Seattle Schools Community Forum

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...

My predictions for the new coin of the realm for the next 25 years for both business and government?  Data and lots of it .  And now, we have "digital data backpacks" so that your child's data can be "carried" around AND made use of anywhere your child goes.  From The Atlantic (with the what-should-be-troubling-to-you title, Your High School Transcript Could Haunt You Forever , the story of how what seems to be help - remedial classes in college - could follow you around.  What if the data collected by the software never disappeared and the fact that one had needed to take remedial classes became part of a student’s permanent record, accessible decades later?  What if the data collected by the software never disappeared and the fact that one had needed to take remedial classes became part of a student’s permanent record, accessible decades later?   Some educational reformers advocate for “digital backpacks” that would have students car...

A heartbreaking story about the Greenwood shooting by the Ballard student via the Times .  The student was not homeless (he came from a two-parent household) but had chosen not to live at home.  Both his mother and the victim's wife seem to have deep sympathy for the situation of the other.  From SXSW from Microsoft's CTO - "anonymity going to be more valuable than gold in near future."   Might want to keep that in mind for your children's privacy going forward.  No one may be anonymous in the future but that doesn't mean people won't want some privacy in their lives.  Interesting new website - Funding Washington Schools - "understand the consequences of underfunded K-12 students" - good info. You want more?  Here's the hugely useful Government Information page from Vanderbilt University with at least a hundred l inks . My Northwest story on NWC and Cascade - the e-mails seem to show the district very much did know it was going to ta...

Here's what inBloom - the "cloud" student data system that the Gates Foundation is setting up says about students: Every student is an individual, with unique knowledge, abilities and learning needs. But the technology used in most K-12 schools today can make providing personalized instruction time-consuming and cumbersome for teachers. Meanwhile, states, districts and educators implementing the Common Core State Standards have set new goals for student learning, and they need effective tools and resources to ensure students meet those goals. Better, more integrated technology and data analytics can help by painting a more complete picture of student learning and making it easier to find learning materials that match each student’s learning needs. Unfortunately, creating the technology infrastructure to do this is often too expensive for most states and school districts. That’s where inBloom comes in. I feel like many parents are out there shrugging....

First off - read Anthony Cody's column from his Living in Dialogue slot at Education Week.  READ IT in its entirety.   Why?  Because it gives quite the total picture of Common Core and why so many - yes, including Tea Party folks - are against it.  Worried about it.  And will fight it.  You should be, too, if only to protect your child's privacy. Here's the basics from his column but again, READ IT: "1. Sharing of student and teacher data with third party developers of all sorts, with no guarantees of privacy.  As noted in this post, there are plans in place in some states such as Illinois and New York, and others as well, to collect massive amounts of data, which will be housed in a cloud based databank maintained by inBloom, a non-profit created by the Gates Foundation for this purpose."

  Update:  From a Colorado blog about children, School Belongs to the Children, a screenshot of inBloom's promotional video.  The accompanying article has some good information that I plan to draw from on what WE in Washington State need to do to stop this. This article   from Reuters really does a good job of explaining the issues around student data and privacy.  (I had seen this but a reader also alerted me to it; thanks). I keep getting asked, "What to do?"  I'll have a list of things you CAN and SHOULD do.  Our district can say no to a lot of this.   In a nutshell: A $100 million database set up to store extensive records on millions of public school students has stumbled badly since its launch this spring, with officials in several states backing away from the project amid protests from irate parents. The database, funded mostly by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , is intended to track students from kindergarten t...

I have a two-fold purpose to this thread.  One is to continue to provide food for thought about what your child's generation faces in terms of privacy.  Yes, I know, just as many say "advertising is all around them so who cares if it's in their test materials", I'm sure there are those of you who will shrug.  Whether we like it, think it's just the wave of the future or what, the fact is that things are going to be different for our children.  Two is to ask for help in trying to gather and organize information on privacy issues around testing.  This is needs to have an alarm sounded and loudly.  That I don't hear it coming from the PTA is even more troubling.  (And actually the national PTA loudly supports Common Core which is where the problem comes from.)  What's interesting is that state PTAs are sounding the alarm (I'll have to see if I can find out what Washington state PTA is doing).  In Missouri, parents point out, that in 201...

 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 ...