all there. The vote should be no.

The first order of public business today for the School Board is to have their Work Session on the district scorecard from 4-5 p.m. The presentation isn't available as of this posting so I'm not sure what the district plans to say. (Feedback from parents, feedback from principals, ??) Then there will be quite an interesting event at 5 p.m. which is a parent appeal on the use of a textbook. I myself have never seen this (I know it has happened before but I've never been to an actual hearing). Each party (district and staff) each get 10 minutes and then 10 minutes for Board review and determination. (The Board review on the website consists of the Board policy. What is interesting about the policy is that it states there should be an orderly process for appeal but then doesn't name one OR name an outcome should the district lose its case.) Then the Board will adjourn for 30 minutes and all the usual suspects will file into the Board room for what should be an inter...

From the Wallyhood blog (the blog of Wallingford where B.F. Day, JSIS and McDonald are located), a post on the school reports. The blog points out the differences in scoring between JSIS (a 4) and B.F. Day (a 2) as well as the number of free/reduced lunch students at B.F. Day versus JSIS. Here's an interesting stat from the blog entry: While many folks don’t think about B.F. Day as a Wallingford school since it sits on the other side of Aurora, last year 23% of B.F. Day’s students were from Wallingford, and that number more than doubled to 48% this year due to the New Student Assignment Plan. They also provide a link to an interesting study that I forgot about from 2000 of parent involvement at JSIS and its outcomes. What is fascinating is how quickly the comments got vicious (and it points out a big issue of how parents feel about their school versus the data on its performance). One parent spoke of how he/she felt that B.F. Day gets a bad rap versus JSIS when it comes to ...

This map comes to us from the UW's Center on Reinventing Public Education using the School Reports. It doesn't break out by type of school but by ranking but it's interesting to view.

I believe the link for the new school reports is to go live at 10 a.m. today. Let us know what you think. From the Seattle Times story : "In addition to test scores, each school's report includes data about attendance rates, average class size, percent of high-school students taking college classes and much more. The schools also outline their goals for the year and how they plan to achieve them." "One example: Seattle distinguishes between high-achieving schools based on how well low-income students are doing. Schools that have a significant gap between the performance of students from low-income families versus middle- and high-income families get a ranking of four rather than five."

From a District document on school reports: The first annual school reports will be released by Seattle Public Schools (SPS) on November 9th 2010, which will provide a snapshot of school performance on common academic measures. SPS wants parents, students, and the community to know how each individual school is doing – from test scores to absence rates to student proficiency – so we all can learn from and act on the information to make our schools better. In order to ensure excellence for all, the district needs to know how each school is currently performing and make improvement plans based upon that information. To be successful, we will need the community’s help. These school reports, which will be released annually, are meant to kick-off an ongoing community conversation about what needs to be done to make our schools better. At the school level, the new performance data and the district’s improvement plans will help leaders focus on what is working well in schools, identify ar...