Seattle Schools Community Forum

This from Edutopia (the public ed blog from George Lucas' educational foundation - they are not political but all about making the classroom better). Thoughts?

Well, a lot of convergence on School Board races yesterday and it probably leaves just one incumbent standing for reelection - Marty McLaren.   I can direct potential candidates in District 1 (Sharon Peaslee) to people who know campaigns/School Board work for anyone who might be considering a run at the position.  Contact me at sss.westbrook@gmail.com. I saw Director Carr's farewell e-mail.  She lists accomplishments over her eight years on the Board "working together as a Seattle Public Schools governance team" and I was astonished to see "began foundational work for a universal preschool partnership with the City of Seattle" on the list.  Did you hear that the NSA doesn't want to go in the backdoor for your data ?  Nope, they want the key to the front door....from Google (and others).  From Extreme Tech : Instead of handing the NSA a unilateral window into encrypted communications taking place at Google or Apple, Rogers suggested a f...

I asked the district: Is it true that opting out your kids can get them removed from the Spectrum/APP seats? The answer, via Advanced Learning, was a flat "no."   So if your teacher/principal is saying this, tell them you checked with the district.   If you continue to hear this, I would write to your region's Executive Director because it is wrong to give out misinformation about SBAC testing. Nationally, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, endorsing opting out (at least in her home state of New York).  Her statement yesterday via Twitter, We believe parents have right to opt-out & tchrs shld be able to advise parents how. We’ve said it repeatedly, are fighting for it in ESEA. @lacetothetop et al have asked what I’d do if I had kids in NYPS—based on what I’ve seen, if I had kids, I’d opt them out of the PEARSON (PAARC) tests this yr. I may have put this up before but I think it worthy of a repeat: it's the ...

 From Student Privacy Matters (I note there is nothing for Washington State):   Below are links to the laws enacted regarding student social media privacy.   Some states cover K-12 and post secondary and others only post secondary.  In general, these laws make it difficult for Pearson and schools to monitor online the students the laws cover.  You may want to provide this information to the list serve in case they want to review their state's law and/or advocate for coverage for K-12 students.  

 Update: a student "oath" from Louisiana from last year's testing: End of update Update: Via news updates , this is what the student did: Apparently, the student had just commented on the question after taking the test, and deleted his tweet after being contacted by the district. So commenting on a test score via social media will get your child on Pearson's naughty list.  What a bunch of bullies.  (You should read the whole article but here's a bit of it.) In addition, Pearson/PARCC has access to if a student is using testing modifications, along with their names, unique identifier numbers, etc. Beyond sensitive student information, Pearson also collects everything a student types into the keyboard during the test including words or sentences that were typed and then deleted. Pearson knows whether or not the student views a test item, how long it takes him/her to answer a specific question, and it tracks the student's clicks as he/she na...

 From The New Yorker, a thoughtful article by Mark O'Connell, "First Thought, Worst Thought," about thinking before you hit send.  I would think that includes Facebook, e-mail, texts or Twitter.  Something to talk to the kids about, perhaps. On the one hand: As Roxane Gay put it in an essay on her ambivalence about the public shaming of Sacco : “The world is full of unanswered injustice and more often than not we choke on it. When you consider everything we have to fight, it makes sense that so many people rally around something like the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet. In this one small way, we are, for a moment, less impotent.” Or maybe: The weird randomness of this sudden mutation of person into meme is, in the end, what’s so haunting. This could just as well have happened to anyone—any of the thousands of people who say awful things on Twitter every day. It’s not that Sacco didn’t deserve to be taken to task, to be scorned for the clumsiness and hurtful...

You may recall my update on Common Core?   I left out the biggest news which is the looming showdown between California Governor Jerry Brown and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The fight is over - what else? - testing .  From EdSource : Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday defended the state’s decision to suspend state standardized tests this year and instead offer students a practice test in the Common Core standards that’s now being developed. And he gave no sign of steering away from a collision with the federal government over this issue. The governor wants to pilot CC assessments for schools that have the necessary equipment.  The issue is that a new California law says this: By requiring that every district capable of administering a computer-based test give students a Common Core field or practice test next spring, the bill will put California out of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law.  And that's because California - like m...

Yet another stupid, yet potentially lethal, "no you do it" challenge is racing around the country.  It's called the Cinnamon Challenge and basically, it's swallowing a teaspoon of it without water.  (I recall this as trying to swallow a half-cup of flour in my day.) Now you think, "Cinnamon - how bad can it be?"  The issue is that cinnamon is a minor caustic that can burn mouth tissue and, worse, can cause breathing difficulties.  If a child has respiratory issues such as asthma, it could be life-threatening (as has been the issue in several cases throughout the country where children had to be put on ventilators.  It seems like you wouldn't have to tell a kid not to do this but I can see how they think cinnamon is sweet and delicious as it seems it is on a Cinnabon. Fantastic guest column in the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet by Ronald Willett, a former university professor, researcher and administrator and former corporate executive.  Th...

The Times has what could be considered a somewhat funny kind of "whoops" story except that the bigger issue of social media and your child is more sobering. The story is about Miss Seattle, Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn.  She won her crown last Saturday. The next day reporter Linda Thomas from KIRO-FM posted a story about Ms. Ahn's Twitter postings from a couple of months back. Apparently, Ms. Ahn, who is from Mukilteo, had gone to school in Arizona and now finds Seattle, well, rainy.  She also finds many people and situations "annoying."  The story ran on more than 240 news sites. So this is no big deal except for what comes later in the story. But we just keep tweeting and Facebooking away, many of us not worrying that those embarrassing tweets and photos never go away or that they can ultimately mean loss of a job, not being accepted into a particular college and, in certain spectacular situations, becoming a national laughingstock. Now it's one thin...